Third Rail Books

By David Hardy, www.artsvegas.com, October 30, 2013

William Shea and Patrick Lai spent fourteen months documenting the graffiti scene in Las Vegas. They sought out to expose the talent seen in the Valley to a larger audience. The result is Fade to Gray: A Photographic Review of Graffiti Art in Las Vegas. Shea and Lai are an unassuming pair who ended up in Las Vegas working in casinos by way of New York and China, respectively. While sitting down with them at The Beat on a Sunday afternoon, William revealed that the original idea behind the book came forth through reading other street art-inspired publications like Juxtapoz.

“First Friday helped spawn this street-art culture in Vegas, but most of the artists were unknown outside those circles. This project is a vehicle to expose the art culture here to the rest of the country,” Shea explains. During their research for the book, the authors discovered that well-known graffiti artists (with names like Pursue) had occasionally visited Las Vegas in the past, leaving traces of their work for a short time before being erased by the city’s graffiti abatement crew.

In fact, the title of the book relates to the generic “middle gray” that’s slapped on walls in an effort to erase the work. Since Las Vegas has a “zero-tolerance” policy on graffiti, the crews don’t differentiate between tagging, vandalism, and art. Large-scale graffiti pieces and gang graffiti and tags are covered with the same gray paint.

During the year-plus of shooting photos, the pair would “stake out First Fridays, in order to note changes, record new work, and hurry to photograph them the next day. Often, the work would be covered up the day after we photographed it,” notes Shea. They worked odd hours, sometimes arriving hours after a new piece had been painted.

Celebrated local artists like Kuhr, Ras One, Skel, and Tiki Jay are represented in Fade to Gray, as well as atypical examples from Jerry Misko and KD Matheson. The work in the book focuses on downtown graffiti mainstays like S. Casino Center Blvd., W. Colorado Ave., and E. California Ave., but also features street art found in the rest of the Valley in its final chapter.

The response from the art community in general has been positive. Shea says, “We’ve been told that many of the artists featured were stoked about the recognition. The 18B Arts District was also excited about the work. We anticipated a certain level of negative feedback based on the subject, but so far that hasn’t happened.” They hope that the emerging downtown construction leaves room for graffiti artists to co-exist in the new cultural landscape.

Durability of materials was a huge factor in the release of the book. Shea said that he and Lai received offers from six publishers, but ultimately decided to self-publish because of the cheap paper, dull ink, and flimsy covers offered.

“None of them wanted to commit to the level of quality that we needed, so we decided to print it ourselves on 100 lb glossy paper. R&D on the durability of the book was also huge for us; we wanted to print a version that looked beautiful but could also withstand a lot of hands,” Shea recounts. They passed-on early copies of the book directly to the artists who corrected names themselves on the hardcopy.

They’ve secured a contract for the second printing of the book that meets their standards and plan to find a way to give back a portion of the proceeds to the art community. “We’re looking for the right way to do it; that’s a goal,” says Shea. Hoping that “the city might revisit the concept of ‘zero tolerance’ for street art,” the photographers’ immediate goal is to make the public more aware.

As of now, some of the artists mentioned have been tapped to paint large-scale murals in conjunction with the recent Life is Beautiful festival. Local galleries have also embraced street art in their monthly programming; Amanda Harris Gallery of Contemporary Art is planning the 2nd exhibit by LA street artist Benjamin Alejandro in November. Banksy’s recent month-long “residency” in New York has helped catapult street art into the post-millennial zeitgeist. Will that momentum help some Vegas-based artists bear the fruit of their labor? We hope so.