Winners of local competition saluted at ‘Celebrating Life!’ exhibit

Joy of Life, meet Specter of Death:

Gas-masked Christ figure. Veil-wearing Middle Eastern woman. Snakes slithering down her shoulder.

Title? "Terrorist." Exhibit? "Celebrating Life!"

"It's Christianity vs. Islam, there's no getting around that," says 66-year-old local artist Rainer Bertrams, unafraid of offending in his artwork. "More wars have resulted from feuds over religion than anything else."

Artistic as well as provocative, "Terrorist" hangs among other works at the Bridge Gallery at City Hall, all winners in the "Celebrating Life!" art competition that was in May for Clark County residents ages 50 and up.

"It allows for people to have an outlet at that age," says Jeanne Voltura, gallery coordinator for the city of Las Vegas. "There are quite a few who are just starting to make artwork or they had a career and then came back to it."

Sponsored by the Las Vegas Arts Commission and now in its 10th year, the "Celebrating Life!" contest racked up its highest number of entrants this time around with 220 submissions, up from 185 last year. Winnowed down to 69 for the juried competition, 25 emerged as prize-winners that were first displayed at the Charleston Heights Arts Center and now line the gallery space that offers an artistic respite in the midst of city business downtown.

Categories included drawing and pastel, mixed media, painting, photography, watercolor and Gouache, and sculpture and ceramics. "Last year, the work seemed way more whimsical and colorful," Voltura says. "This year, it seemed a little more somber and dark."

Setting that tone with "Terrorist," Bertrams' mixed media creation alludes to another theme beyond the face-off between faiths, evidenced by the machinery gears that grind throughout the work. "It's also about the mechanization of religion, and with it comes the insufferable side effects of pollution and environmental destruction, which makes me think, 'Hey, the elimination of the species is coming,' " Bertrams says.

"I think Christ is getting ground up in the gears of all this mechanization."

Too intense? Elsewhere around the walls, Judi Rosenthal's "Chillin" is a color-penciled portrait of a young boy stretched out on a pool float, water covering his midsection, a picture of relaxation. Evoking the gregarious, life-affirming spirit of Louis Armstrong, Dede Salier's semiabstract likeness of Satchmo takes its title from his hit song, "What a Wonderful World," his famed trumpet in hand. Gladys Jorgensen, challenging viewers with the title "What Do You See," presents a mass of colors and shapes -- a horse emerging here, a butterfly fluttering over there, maybe even a human face popping up, or perhaps none of them -- that's an artistic Rorschach test.

Composed as a digital photo, A.J. Schreiner's "Owl's Club AM" views the club's layout from the back of the barroom toward the morning sunlight streaming in, affecting a lonely vibe that seems to form a ghostly image on the floor. And Peter Justl's "Marche Bacchus Behind the Scenes" -- a lush, detailed oil painting that took the "best of show" prize -- peeks in on the kitchen staff carefully preparing meals at the upscale French bistro/wine shop in Summerlin.

Darkness returns -- but with a streak of optimism -- in Dennis Parker's acrylic painting, titled "Hope." Interestingly positioned near Bertrams' "Terrorist," it portrays a desolate stretch of highway at night, the road seemingly about to plunge off into a giant, oppressive black void. Yet a small sign reading "Tomorrow Comes" pokes out from the corner of the canvas.

"I was trying to capture a sense going from darkness to at least the hope of a coming dawn," says Parker, 62. "The world is dark and dreary and difficult at times. When you're in a (psychological) depression, you have to somehow construct a state that will carry you forward. I wanted to share that there is hope."

Terrorism to hope, with the everyday world in between -- such is "Life!"

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.