Client: City of Las Vegas, Nevada, Office of Cultural Affairs
Location: Las Vegas, NV, United States
Completion date: 2008
Artwork budget: $66,442
Project Team
Artist
Denise R. Duarte
D'Arte Designs, LLC
Artist
Dayo Adelaja
Artist
Sylvester Collier
Overview
The West Las Vegas community has its own history, culture, challenges, accomplishments and aspirations. The people of West Las Vegas deserve their point of pride that reflects their deep artistic and cultural personality. The West Las Vegas Gateway, located at the entrance to the Doolittle Senior Center, is the most appropriate permanent celebration of the past and future of the West Las Vegas community. It serves as an educational tool that inspires and encourages current and future generations, while honoring those who have gone before.
It's dimensions are 16 ft H x 12 ft W x 6 in D.
Goals
"Ancestral Gateway" is a sculpture that reflects the culture of the West Las Vegas community and stands as a beacon to the neighborhood’s strength and resilience. It seeks to increase the community’s sense of identity and pride. This project has grown out of community participation and reflects and celebrates the lives that make up the West Las Vegas community. The corten steel sculpture uses negative space designs reflecting African symbols and accompanying meditation path with inset steel powder coated symbols.
Process
This project grew out of community activism to obtain a public art memorial to the people of West Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Arts Commission's representative and the Office of Cultural Affairs worked with the artist team to find the most appropriate site and to develop the artwork to reflect the community, past, current and future.
Additional Information
A gateway is a journey’s end and a new beginning. It emphasizes the importance of a culture, a life, a society. It memorializes those who in their time created it, as well as those in the future who will continue to celebrate it. A gateway is a historical marker, a point of passage and a celebratory sign to establish the permanence of a people, time and place. It is the merging of culture, history and the future aspirations of a community. This sculpture was awarded the 2008 City of Las Vegas Mayor's Urban Design Award for Public Art.