The intersections of art, teaching and life for two Las Vegas teachers
On display now at the Las Vegas Art Council’s Gallery 140 is a unique art show that continues an intertwining path of two Las Vegas art teachers, on display through March.
McKaila Dorman-Weldon and Faith Gelvin teach fine art to high school students at West Las Vegas High School and Robertson High School, respectively. Both women are also artists in their own right. As teachers, they champion their students’ artwork—for a change, this show puts their work on display in a show called “Artist-Teacher Intersections.”
Dorman-Weldon moved to Las Vegas at 18 on a soccer scholarship to Highlands University. “As I navigated college, I began to feel depressed, especially during off season,” she said. “My mother encouraged me to take an art class at Highlands as that was always my balance back at home and the rest is history!” She graduated with a degree in fine arts.
Most of her surrealist work is commissioned ceramic pieces for wedding gifts, disc golf trophies and funerals. “This exhibit of art is a collaboration with a longtime friend, Faith Gelvin,” Dorman-Weldon said. “Over the years our paths have intersected in many ways, such as life and death, kids, art, love of the mountains of New Mexico, struggling as a teacher during Covid, the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon wildfire tragedy and so much more.”
Gelvin echoed the thoughts, and said the two met at the Highlands foundry and “lead a parallel and connected path that has meaningful and profound intersections.”
Gelvin’s degree is an MFA in sculpture, and she has been teaching art for Las Vegas City Schools since 2007. “It is a challenge to maintain a productive art practice and be a full-time teacher simultaneously,” she said. “I am passionate about both.”
With six classes a day and over 100 students, Gelvin said her classroom is “a chaotic river of crayons, pencils, paints, brushes, clay, paper and books, which with my guidance are transformed into treasured art works. At the end of the day I am left with a fantastic mess of bits and pieces of materials that are energized by youthful experimentation left behind, forgotten and often disrespected and broken on the floor. It is from this energetic soup that I create many of these art pieces.”
