Ah, yes, the infamous paint brushes, for such is what they are, although your confusion is understandable.
It all goes back to 2007, when the downtown Arts District and First Friday events were starting to take off and it was decided that the area needed some public art to help put it on the map. Various artists competed for the gig, but the commission went to controversial New York City artist Dennis Oppenheim.
His contribution to the Gateway to the Arts District is two 45-foot tall metal paint brushes that illuminate at night and were originally planned to shoot beams of light 2,000 feet (later reduced to 1,600 feet) into the night sky, and from the outset the project raised eyebrows. Some considered the brushes too banal and insignificant, particularly compared to some of the artist's other work, while the project went horribly over budget from the get-go (it ended up costing $700,000) and had to be paired down from an original four brushes to just two. The project was still mired in controversy and not yet complete when earlier this year, Oppenheim died unexpectedly.
Since then, "Paintbrushes" has been completed and was officially dedicated June 2, but we have to admit to being somewhat underwhelmed by it, although we've only seen the brushes by day and need to check out what they look like at night these days (each brush is equipped with more than 100 colored and white LED lights that can be programmed to deliver different visual effects). Oppenheim himself explained his vision thusly: "The Paintbrush Gateway projects a stroke, 1,600 feet long, going into darkness, thus echoing an artist’s excursion into the unknown."
The two brushes are both located on Charleston Boulevard one at the corner of Art Street and the other at the corner of Fourth Street. Send us your photos if you have and we'll post them here; in the meantime, both the Las Vegas Sun and LV Weekly have some photo galleries.
