Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/692319
"These pieces are like children To us; we wanT Them To be in good places where They're loved and appreciaTed." –marco cochrane Bliss Dance will get you dancing on your way through The Park. The world's friendliest fire-breathing praying mantis stands sentry at Container Park. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh in 2012 as part of his $350 million Downtown Project revitalization. Along with shooting flames from its antennae, the oversize insect moves, speaks, and plays music from a 4,000-watt interior sound system. Also taking over Downtown is Scott Cohen's community-driven Life Cube Project, a short-term piece that returned in March for two-and-a-half weeks of interactive collaboration between Cohen and local artists (lifecubeproject.com). Originally staged at Burning Man in 2011, the project overtook a vacant Fremont Street parking lot for the first time in 2014, encouraging visitors to paint or write their goals and dreams on a 24-square-foot whitewashed cube. "It wasn't until after the project was up," Cohen recalls, "that a local artist commented that it was the largest canvas in Las Vegas." Per tradition, the piece later was publicly burned in a sunset ceremony attended by thousands of people, emphasizing the ephemeral natures of art and life. "We're in a world where efficiency is what everyone strives for, but I was doing the opposite of that," Cohen adds of the project, which he hopes to bring back to Vegas in the future. "What I found in Las Vegas is that there's a hunger to get involved with projects like this—to get involved with expression." . vegasmagazine.com 115