Third Rail Books

BY SCOTT DICKENSHEETS, Las Vegas Citylife, September 26. 2013

To the too-small shelf of books documenting the growth of Las Vegas culture we can now add Fade to Gray, a photo book examining the city’s street art. Compiled by local photographers William Shea and Patrick Lai, the volume’s 138 pages are filled with photos of the graffiti scene taken between March 2012 and August 2013. The point: “creating awareness about the unseen talent and hidden benefits that graffiti contributes to the art community,” the pair say. The pair began shooting in the Arts District but eventually worked their way around the entire valley.

Of course, the line between graffiti and “street art” is, for many, a thin or nonexistent one, particularly from an official point of view — the title Fade to Gray derives from the gray paint that municipal governments use to paint over graffiti, which the powers-that-be consider vandalism.

That doesn’t mean the book isn’t finding a bit of an audience. “It’s been difficult keeping the book in stock (on Amazon) as we didn’t expect such a strong response this early on,” Shea tells CityLife. Don’t worry, he says, more are on the way.