400 % Manet

TIM BAVINGTON HIT me with flowers. With seven-foot bouquets of flowers, to be precise, smack-dab in the middle of two large paintings on the wall of his downtown Las Vegas studio. There are two more, somewhat smaller works in progress to the right, surrounded by studies. On tables and carts around is evidence of the artist’s process: the remote control for a stereo resting at the center of a palette, rulers, brushes of nearly every shape and size, a colorful model for his eighty-foot steel sculpture in response to Aaron Copland’s rousing populist Fanfare for the Common Man. The sculpture in real life, a landmark outside the Smith Center for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas, looks like tubes from a group of massive pipe organs, but in pinks, blues, yellows, oranges, and greens.