UNLV celebrates its fourth annual Art Walk that took over UNLV’s Academic Hall offering live performances, art shows, dances, food, and beer and wine tastings.
In the Fine Arts courtyard, a wine and food tasting brought many of the attendees into the well-ventilated space together. Those old enough to drink received a bracelet verifying their age to participate in the tasting. Two white wines and a red wine were a part of the selection.
Milpa, a Mexican molino and cafe on 4226 S. Durango, offered small in-house corn based tortillas topped with a traditional seasoned beef. Pickled onions, an earthy green sauce with a few leafy greens dressed the taco. UNLV’s Epicurean Society brought chocolate cake pops that were in attendees hands as they chatted on the tables set up around the venue.
At the venue, they had a percussion performance that mainly consisted of xylophones. The music did not overpower attendees’ ability to chat and laugh amongst groups. There was no issue for those pouring wine to the ones partaking in the wine tasting. At a table nearby, they described the red wine as crisp like an apple and the alcohol bite to be virtually absent.
The second venue was in the Pida Plaza, sectioned off again to those above the drinking age since there was a beer tasting and another food vender. Yaad Patty, a Jamaican mobile food vender, that served beef, chicken, and vegetable patties. The flakey yellow pastry dough held in the proteins that could be topped with their savory sauce specifically for the beef patties, but was used on all the patties.
A jazz performance took stage as listeners drank beer and enjoyed their Jamaican patties.
Food and drinks were not the only instalments at the Art Walk, Little Shop of Horrors, a theater show to show on Dec. 3, brought some of their puppets and gave some behind the scenes. Whitney Meltz, the puppet designer for the future performance, explains that the show was put off because of the pandemic.
The puppets are described to get larger as the performance goes on to the third version of the puppet. “The final form of the plant would be big enough to swallow an actor whole,” Meltz said.
In the Peter Lind and Mary Healy Gallery, there was a decoration competition that spanned all ages to see who had the best decoration. The winners received two tickets to a performing arts center show in the spring, according to Mia Zapata, a UNLV sophomore and helper at the event.
In the Ham concert hall, an opera takes place as Perry Chacon, a doctoral student at UNLV and Christina Mancheni perform for the audience. Their voices resonate to the back of the auditorium. Performing arts usher, Susan Bindhamer, promotes attendees of the Art Walk to attend the talented voices of the opera.
Right outside the Fine Arts building, the sculpture class by Emily Modd, the professor, hosts an opportunity for event goers to make a mold of sand to have molten aluminum be poured into and create a sculpture.
Azure Werner, a student of the class, explains that it takes two to three people to pour the red-hot liquid aluminum, two people on each side and sometimes a third to remove the top layer of the metal and to direct the pourers to the mold. To the side of where the molds are being poured, there were some molds that seemed to be ready by the eye, but it was still extremely hot at the touch.
“These molds were poured in at 5:30 p.m. and they’re still really hot, like an oven,” Werner said roughly three hours after the aluminum was poured.
In the middle of the Art Walk, the film department took their equipment out to show people what they could do. In one tent, there was a scene from Harry Potter playing where a dragon roars at the main characters. The department is able to set up a microphone where people can give their best imitation of a roar and through the software Dehumanizer, people were able to create the vicious roar heard in the movie.
The other tent had the film department’s display of its virtual reality (VR) class that allows attendees to put on a pair of goggles and experience VR. Users are put into a Star Wars scene where they can fight and interact with main characters of the franchise.
In the class, students are creating their own videos with a 360 degree camera, James Lowery, a student and helper, explained the class. The class also meets in a VR room where they can interact with each other as if they were in person. Bruno Dos Santos is one of the students waiting to be in the class set to be taken in the spring.
