The department of art at is delighted to announce the installation of “The Land of Hidden Gems,” a public sculpture by its inaugural Transformation Fellow, Brooklyn-based artist . The installation will be on view April 2 to April 12 on the east side of UNLV’s Archie C. Grant Hall. On Saturday, April 6, the department will host a public celebration of the project from 2 - 5 p.m.
Come by, take a picture, and post it with the hashtags: #landofhiddengems #unlv #unlvtransformationfellow. The artist’s sketches for this exciting new installation are included here. The April 6 events will include public remarks by the artist, representatives from the art department, community partners, and other surprises; as well as a Grant Hall Gallery exhibition documenting Browder’s seven-week Las Vegas project. Grant Hall is located on the east side of the UNLV campus on Maryland Parkway between and Harmon and University avenues. Free parking is available nearby.
More than 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 the Las Vegas community. It uses only recycled and donated materials, and 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 art department selected Browder from a competitive pool of more than 100 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, Montana, in 1976, Browder received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 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 United States, 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 or Holly Lay for inquiries. Installation Drawings, courtesy of Amanda Browder, 2019.
