Artist Quaranto taps into her pain to find inspiration for creations (Las Vegas Review Journal, 3/24/11)

Quaranto, the owner of Blackbird Studios in the Arts District, is well-known locally for her surreal, dreamlike paintings and mixed media art that hint at loss and heartbreak interspersed with moments of clarity and great joy.

The style came out of her attempt to deal with the frustrations in her life in 2008: the end of her marriage and her son Gabriel’s newly diagnosed autism.

Where’s Your Head At? (Las Vegas City Life, 3/24/11)

Skull, a group show at Blackbird Studios, may not reinvest the skull with its mythic mojo… but it might help dispel the feeling of tired kitsch conjured by the idea of skull art. Devised by Chris Bauder, it collates work from 22 wildly varied artists (regrettably, just one woman), almost none of whom settle for lame brain shtick.

Tech Know: Carving an Atomic Bomb (BBC News, 2/28/11)

As every artist before him, Mr Smigel is not as happy with his creation as those who only see the before and after. He has lived with it and knows its flaws.

Despite this, there is satisfaction to be had in the work he has done and how fast.

“The timings made it tight,” he said, “but we did pretty much make magic happen here.”

The Eccentric Art of Jesse Smigel (Las Vegas Sun, 7/28/10)

No matter how weird or quirky his work gets, serious people have taken notice. St. Jude Hospital asked Smigel to create a Styrofoam piece for the patients to paint and auction at a fundraiser. The work turned out so well, one of its representatives decided she’d rather have it put on display in the corporate home office. Smigel also receives commissions to create work for everything from art galleries to children’s bedroom decorations (a dinosaur headboard, for example).