Jurors
CCSD VOICE award recipients will be selected during an online review by local Nevada artists as well as artists whose scope and range of personal work reach international audiences. Each judge will be reviewing one category when adjudicating the submissions. Judges look for works that best exemplify and express the focal concept in each category while highlighting the emergence of a personal voice through creativity, originality, and technical skill.
VOICE JURORS
Chala Escobar
Chala Escobar is a first generation Salvadoran-American artist who grew up in Las Vegas. She attended Arbor View High School, where she won various awards for her drawings and paintings including scholarships from Boulder City Art Guild and City Lights Art Gallery. She completed a BA in art and art history at Occidental College and now works as a gallery assistant and archivist at Left of Center Gallery & Studio.
Jeannie Hua
Jeannie Hua graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an MFA in 2022. Since then, she taught at Ox-Bow School of Art for their Art in the Meadows program. Her work was shown at First Street Gallery in NYC, Agitator Gallery, and Woman Made Gallery in Chicago. She had a solo show at College of Southern Nevada’s ArtSpace Gallery and became adjunct faculty in Art History at the school. She has participated in group exhibitions in galleries and museums in New York, Illinois, California, Nevada, Michigan, Virginia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Utah, Tennessee, Oregon, and Orquevaux, France. She was the recipient of the Denis Didero Grant, Nevada Council of Arts Grant, as well as merit scholarship to Ox-Bow School of Art.
Gwaylon Leaf
Gwaylon Leaf has been making art across Nevada since graduating with his MFA from UNR in 2020. Since graduating, he has received recognition from the First Lady of Nevada for his artwork. His work has been exhibited in both Northern and Southern Nevada as well as Vincennes, Indiana and New York. In his artwork, he navigates the ambiguity of his multi-cultural identity within a Western environment. As a non-Chinese speaking individual growing up in an environment of Chinese calligraphy, scroll painting, and poetry, Gwaylon adapts the visual forms and philosophies of traditional chinese art and reinterprets it through Western influences to create a visual language that speaks to the liminal spaces between cultural boundaries.
FORMER VOICE JURORS
Cheryl Magellen
Ms. Magellen received a BA degree from Chico State University, studied at the Southern Oregon Art Academy, and continued her studies at the Scottsdale Artists’ School, in Arizona. Since moving to Las Vegas, she was instrumental in starting up and curating two galleries in the Arts District. She has been teaching art since 2009 in Oregon, California, Arizona and Las Vegas, and shown her work in National solo and group exhibitions. She has been an active member of the Portrait Society of America (Cecelia Beaux and Nevada Chapter); Oil Painters of America; American Impressionist Society; American Women Artists; Portrait Artists of Arizona; Southern Oregon Society of Artists; Red Rock Pastel Society of Nevada; and the Las Vegas Artists Guild. She currently teaches privately, works in oil, acrylic, pastel and charcoal, and specializes in portraiture.
Izaac Zevalking
Izaac Zevalking is a socio-political artist acclaimed for his graphic exploration of a broad variety of contemporary issues from global history to current affairs under his alias, Recycled Propaganda. Izaac is an English-American who was raised bicontinental in a family who highly valued creativity and outside-the-box thinking. This support and lifelong emphasis on ingenuity, coupled with a background in graphic design, bred an artistry which aims to encourage critical thought and nuance in an increasingly apathetic and polarized society.
Originally from Pensacola, FL, Sam Davis received his BFA from the University of Florida in Creative Photography and an MFA in Photography and Sculpture from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Davis creates images that reference his love of family history (his father had once been a participant in an atomic test during the 1950’s, while other family members worked on the first submarines during the civil war) coupled with a playful curiosity of popular and kitsch culture. His images combine obscure technology, science fiction and childhood fantasy to call into question notions regarding memory, nostalgia, imagination and pulp/cyber folklore. Davis creates images that he hopes will cause the viewer to pause and question while at the same time provide a pathway for the viewer into another frame of thought-to proactively imagine. When Sam Davis is not chasing U.F.O's, he is teaching alternative process and analog photography as Assistant Professor of Photography at Southern Utah University.
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Voice 2021 Juror Statement
Looking at the work of students provides a window to thoughts and ideas often hidden from the rest of the world and this is even more poignant given this past year of isolation and disruption. What better genre to wander and explore in than Conceptual Surrealism? This has truly been the time of a life lived in fantasy, thinking of other places, other times and other realities. For some students this has been a year of incredibly deep introspection and discovery and for others, a year of struggle and fear. The winning works show a broad approach to dealing with the surreal reality of today and a life lived through fantasy and escape. These works illustrate exploration into identity, faith, despair and hope..
ASHANTI McGEE
Ashanti McGee has lived in Las Vegas, Nevada for over 25 years. She graduated from the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts in 2002. She has served on several art advisory boards and groups including the Contemporary Arts Center, Cultural Alliance of Nevada, and the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) Leaders of Color Advisory Committee. She is married and has four children.
CHECKO SALGADO
Checko Salgado's experience as an instructor and curator have given him the opportunity to benefit artists and students with their work being exhibited both on a regional and national scale. Salgado's work combines art, culture and advocacy for environmental protection. Salgado is currently co-curating an exhibition focusing on the proposed Avi Kwa Ame National Monument Area outside of Searchlight, Nevada.
Casey Jade
Casey Jade has been a Las Vegas local since she was 5 years old. Raised by a single mom who always had multiple jobs, she has had a strong calling to empower women from a very young age. It wasn’t until she was 25, burnt out from being an operations manager in the consumer electronics industry, and yearning for learning, that she found her passion for photography. While getting her commercial photography degree, she discovered she could build up her subject’s confidence by bringing out their favorite aspects and shifting their mindset. Since then she has been on a mission to change the world one woman at a time.
Sean Slattery
EDUCATION
BFA in Painting and Drawing/Art History, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, 1997.
MFA in Painting, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2004.
PROFESSIONAL
Adjunct Professor, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, current.
Art Handler, past and current (including Guggenheim Museum, Las Vegas; Godt-Cleary Gallery; MCQ Fine Arts).
Assistant Director, Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, TX, 1999 – 2001
Co-curator/Museum Manager, Arlington Museum of Art, Arlington, TX, 1998 – 1999
Member, Good/Bad Art Collective, Denton, TX, 1996 – 2000
PERSONAL
Born 1975, Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
"Dear Artists,
Congratulations on the hard work you performed that got you to this show. All of you young artists made strong efforts and deserve the celebration of this exhibition and this reception. Whether you pursue art as a career, a calling, or a hobby, or if you don’t pursue it ever again, remember this feeling of success and let it guide you through the tough moments that are sure to come.
Congratulations also to you artists who I singled out for special recognition. I chose your work partly for the level of craft you demonstrated. More importantly, I chose it because you created a world inside your artwork that is different from the world we inhabit. Though your art might address our regular lives, the good and the bad that fill them, your art goes beyond that. Each artwork creates a unique space, spaces that I assume reflect your interests and desires, the things that make you “you.”
To the artists in the show that did not receive the top prizes: be proud. Know that the space between inclusion and special recognition is not large. On a different day with a different juror, the results might be different. Look at the work of the others here and see if you can learn from them. Is there something special that you can identify, something that explains their status in this show? If not, blame my bad eyes and lack of taste, and resume making artwork.
The same advice applies to those who did receive special recognition. Celebrate! But don’t stop looking and don’t stop learning.
I wish all of you the best, and thank you for the honor of evaluating your artworks. "
Sean Slattery
Assistant Professor in Residence, Painting & Design, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Jerry Schefcik
Jerry Schefcik has been a Las Vegan since 1961. His college career took him to Brigham Young University where he earned his BA in Art and Design and on to the University of Denver for a MA in Art History and Museum Training, where he interned with the Denver Art Museum. He worked as Curator of Visual Arts for the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center in Pueblo, CO, and then moved to the Amarillo Art Center, Amarillo, TX as Curator of Art. From Amarillo he returned to Las Vegas to join the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) in 1989 as Curator of the Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery. He was promoted to Director in 1991. He concurrently served as Exhibitions Curator for Nevada Institute for Contemporary Art for over a decade, and Curator for the McCarran International Airport Arts Advisory Sub-Committee for five years. Now as UNLV Director of Galleries, Schefcik oversees the Donna Beam Gallery and six satellite galleries throughout the UNLV campus. He also teaches the three-part Gallery Practices series and supervises the gallery internship program. In addition to his responsibilities at UNLV, he currently serves on the Board of the Nevada Arts Council, as a Commissioner for the City of Las Vegas Arts Commission, and as a board member of the North Las Vegas Arts and Culture Commission, and he is a member of the RTC Arts in Transit Advisory Council. A central figure within the ever-growing Las Vegas art scene, Schefcik demonstrates his dedication to the past, present and future art endeavors of this city by contributing much of his time as an advisor, juror, and mentor to numerous arts organizations in Las Vegas and the Western Region.
"VOICE continues to present outstanding work year in and year out. It was an honor to judge a section of work submitted to this year’s competition. It’s always gratifying to see the high level of artwork being produced by students here in the Las Vegas valley, and this year’s entries have even stepped it up a notch. The format of themes rather than media was a much appreciated variation of the entry criteria. Within the area that was my responsibility the art touched on the gamut of self-realization perceptions from the angst and self-doubt to the comfortable and gentle. That observation was the motivation in the selection process: a representation and reflection of the variety of “selfs” that make up who we are. Thank you for the opportunity, and keep up the good work!"
Jerry Schefcik
UNLV Director of Galleries