Las Vegas

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With sketchbook in hand I walked down the Las Vegas Strip towards the Mandalay Bay Hotel. Across the street a large Statue of Liberty wore a Golden Nights sports jersey and I had to sketch. The jersey took 4 straight days to make, weighs 600 pounds and is 28 feet tall. It took six hours to get her dressed. The back dons the number 17 and the name Budweiser. It is a bit sad that she has been turned into an advertising billboard for beer.

Also in the scene was Ellis Island and the Empire State Building. I used to work in the Empire State building and the large windows could be opened and I liked to sit on the ledge of the window looking out and straight down. I liked to watch the window washers at work. They would snap a restraining harness to a latch on the outside of the window frame and then lean out to squeegee the window. No that is a job that took some real guts.

This replica decorates the New York, New York Casino. The United States Post Office decided to print a postage stamp using the face of the statue of Liberty. In stead of using the face of the statue in New York, they used the face of this Las Vegas statue created by artist Robert S Davidson.

Davidson, born and raised in Las Vegas, completed the Statue of Liberty replica in 1996 for MGM Resorts International, when the casino operator opened its latest theme casino New York-New York. Davidson said in court documents that he
wanted to give his replica a face that was “a little more modern, a
little more feminine” and looked for inspiration from a photograph of
his mother-in-law, Lucille Schwartz.

 

Davidson sued the post office for copyright infringement. The stamp was first issued in December of 2010. About 4 billion copies of the stamp were printed by USPS.  The post office mistook
the face for the statue that has stood in New York Harbor since 1886. Getty images was paid $1200 for the right to use the photo on the stamp. The stamp generated about $2.1 billion in sales for the Postal Service, according to court filings. The artist was awarded nearly $3.6 million in 2018 by a federal
court that ruled the U.S. Postal Service infringed his copyright when it
mistakenly used an image of his statue on the stamp.

The only thing that keeps this scene from looking like it could be NYC is that large palm tree to the right of Lady Liberty. The tree looks about as tall as she is. This statue is about half the size of the original in New York Harbor. This replica took 11 months to complete. Hopefully I will be safe for having turned my eye towards Lady Liberty. To date I have made $0 for having sketched her.

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.

The Strip

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What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Everything seems normal until it is not. While Pam Schwartz was at a museum archivists conference in Las Vegas, Nevada I explored the Strip with my sketchbook. A block from the hotel where the conference was held was a MacDonalds and I ate there each morning as I walked my way over to the strip. I got plenty of exercise on this trip hiking many miles each day. Across the street from Casino Royale and Harrah’s Casino I found a recessed nook by a hotel wall where I was out of the way of the hoards of tourists wandering up and down the strip.

There was plenty to take in among the riot of color and false opulence. A huge McDonalds Arch dominated the scene between the casinos so it seemed fitting since this was my breakfast choice each morning. Other fast food choices included Outback and Panda Express. Barricades were set up all along the strip so that cars could not drive into the crowds on the sidewalks. Pedestrians were carefully sequestered from possible danger but that made no difference on October 1, 2017 when a shooter high up in Mandela Bay Hotel room fired more than 1,100 rifle rounds into a crowd enjoying a Country Harvest Music Festival. 58 people were shot to death and this became the largest mass shooting in America surpassing the 49 shot to death in Orlando just 16 months earlier. One survivor of the mass shooting in Las Vegas, Telemachus Orfanos, a navy Veteran, was later shot to death at the Borderline Bar in California where college students were line dancing.12 people  including a police officer were killed at the Borderline.

My goal sketching each day was to do a series of sketches as I walked my way down to the site of the Las Vegas Mass shooting. I never actually entered a casino but Pam and I did take in one amazing Circue show. More of our time was spent seeing that ways that Las Vegas has responded after the mass shooting. The strip was crowded and back in business immediately following the shooting but locals still struggle with their new reality. Like Orlando Las Vegas has a tourist driven economy. It seems that these tourist getaways are very attractive for the insane looking to make a name for themselves by pulling a trigger.

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.