Vegas Is Beautiful

Returning to Las Vegas for a third year this September 25–27, Life Is Beautiful isn’t quite like any other festival out there. Spanning more than 15 city blocks in the heart of Downtown Las Vegas, Life Is Beautiful is billed as a lifestyle festival and is a celebration of equal parts music, food, art and learning. Past lineups have included Kanye West and Foo Fighters, celebrity chefs José Andrés and Hubert Keller, speakers Pussy Riot and Penn & Teller, and artists Chuck Close and D*Face.

The festival’s visual hallmark is its mural program Rise Above, which features dozens of original, large-scale street artworks brought to life on the walls of motels, parking lots and other structures in the days before the festival by an international cast of renowned artists. Many are left up until the following year, when they’re either retouched or repurposed for another artwork. Helmed by curator Charlotte Dutoit of the artist collective Justkids, the project takes its inspiration from Miami’s Wynwood Art District and features work from up-and-coming and established artists. This fall, the program will evolve to include more installations and design elements, in addition to murals.

“You walk around downtown and you really feel like you’re in the arts district,” says Pasquale Rotella, who has long been a champion of the convergence of art and music. “Before it was just old neon signs. Now businesses are thriving and there are cool places to go to. The art really wows you, and every year they add more and more. Even though I’ve walked past some of these paintings 50 times, I still look up and I’m still blown away.”

“The beauty of it is the art community rallies around it,” says Life Is Beautiful founder Rehan Choudhry. “So it’ll always keep evolving. We’re always looking for unexpected visual experiences.”

Here, Choudhry discusses some of his favorite pieces:

Skull Snail (Alexis Diaz, 2013)

“This got named one of the top-10 murals in the world for 2013. Him coming out to do this was probably one of the biggest breaks we got that first year. We saw him at Art Basel, and Charlotte said it would be a dream to get him, and then he kind of came out of nowhere. He works with such a fine touch. That piece is so intricate and complex. It’s thousands of tiny brushstrokes. He probably spends more hours out of anyone doing this.”

Eagle on Black Background (Ana Marietta, 2013)

“She’s my favorite—my favorite style. It worked well for the side of this bar, the Commonwealth, because she has that steampunk kind of vibe. I don’t know any other business owner in the city that would’ve taken the risk and let us put that thing up. But if you look at it now, I challenge anyone to remember what it looked like before; it seems like a natural part of the décor of the building.”

Viva Lost Vegas (D*Face, 2013)

“Anything D*Face does, I love. His stuff is so cleanly created and very message-focused. It’s a very striking piece to be on that side of the city. Typically, no one is looking at Fremont from the east side going down. That’s one of the last spaces in Downtown to be redeveloped. It was a statement piece, if anything.”

Gave Her My Heart/Blue Skull Guy (D*Face, 2013)

“I was actually really surprised at how well-received that piece was. It’s definitely a downer. That was the first mural to go up during that week, so people were crowded around, watching him do it. I know a lot of his work is really part of a series, so if you put them together, it’s almost part of one comic book, which is cool to be a part of.”

The Maser Motel (Maser, 2014)

“He did it all on his own. I remember having to look for a cheap used car we could buy on craigslist for him to paint. I love his pieces; they come across very simply and very powerfully. They’re highly photographable. It was definitely one of the more popular ones people posted on social media.”

Guy on Blue Background (Zio Ziegler, 2013)

“Zio was a machine when he made that thing. I think he worked on it for 20 or 21 hours a day for the four days he put that up. It was one of the first pieces he did with color and said he was trying to break from his normal pieces. It ended up being a really powerful piece for him and was really popular with the crowd, as well.”

Horned Lizard (Roa, 2014)

“For that one, I know he researched desert lizards specially in Nevada and created a combination of two or three different ones to make his own. It was perfect, and that blood splatter coming out of the eye was his final touch. It shook us up for a moment.”

Wire Mesh Man (Edoardo Tresoldi, 2014)

“You should see this guy’s hands by the end; it’s disgusting. Even though he covers them in tape, it’s such a painful process. My favorite part of the piece was how everyone talked about how it looked different from different angles, kind of like he would follow you around while walking.”

#HappyWall (Thomas Dambo, 2014)

“This one was so cool. It had interactive panels you could change to say different things. But it was a tough one. There were people at the church next door who were mad at us for shutting down the street, and one of the churchgoers took her car and drove it into the site and into the piece the night before the festival. I gave my car and credit card to the artist and told him to do whatever he needed to do to get it fixed in time. Luckily, he did.”

Corner (Borondo, 2014)

“We were lucky to have a piece of the Spanish rising star Borondo, probably the most talented mural artist to appear on the scene in the last decade. He did a corner piece and used the anamorphic technic, which requires the viewer to be on a specific point to see the image correctly. Fascinating!”