Three towering metal flowers are about to bloom on a traffic island in East Las Vegas. The City of Las Vegas will unveil “Las Tres Flores,” a new public art sculpture depicting the Las Vegas bear poppy, at a free dedication ceremony next Tuesday morning at the corner of Sunrise Avenue and 26th Street.
The 9 a.m. outdoor ceremony on September 1 is open to the public, according to FOX5 Vegas, which reports that the sculpture features three towering metal bear poppy flowers and a single bud rising from blue-green leaves, with boulders at its base meant to reflect the mountains framing East Las Vegas and the rocky terrain where the bear poppy actually grows. A reception will follow at 10 a.m. at the East Las Vegas Community Center, 250 N. Eastern Ave., the outlet notes. The City of Las Vegas commissioned the piece for the East Las Vegas neighborhood, with artist Justin Favela working on the sculpture alongside Vik Sehdev as principal engineer and Adin Fly as fabricator, per the same report.
A Las Vegas Native Brings National Acclaim Home
Favela is a Las Vegas native and UNLV BFA graduate whose large-scale, piñata-style installations exploring Latinx identity have earned him international recognition, including a solo commission at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., according to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. His connection to East Las Vegas public art isn't new either. In 2019, he installed “Seven Magic Tires” in an empty lot in East Las Vegas, using brightly painted recycled tires as a playful jab at Ugo Rondinone's famous “Seven Magic Mountains” installation outside the city, as detailed by the Nevada Museum of Art.
“Las Tres Flores” highlights the beauty of the desert, and city officials have built out a full program around its debut. Parks, Recreation & Cultural Affairs Director Maggie Plaster will open the dedication, with remarks expected from Favela himself, Ward 3 Councilwoman and Mayor Pro Tem Olivia Diaz, and Las Vegas Arts Commissioner Fawn Douglas, according to the City of Las Vegas.
Funded Through a Nearly 40-Year-Old Arts Ordinance
The sculpture was commissioned through the city's One Percent for the Arts program, a municipal ordinance enacted in 1987 that sets aside capital improvement funds for civic art projects, the Las Vegas Arts Commission explains. Diaz, who became the first Latina elected to the Las Vegas City Council in 2019 and was appointed Mayor Pro Tem this past July, represents a Ward 3 district that is over 65 percent Hispanic, where expanding public art has been a named legislative priority for her office, per the City of Las Vegas.
The reception site itself carries symbolic weight. The East Las Vegas Community Center underwent major municipal refurbishments to showcase neighborhood murals and active community spaces designed specifically to reflect the area's Latino heritage, according to city records.
The Real Flower Behind the Sculpture Is Disappearing
The bloom at the center of the artwork is more than decorative. The Las Vegas bear poppy, or Arctomecon californica, is designated a critically endangered plant species by the State of Nevada and grows exclusively on rare, gypsum-rich desert soils in Clark County and surrounding Mojave areas, according to NatureServe Explorer. A 2024 study published in the PMC Journal of Insect Conservation found that local populations of the plant experienced sudden collapses of more than 90 percent between 2021 and 2022, driven by urban expansion, gypsum mining, drought, and pollinator declines.
The plant's name carries its own quirk of history. Despite its scientific name, the Las Vegas bear poppy has never been native to the modern state of California; explorer John C. Frémont named it in the 1840s, when Southern Nevada was still part of the Mexican territory of Alta California, according to NatureServe.
That vanishing habitat is already the subject of an active local campaign. As Hoodline reported in July, conservationists and Southern Paiute leaders have intensified a push for a 32,000-acre East Las Vegas National Monument near Frenchman Mountain to preserve shrinking native habitat for the bear poppy, tying the sculpture's civic celebration to a real fight over the flower's survival just outside the city.
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