by Birdie Jaworski
JB's Tortilla Cones, by Nancy Philo
Soft yellow paint coats the rounded corners of an adobe storefront lining the Las Vegas Plaza, giving sunlight opportunity to cast shadow against a recessed door. Delicate ristras, ochre paint clinging to the rough surface, echo a white sign offering burritos smothered in red or green. Nancy Philo's painting of JB’s Tortilla Cones' facade offers a humorous zen koan, a painting of a painting.
"Las Vegas inspires me to paint," Philo muses, "the interplay of old and new, the unusual nooks and crannies. I can't imagine a better subject."
Philo knew she was an artist before she hit double digits. At seven, she lugged sketchbooks and pencils around her Michigan neighborhood, spending free moments capturing her surroundings, and at ten began taking lessons at at Detroit's famed Institute of Art where she fell in love with the world-class museum.
"I loved wandering the museum and learning about different art periods," she reminisces. "I grew up in that museum. I discovered who became some of my biggest inspirations - Diego Rivera and Frieda Kahlo. I became fascinated with the Mexican painters."
Philo's personal art history is rich and varied. She became a peace and civil rights activist in the deep south, illustrating for two pacifist magazines in New York City while working to stop the war in Vietnam. A drawing that she did of Martin Luther King, Jr. is part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art's Portrait Collection. After spending years as an art instructor for idyllic New England summer camps as well as owning her own Northshore Boston gallery, Hyperbole, Philo felt the Land of Enchantment tugging at her heart.
"I visited Las Vegas on an art trip with my sister fifteen years ago and fell in love with the town," Philo says. "I had been coming to New Mexico with groups of artists - driving them around in a van, showing them how to paint. We'd visit Taos Pueblo, Georgia O'Keeffe's home, Abiqueue, eat bag lunches, paint all day. Every time I'd visit with a group, I'd build in an extra week or two so that I could explore New Mexico."
After a period of soul-searching, Philo pulled up her east coast roots and made the big move to New Mexico, first exploring Truchas and Santa Fe, then eventually purchasing a renovated adobe home in Las Vegas, the place she now considers home.
"I like Las Vegas so much better than Santa Fe. I had no sense of community in Santa Fe," Philo explains. "All I did was go to work. I had work friends there, but I've met so many wonderful people here. This community is not a trasitional kind of place. It's real."
Philo spends her days at Waxlander Gallery on Canyon Road in Santa Fe, a fine arts establishment that sells original works and rents sculpture and paintings to the budding New Mexico film industry. Evenings and weekends find her at home in Las Vegas, painting the local landscape from series of photographs.
"The buildings, the storefronts, I find all of Las Vegas very interesting, very beautiful, with the architecture of all different periods," says Philo. "I have my next fifty paintings photographed and lined up. I know what the next fifty are going to be. I'm very inspired here."
Traveler's Cafe inside of Tapetes de Lana is featuring a show of Philo's Las Vegas-inspired paintings called "Las Vegas: Old and New, Favorite Facades Around Town." The show runs through April 30, with an artist's reception 5 - 7 p.m. Friday, April 4, and 1 - 4 p.m. Saturday, April 5.
"I look forward to seeing friends and neighbors seeing my take on Las Vegas as a newcomer. Everybody has their own feelings and memories. Las Vegas is preserved in time." Philo pauses to catch her breath. "I'm not a history buff because I had a nun as childhood teacher who hated history and made it difficult to enjoy it. But this town reflects so many different eras, and I find it all very fascinating. It gives me fodder for my work."
The show includes a delicate painting of Estella's Cafe, its worn red sign providing counterpoint to the slate-grey of sidewalk below. A piece titled "Plaza Reflections" explores the historic Plaza Hotel as a tourist might - through the reflective all-seeing windows of another building. Philo's work is careful, attentive, as if she swallows whole one street corner, then another, spilling forgotten secrets from her fingers onto the canvas. Her work examines Las Vegas from the perspective of an outsider, from looking across streets, through dust-whipped windows. Philo hopes that her work may inspire others to both look at Las Vegas in new ways, and to consider the importance of art in our lives.
"Perspective - the more complex it is, it engages and challenges me," Philo notes. "People inside and outside, reflections. It gives me time to reflect, myself. The arts are so important. In our culture, we have become little technotrons, and the arts give us a sense of beauty and hope and stimulate our imaginations. And those are all the things that kids - and adults - need."
