Moapa Valley Progress
The Moapa Valley Art Guild inaugurates the celebration of its 50th Anniversary year with a special Art Exhibit at the Old Logandale School.
The Exhibit will be free and open to the public on Friday, March 21, and Saturday, March 22, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the auditorium at OLSHACS. Members of the Moapa Valley Art Guild will be on hand to answer questions and point out paintings of particular interest. Light refreshments will be served.
Highlighting the exhibit will be a retrospective sampling of more than 50 years of art works by MVAG founder Max Bunnell. Also, selected paintings from the Art Guild’s Permanent Collection. This Collection was begun by Bunnell and the Guild many years ago, and has been added to over the years. When Max would invite a guest artist to come and give a demonstration, he would often ask the artist to leave his or her demo painting in the care of the Art Guild. Also, a number of them were painted by local artists well known to the community, and donated to the collection by the artist or family members of the artist. As part of Max Bunnell’s life-long dream, and in the thinking of Guild Members, these paintings are held in trust for the people of Moapa Valley. For a long time, the paintings in the collection were housed in schools and other places around the valley. Then, starting about six years ago, Joyce Jones and Zona Tobler spearheaded an effort to collect and catalog these paintings that had been accumulated and put them all in one place. It was a big undertaking, as some of the paintings had been virtually forgotten. Finally most of them were located and brought to be housed at OLSHACS, where they are on permanent display in the Art Room and on the hallway walls. There they are placed so high that it is difficult to view them properly. Only on special occasions like this can the collection be presented as a proper Exhibition.
The Guild believes that local folk will enjoy seeing paintings by renowned regional artists as well as people with whom they are familiar, such as, Bernice Breedlove, Maria Wurtz, James Haworth, and A.E. Johnson. The Art Guild sincerely hopes that many Moapa Valley residents will be able to take advantage of the opportunity to view and appreciate this unique part of our local cultural art heritage.
