Eccentric Artists presents its 6th annual Shameless Plug ARTS FEST, Oct. 3

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Where Las Vegas Creativity Connects, Creates and Collaborates

By Isabel M. Castro

"In a city famous for spectacle, four women are creating another kind of excitement—one built on collaboration, community and the belief that artists should not have to wait for permission to make their mark.” Sarah O’Connell, founder and publisher of Eat More Art and Artistic Director of The Asylum Theatre

Las Vegas has never been short on spectacle. But beyond the marquees, stages and polished productions of the Strip, another kind of creative energy is gaining momentum—one driven by independent filmmakers, performers, visual artists, designers, entrepreneurs and cultural producers determined to tell their own stories.

This October, that energy will converge downtown when Eccentric Artists presents its sixth annual Shameless Plug ARTS FEST, a free community celebration taking place Saturday, Oct. 3, at Fergusons Downtown. With the theme "Cosmic Voyage,” the festival invites artists and audiences to explore what happens when creative disciplines, cultures and ideas collide.

The event will transform Fergusons Downtown into a lively meeting place for artists, performers, makers and audiences, featuring a marketplace, live performances, workshops, interactive installations, a film challenge and a custom photo booth. The festival's philosophy is simple: artists should have a place to show their work, meet one another, exchange ideas, and perhaps discover their next collaborator.

Earlier this summer, Eccentric Artists presented its sixth annual Shameless Plug FILM FEST on Aug. 29 at the THIRD Street Arts & Media Incubator, bringing filmmakers and audiences together for an evening devoted to independent moving-image storytelling. Together, the two festivals represent the public face of a much larger creative experiment.

At its heart, Eccentric Artists is about one powerful idea:

Connect. Create. Collaborate.

The phrase may sound deceptively simple, but the organization's ambitions go beyond it.

Building Community Through Creativity

Eccentric Artists emerged in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced artists and creative organizations to rethink how they worked, communicated, and stayed connected. What began as a virtual film collective gradually evolved into a broader creative enterprise. In September 2022, Eccentric Artists officially became an LLC, establishing itself as a women-led film and event production company based in Las Vegas.

The circumstances were challenging, but they also opened the door to experimentation.

Artists learned to produce remotely. Audiences became accustomed to digital experiences. Collaborations that once depended on physical proximity could suddenly take place across cities and time zones.

For Eccentric Artists, that disruption became an opportunity to imagine something different—not simply a return to the way things had been, but a more accessible and collaborative creative infrastructure.

Rather than specialize in a single discipline, the founders built connections among many.

Today, Eccentric Artists works across film and commercial production, documentaries, narrative projects, livestreaming, post-production, events and festivals, digital content, workshops, mentorship and installations. Its stated mission is to redefine business production standards, promote diversity and inclusivity, and create opportunities for shared upward mobility, particularly for underrepresented artists.

The range is intentional.

A filmmaker might need an editor. A theater company might need documentation. A small business might need a compelling story. An artist might need assistance bringing a project to an audience. A festival might need everything from production and technology to marketing and social media.

Eccentric Artists operates in that space between the idea and its realization.

Where Film Meets Theater, Art and Community

Two recent collaborations demonstrate how that philosophy works.

One is "Local Time,” a lifestyle and documentary series with Michelle Patrick that explores local businesses and culturally specific communities. The project looks beyond the familiar images of Las Vegas to focus on the people, traditions, and enterprises that give neighborhoods their character. Eccentric Artists co-produces the series.

Another is the organization's work capturing "The Anemone and the Boar,” a play created by The Asylum Theatre, as well as providing professional production logistics for Nevada Women's Film Festival at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to name a few.

For Eccentric Artists, these projects are opportunities to enter someone else's creative world.

Documenting theater, for example, is fundamentally different from producing a lifestyle series. A live performance exists in a fleeting combination of light, movement, sound, and emotion. Capturing that experience requires both technical expertise and an understanding of performance.

That is where collaboration becomes more than a business arrangement.

As Eccentric Artists co-founder Jemsen Yumico Bollozos explains, “We're working closely with individuals and organizations that align with our mission. Being able to offer them our skill set and services is exciting because it lets us create together.”

That distinction—create together—may be one of the most important ideas behind Eccentric Artists.

The company isn't simply looking for clients. It is looking for creative relationships.

Four Women, One Collective Vision

Eccentric Artists' identity is shaped by four co-founders whose professional strengths complement one another. Their roles reveal why the organization can move so comfortably between creative production, technology, events, business development, marketing, and community engagement.

Jemsen Yumico Bollozos: Connecting Vision and Opportunity

As Co-Founder, Creative Director and leader of Strategic Business Partnerships, Jemsen Yumico Bollozos occupies the space where creative vision meets opportunity.

Her work involves recognizing the potential in an idea and considering the relationships, resources,, and strategy needed to bring it into the world. That requires more than creativity. It requires entrepreneurship.

For Eccentric Artists, business development isn't separate from the artistic process. Partnerships can determine whether an idea remains a concept or becomes a finished production.

Bollozos helps build those bridges.

Her role reflects one of the company's central beliefs: creative people need not only artistic freedom, but also the infrastructure, relationships, and resources that allow their work to reach an audience.

Veronica Castillo De La Vega: Making the Vision Work

Castillo De La Vega, Co-Founder, Technical/Event Producer and Digital Content Technology Lead, represents another essential dimension of creative production: making the vision function.

Audiences often experience the finished event or production without seeing the complex network of technology, equipment, scheduling, logistics, and problem-solving behind it.

Castillo De La Vega works within that unseen architecture.

Her expertise lets Eccentric Artists move between digital content, live events, and production environments while maintaining the technical foundation needed for a successful experience.

In a creative collective, imagination may generate the spark. Production turns that spark into something people can actually experience.

Tiffanie Rose Ignacio: Building the Gathering Place

As Co-Founder, Director of Operations and Community Partnerships, and Events and Festival Director, Tiffanie Rose Ignacio helps turn Eccentric Artists' philosophy of collaboration into physical spaces where people can meet.

Festivals may appear spontaneous to audiences, but behind every successful event is an intricate network of artists, vendors, schedules, partnerships, volunteers, and production teams. Ignacio works within that network.

Her community partnerships are equally important.

A creative event is only as meaningful as the community that participates. By cultivating relationships with artists, organizations, and audiences, she helps ensure that Eccentric Artists' events are not simply showcases but gathering places.

That distinction is fundamental.

A showcase asks people to look.

A community asks people to participate.

Nadine-Gabrielle Natividad: Telling the Story

Natividad, Co-Founder, Chief Brand Officer and Editor-in-Chief, works on another critical part of the equation: telling people why the work matters.

In an era when an extraordinary amount of creative work competes for public attention, storytelling and communication have become inseparable from production.

A project can be beautifully made and still remain invisible if audiences never encounter it.

Natividad helps give Eccentric Artists' projects a public voice through marketing, editorial work, and social media. Her role reinforces a larger truth about contemporary arts organizations: communication is no longer simply publicity. It's now part of the creative ecosystem.

The Meaning of “Shameless”

The name Shameless Plug is intentionally provocative.

In a culture where emerging artists are often expected to wait to be discovered, the festival flips that expectation on its head.

Plug yourself. Talk about your work. Show what you make. Meet people. Ask questions. Make connections.

The festival gives artists permission to be unapologetically visible.

That can be especially powerful for emerging creatives who have not yet found their place within traditional cultural institutions. There is no single pathway into the arts anymore.

Some artists come through universities. Others are self-taught. Some work professionally during the day and create at night. Others move between disciplines, refusing to define themselves simply as a filmmaker, painter, musician, designer, or performer.

Eccentric Artists recognizes that creative identities are increasingly fluid.

Its festivals reflect that reality.

A filmmaker can encounter a visual artist. A theater producer can meet a videographer. A musician can discover a photographer. An entrepreneur can find a creative partner.

Those encounters can become collaborations.

Collaborations can become productions.

And productions can become careers.

A Different Picture of Las Vegas

The broader significance of Eccentric Artists may lie in what its work says about Las Vegas itself.

For decades, the city's dominant image has centered on entertainment: casinos, showrooms, celebrity performers, spectacle, and tourism.

But Las Vegas has been developing another identity alongside that familiar one.

It is a city where artists live, teach, experiment, organize, and build creative businesses. Independent arts organizations and community-based cultural spaces are expanding what Las Vegas culture can be.

Eccentric Artists is part of that evolution.

Its founders are not waiting for Las Vegas to become an arts city. They are helping make it one.

That means creating opportunities for artists to meet audiences outside traditional institutions. It means using technology not simply as a tool, but as a means of connection. It means recognizing theater, film, visual art, music, design, and digital media as parts of one larger creative conversation.

Most importantly, it means understanding that culture is not something a city simply possesses.

Its people continually create it.

The Cosmic Voyage

"Cosmic Voyage” is therefore more than a festival theme. It aptly describes where Eccentric Artists stands today.

The organization began during one of the most uncertain periods in recent history. What began as a virtual gathering of filmmakers evolved into a production company, festival organizer, creative service provider, and community-building organization.

Experimentation has shaped its journey.

And the journey is not over.

For audiences attending Shameless Plug this year, the experience may begin with a film, performance, installation, conversation, or an unexpectedly discovered new artist.

But the most important part may happen between those experiences.

Someone meets someone.

An idea gets exchanged.

A phone number is saved.

A future project begins as a conversation.

That is where creative communities are actually built—not necessarily on the biggest stages, but in the spaces between people.

And that may be the most compelling reason to pay attention to Eccentric Artists.

In a city famous for spectacle, the organization is making space for something potentially more enduring: people creating something together.

Its Shameless Plug festivals offer the public a chance to witness that process firsthand. But beneath the films, performances, installations and marketplace is a larger invitation—to step beyond the role of spectator and become part of the creative conversation.

The future of Las Vegas arts will be shaped not by one institution, one artist or one spectacular production alone, but by the thousands of connections made across the city—between artists and audiences, theater and film, technology and tradition, established voices and emerging ones.

Shameless Plug ARTS FEST: Join the Creative Conversation

On Saturday, Oct. 3 from 3 to 11:45 p.m., Eccentric Artists will bring its sixth annual Shameless Plug Arts Fest to Fergusons Downtown, 1028 E. Fremont St. The event is free and will feature a marketplace, performances, film challenge, workshops, installations and a custom photo booth.

Under the theme "Cosmic Voyage,” the festival invites Las Vegas to explore the limitless possibilities that emerge when artists stop working in isolation and start creating across disciplines.

Whether you're a filmmaker, painter, performer, musician, designer, photographer, entrepreneur—or simply someone who loves the arts—you're invited to plug yourself in.

Come curious.

Come creative.

Come ready to connect.

Connect. Create. Collaborate.

Connect:

Website: Eccentric Artists

Email eccentricartists.space@gmail.com

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