Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area

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My favorite site that we visited in Nevada wasn’t the Las Vegas Strip but instead, The Valley of Fire located about 50 miles north east of Las Vegas. Cynthia Sanford the curator at the Clark County Museum took us on a road trip to the Valley of Fire. World-renowned for its 40,000 acres of bright red Aztec sandstone
outcrops nestled in gray and tan limestone, the Park
contains ancient, petrified trees and petroglyphs dating back more than
2,000 years.

The petroglyphs were etched into desert varnish, a layer of dark rock on
top of the sandstone. With the black layer carved away, the petroglyphs
reveal the orange rock underneath. The desert varnish is a patina of
iron and manganese that leached from the rock and evaporated over the
course of thousands of years.  The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, passed through the Valley of Fire in prehistoric times. Their approximate span of occupation has been dated from 300 BC to 1150 AD. Their visits probably involved hunting, food gathering, and religious ceremonies, although scarcity of water would have limited their stay.

A Visitor Center provides exhibits on the geology, ecology,
prehistory and history of the park and nearby region. Open year round, the park has
numerous campsites equipped with shaded tables, grills and water, as
well as many intriguing trails to tempt hikers.

I started hiking up a steep incline with Pam but she scrambled inside a cave and up through a gap in a series of rocks which I did not feel confident navigating. Instead of climbing up, I stayed in the shade of the cave and did this sketch. I placed a pencil on the ground at the edge of the cave shadow to see what direction the sun was moving. About 15 minutes into the sketch I could see that I would be safely in the shade for the duration of the sketch. Ive started using this trick more often since this trip to see what direction the sun is moving when I sketch outdoors.

People came and went walking along the trail at the base of the giant sandstone outcrop. At sunset this place must light up a glorious orange. The rocks are already a vibrant shade of orange.

Las Vegas Rememberance Wall and Healing Garden

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October 2, 2017 the day after the mass shooting in Las Vegas, Brad Jerbic a city attorney, one of his friends and an employee of the city, Cameron Robinson was attending the concert where the shooting happened. His friend did not show up to work. At 7:15 that morning they got the call that confirmed that Cameron was one of the 58 who were killed that night. One of the attorneys advised that they should go and take a walk to stop and reflect. But where? At that moment he got a call from Stonerose Landscapes principal, Jay Pleggenkuhl, who advised that the city find a piece of land not to sell or donate but just loan so that a memorial garden would be created immediately. By 10 am they had agreed on a piece of property which is away from the strip at 1015 S. Casino Center Blvd. By 4 pm Jay and Daniel Perez had drawn up a plan for the garden on a napkin. The city decided to step aside and let Jay and his volunteers create the garden.

By Tuesday morning all 58 trees were donated by Boon Valley Nursery and all the shrubs were donated by Star Nursery. Along with the 58 trees there is one more tree called the tree of life. When searching for the spot to plant the tree of life, the soil was kicked and and a medallion just happened to be buried ch was medallion of the tree of life buried in that spot for who knows how many years. Siegfried and Roy donated the Tree of Life tot he garden. In just 4 days the volunteers managed to open the garden. The original Wall of Remembrance which I sketched was made from pallets covered in photos and memorial items. One year later it was removed and stored in the Clark County Museum to be replaced with a more permanent wall of remembrance. The names of the 58 souls lost that night are on the wall.

The community came together in an amazing way to make the garden a reality. The number of volunteers swelled over the days. One man came with coffee for the volunteers and a pizza shop next door donated pizzas. The garden became a path back to life and creation.

Eiffel Tower on the Strip

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The Eiffel Tower on the Las Vegas strip is part of the Caesars Casino in Paris Las Vegas (3655 Las Vegas Boulevard South

Las Vegas , NV 89109). At the top of the tower is a viewing deck located 46 stories up in the half scale replica of the world-famous Paris, France landmark.

As an artist, all the magnificent architectural detail was fun to draw. As I worked on this sketch, a guy was going though his bag in front of me. He seemed really upset that he had picked up the wrong sun glasses. The impression I got was that he lifted the glasses, threw then in his bag and walked out of the store. He had stolen the wrong brand. I should have done a quick sketch of his face  in case the police were interested but I was in the midst of all the detail on this sketch and didn’t want to side track.

This was done several blocks closer to the Mandalay Bay Hotel where the mass shooting happened. My sketching experience was getting me used to huge throngs of people pressed together on the side walks that were separated from traffic with cement stanchions. On this day I made it as far as the New York, NY facades one block from Mandalay Bay where shots were fired on a crowd on October 1, 2017 killing 58 and wounding 413 others. About one month after the shooting, all of the preservable memorial items were gathered, boxed and taken to the Clark County Museum, (1830 S. Boulder Highway, Las Vegas Nevada) to become part of the museum’s permanent collection. The county has cataloged more than 12,000 items that were used to create
makeshift memorials following the Oct. 1 shooting. On October 1, 2018 one year after the shooting the strip went dark at 10:01PM in remembrance of the 58 victims and hundreds injured in the senseless shooting.

The moments during and just after the shooting rampage were recorded on multiple cell phones. For some the effects of that night will last a lifetime. Memorial sites sprang up but most concert goers were from out of town. And the hotels on the strip wanted to get back to business right away. On September of 2019, In the spirit of helping the community heal, MGM Resorts announced that the 15-acre plot where 22,000 people gathered for a country music
festival that ended in the largest mass shooting in U.S. history is
being converted to a community center and parking lot. In coming weeks and months, Las Vegas visitors will notice construction
activity near the shooting site, which has remained unused since the
tragedy. The company said it will also support any effort to install a permanent 1 October Memorial.

Conservation after the Las Vegas Mass Shooting

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On the night of October 1, 2017, a shooter opened fire on a crowd of concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada. He killed 58 people and wounded 413, with the ensuing panic bringing the injury total to 869. The incident is the deadliest mass shooting committed by an individual in the history of the United States. This horrible incident came just 16 months after the mass shooting in Orlando that killed 49 people.

Cynthia Sanford the curator at the Clark County Museum took on the responsibility of having to archive the memorial items left for those lost. Volunteers sifted through items collected, took photos and carefully documented and archived every item that entered the collection. Pam Schwartz of the Orange County Regional History Center flew to Las Vegas to offer any advice she might have after collecting and archiving in Orlando.

The two collection sites were vastly different. In Orlando humidity, heat and daily rains soaked and degraded items left at memorial sites in Orlando. Las Vegas literally has no rain. The concert site however was next to the Las Vegas airport and Cynthia said that anything left on the site was literally blown over by planes as they landed or took off.

The Clark County Museum (1830 S. Boulder Highway, Henderson, NV) includes the Anna Roberts Parks Exhibit Hall and
Heritage Street which contains eight historic buildings from the county.  In a building that was once a railroad station behind the museum, volunteers were hard at work even 6 months following the shooting. The woman taking photos of each item choked up as she described how proud she was to be taking part in the process.

The October 1st collection at the Clark
County museum is made up of tens of thousands of artifacts that help to
tell the story of how the community reacted to the mass shooting at the
Route 91 Harvest Festival. The artifacts will be cataloged to record
information such as physical descriptions, dimensions, and conditions.
Each artifact will also be photographed or scanned for identification
purposes. As museum staff and volunteers process these artifacts, you
will be able to follow our progress by viewing identification
photographs.

Museum curators across the country have formed an informal support group. Knowledge gained after one mass shooting is passed on the curators in the next city overwhelmed by tragedy and the super human effort needed should that community decide to collect memorial items. It is a small community that no one asks to be a part of. 

On September 28, 2018 The Clark County Museum opened  “How We Mourned: Selected Artifacts from the 1 October Memorials“. Items put on display included flags, stuffed animals, rosaries,
artificial flowers, signs, letters, banners, candles, art works and a
portion of a Hawaiian lei that was used as a symbol to promote world
peace. The Orange County Regional History Center in Orlando has also mounted an exhibit each year to remember those who were lost.

KNPR Radio Interview in Las Vegas

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Pam Schwartz and I took a trip to Las Vegas where she was attending a National Council on Public History conference. This scheduling coincidence brought memorial experts to Las Vegas as their museums are continuing to collect and catalogued the items of remembrance that people left after the October 1, 2017 shooting that took 58 lives and had over 500 injured treated at area hospitals. With breakout segments like  “Documenting Resilience: Condolence
Collection Projects in the Wake of Violence,” the national gathering of
academics plans to discuss how communities such as Orlando, Newtown, Connecticut, and Isla Vista, California responded to mass casualty trauma.

KNPR Radio interviewed a panel of individuals who have had to collect in the wake of tragedy. Melissa Barthelemy is a graduate student at UC Santa Barbara who worked on efforts there. Pam Schwartz is chief curator of the Orange County Regional
History Center in Orlando, Florida and created and led the effort to manage the collection of items left at the scene of
the Pulse Nightclub Massacre. Cynthia Sanford is the registrar at the Clark County Museum. She is
heading up the effort to collect and catalog many of the items left at some of the
memorials in Las Vegas.

I sketched as the three fielded questions. Producer Doug Puppel set the tone of the interview. Barthelemy said the collection, archiving and exhibition of items from pop-up memorials are a new area of history research. These
kinds of memorials really only started to appear in the last few
decades. She said people point to the many impromptu memorials left
in the wake of Princess Diana’s death as a contributor to the rise of
spontaneous memorials. The fact that these mass memorials are visible on TV and social media contribute to the rise in items left in the wake of tragedy.

Schwartz said not every community is impacted the same way by a mass
casualty event and therefore not every community reacts in the same way. Those differences change what is collected and how it is exhibited. “The
biggest thing for people to understand, especially people who have not
been through a similar sort of situation, is that one size doesn’t fit
all,” she said. The focus of any exhibition should be on what will help the community with its healing process.

Sanford explained that her museum already has between 15,000 and 20,000 artifacts from the memorials. “Our
role as a museum is to preserve the history of Southern Nevada,” she
said, “Unfortunately, this event is now part of our history.” She
said the museum is planning an exhibit for the one year anniversary of
the shooting, but there is not a plan for a permanent home for the
items. 5,000 items have been catalogued so far. 50 years from now, 100 years from now those items will be in storage. Every item you work on is someone’s story. Sometimes when you get home, that is when it hits you. The three interviewees all explained that they are honored to be able to collect these events for their communities. You have to find a way to get through it.