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he's known. Next door, Ryan is a more reserved
presence, his shyness crackling with suppressed
energy and nervous smiles. He also produces
color-popping abstracts, although he often works
on a larger scale than Bavington, using foam and
board to create hybrids of painting and sculpture.
Today he's repairing a massive piece that was
damaged en route to its destination in the Middle
East. Ever careful, he's adding extra padding to
the packaging for the second shipping attempt.
B
oth artists have works in significant
collections around the world—
Bavington, for example, is represented
in the permanent holdings of New
York's Museum of Modern Art—but they're still
passionate about their adoptive city of Las Vegas.
Bavington points to Symphony Park in the
distance, which houses his 80 -foot-long outdoor
sculpture Pipe Dream. Just two years old, it's
already a favorite backdrop for souvenir selfies,
he says with a laugh. The reason is simple: The
work is a dazzling assembly of 128 colored steel
pipes, a visualization of Aaron Copland's
Fanfare
for the Common
Man, with the pipes varying in size
according to the dynamics of the music. To
address the challenge of fading colors in the harsh
desert sun, Bavington turned to an unlikely
material: car paint. "This piece of art is a nod to
the automotive culture from which the Strip
sprung," he says, pausing before he adds, "And
my dad was a car salesman." Ryan, meanwhile,
has undertaken his most ambitious project yet.
Last year the city launched a competition for
artists, architects, and designers, asking them to
reimagine the unloved Ogden Avenue underpass
downtown. Ryan and his team, the winners of the
commission, have started on the project, which
relocates the sidewalks from the edge of the street
to the center to create a shared walkway, while
adding greenery to shield it from the wind. To
brighten the underpass itself, the team is install-
ing a swath of lights and LED screens (it is Las
Vegas, after all).
Both pieces epitomize the joys and challenges
of visual art in Vegas. An unpretentious open-
mindedness here allows creatives like Bavington
and Ryan free rein to bring high-caliber work to the
masses. The difficulty, of course, is that much of it
is hidden in plain sight, unassuming and over-
looked (don't forget that Las Vegas managed to
allow its own outpost of the Guggenheim Museum
to shutter). But like Ryan's Ogden underpass or
Bavington's organlike sculpture, art in Las Vegas
can be found in the most unexpected places.
from left: A Downtown mural by
British artist D*Face, installed for
last year's Life Is Beautiful
festival; Pipe Dream by Tim
Bavington at Symphony Park.
