The Great Las Vegas Coloring Book

Joyce Straus
The Great Las Vegas Coloring Book, 1975
Paper
Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art Collection
Gift of the Joyce Straus Foundation for the Arts
2017.01

Item Description:
A book cover with a simple illustration of a sunny desert landscape where a road leads up to a golden city in the distance. There is a cactus decorated with yellow stars in the foreground and the outline of the state of Nevada on the right. The words “designed and illustrated by Joyce Straus” are handwritten in cursive inside the outline of Nevada. “The Great Las Vegas Coloring Book” is printed above the desert landscape. The picture is framed inside a black border decorated with dice.
2017.01.001

Joyce Straus moved from Philadelphia to Las Vegas in 1961. From 1975 until her death in 2013 she developed her home into a studio and gallery space where local children could take art classes. As a teacher she stressed the importance of self-exploration through art,
encouraging her students to try a variety of techniques and telling them that the work they created did not need to be perfect; what was important was that it was personal. Former students remembered her classes with gratitude. Straus was a self-taught artist. Starting with experiments in loom-weaving, she developed her style across a range of two- and three dimensional media including glass, metal, watercolor, and wood. The Joyce Straus Foundation for the Arts continues to maintain the galleries and studios she established in
“The House of Straus.”