UNLV Department of Art Transformation Fellow Amanda Browder Installation
The Department of Art at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is delighted to announce the installation of “The Land of Hidden Gems,” a public sculpture by its inaugural Transformation Fellow, Brooklyn-based artist Amanda Browder (amandabrowder.com). The installation will be on view from Tuesday, April 2, to Friday, April 12, 2019, on the East side of UNLV’s Archie C. Grant Hall on Maryland Parkway between and Harmon and East University Avenues. On Saturday, April 6, The Department of Art will host a public celebration of the project from 1:00 - 4:00 pm. Come by, take a picture, and post it with the hashtags: #landofhiddengems #unlv #unlvtransformationfellow.
The April 6 event will include: public remarks by the artist, representatives from the Department of Art, and community partners; a Grant Hall Gallery exhibition documenting Browder’s 7-week Las Vegas project; and other surprises. Free parking nearby.
Over 150 volunteers have participated in this project by donating fabric and pinning and sewing fabric. The following organizations have hosted or participated in free sewing workshops led by Browder: Charleston Heights Art Center, Clark County School District, Core Contemporary, HELP’s Shannon West Homeless Youth Center, Las Vegas Academy of the Arts, Left of Center Gallery, Liberty High School, Pincushion, The Arts Factory, West Flamingo Senior Center, Winchester Dondero Cultural Center, UNLV’s Black Mountain Institute, the UNLV Department of Art, and the UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art.
The Land of Hidden Gems is a collective portrait of our community in Las Vegas. It uses only recycled and donated materials from Southern Nevada, and it has brought together Las Vegas residents and the students, staff, and faculty at UNLV. This large-scale fabric installation also reflects the expansiveness of the surrounding desert and mountain-scape and the various micro- and macro-environments within and around the city. Browder is deeply invested in the power of socially engaged art to strengthen community. During and after the installation, participants have shared personal and collective thoughts and memories through audio interviews, some of which Browder will share, along with process documents and photographs, on April 6 in the Grant Hall Gallery.
Faculty and students in the Department of Art selected Browder from a competitive pool of over one hundred applicants. Browder’s work reflects the mission of the College of Fine Arts at UNLV to boldly launch visionaries who transform the global community through collaboration, scholarship, and innovation.
Born in Missoula, MT in 1976, Browder received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). She is an Art Prize Winner participating in the first edition of the ArtPrize biennial in Grand Rapids, Michigan this coming fall. She has exhibited widely in the US, and also in Canada, The Czech Republic, and Japan. Exhibition venues include White Columns, the New Museum, and the Spring/Break Art Show in New York, The Dumbo Arts Festival in Brooklyn, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In 2016, she received a National Endowment for the Arts grant and worked with the Albright Knox Art Gallery to drape three buildings in Buffalo, New York. She is a founder of the well-loved art podcast Bad at Sports: Contemporary Art Talk Without the Ego. Photos and reviews of Browder’s work have appeared in The New York Times and Fibers Magazine.
To keep up-to-date on this dynamic project, please follow “UNLV Department of Art,” and “Amanda Browder: Transformation Fellow with the Department of Art at UNLV” on Facebook, @unlvtheear on Instagram, and the hashtags #LandofHiddenGems and #unlvtransformationfellow. Contact Marcus Civin marcus.civin@unlv.edu or Holly Lay holly.lay@unlv.edu for inquiries.
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