The City of Sin is slowly transforming into the city of murals and creative works of street art. The hot dry desert has now become a popular meeting place for expressive creative artists to join together and create masterpieces of works of art and sculptures. A past article titled, ‘7 New Art Pieces Embellish Downtown Las Vegas’, provided some beautiful examples.
Not just inside the city of Las Vegas, but even the outskirts, approximately ten miles south of Las Vegas on I-15, there is an eye-catching public art installation known as the Seven Magic Mountains. Imagine seven towers of colorful, stacked boulders standing more than thirty feet high, in the middle of a barren desert. This is an irresistible sight and photo opportunity for tourists, art lovers and influencers.
Curiously, virtually none of this art concerns anything to do with gambling, blackjack, poker and casinos. This may be a fresh fad to Vegas, but the new-age flavor on the Strip is renowned for the DJ parties on pool decks, pulsing nightclubs and newer table games. Of course Vegas is famous for gambling and poker is still the city’s main calling card and attraction. The main casinos are still known for their poker rooms.
Las Vegas also still plays host to the World Series Of Poker — or strictly speaking is hosting the event again, after COVID forced an unwanted hiatus. In ordinary times, though, the best poker players in the world still flock to Vegas once a year for this event. Tens of thousands of the world’s best players join to compete for cash games, exciting daily tourneys, satellites, and 88 separate multi-day, bracelet-awarding events. Poker is still famous and popular because it is a social activity which makes it a perfect game for friends and tournaments.
Yet this game, so intimately tied to the city seems to have inspired few of the area’s street artists. It seems another evolution is taking place because the next era has begun and has formed a blending of the minds; creative art with classic poker. An example of this can be found on the new Gamblers General Store. When it moved into a new location in 2019, it initiated this trend with some fun, poker-themed art exhibitions on its exterior.
You can see the art here that was posted on Review Journal.
The captions have a few words on the artist for the primary mural, and there are some other poker designs as well.
This might not be at the scale or level or inventiveness of some of Vegas’s highlight street art — but it feels like a welcome addition to the scene. Everyone likes animals and people love Vegas, so a blending of the two creatively expressed through a mural on the side of a building is bound to make heads turn and make people smile. Art, in the form of murals, sculptures and paintings, continue to have an inspiring effect and encourage people to be expressive, creative and to connect with one another.
