AC⚡️LV Turns Up the Volume on Las Vegas Art and Culture - QVegas

February 25, 2026

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After nearly three decades of imagining an arts magazine for Las Vegas, Robin Slonina is finally putting it in readers’ hands. If that sounds overdue, it’s because it is—and, in classic Slonina fashion, the catalyst wasn’t a corporate pitch deck or a trendy media pivot. It was a creative necessity.

For the last two years, Slonina has run an art gallery space that became a kind of community engine. She mounted “many, many group shows,” she says, including the VOICE exhibition with CCSD that highlighted the work of 100 teenage artists. Over time, the numbers added up to something bigger than a calendar of events: Slonina estimates she has shown more than 400 local artists on the walls and pedestals of her space.

But as the gallery grew into a platform for others, her own studio practice began to ask for room again—literally and figuratively. Recently, she reconfigured the gallery into more of a studio space to make time for her own work. That shift sparked a question: if the walls are no longer doing the heavy lifting, where does all that local talent go?

Her answer is AC⚡️LV, a new oversized print magazine dedicated to Arts & Culture Las Vegas.

“I could take the artwork off the walls and put it on the page,” Slonina explains. The magazine becomes a second exhibition space—one that can travel, land on coffee tables, and be shared beyond the usual gallery-going crowd.

A name with a wink—and a mission

The title AC⚡️LV is intentionally punchy: a playful nod to AC/DC, with a grassroots, slightly punk-rock energy. But it’s also literal, standing for *Arts & Culture Las Vegas*—and that “culture” is key. Slonina doesn’t want a publication that only covers visual art, even though the Arts District is often discussed in those terms.

Her perspective is shaped by proximity to the city’s performance world. Her husband performs with Cirque du Soleil, and through that connection she’s become embedded in a community of performers whose skills rarely get covered outside promotional contexts: contortionists, sword swallowers, acrobats, synchronized swimmers—the people who create the spectacle Las Vegas is famous for.

AC⚡️LV, she says, will offer “a glimpse behind the scenes” and introduce readers to the talent “that powers all of our Strip spectacle,” while still keeping its roots in local community.

Even the logo reinforces the concept. Slonina designed it inside a text-message bubble, complete with a lightning bolt emoji as a visual emblem. It’s a nod to how so much of life—and even professional creative life—happens through texting now, and to the idea of inviting the public into conversations that usually happen backstage, privately, in real time.

“Small but mighty” and unusually cohesive

Ask Slonina what stands out about the Las Vegas creative community, and she doesn’t hesitate: it’s tight-knit.

Las Vegas, she points out, is still “waiting to have a proper freestanding museum,” which can limit the traditional ladders artists climb in other cities. But that lack has produced something else: collaboration. She describes a scene where people routinely show up for one another—gallery openings, black box theater productions, workshops, skill-testing nights—offering support and feedback.

It’s a “rising water raises all ships” mentality, she says, and she believes the community’s cohesion is a real differentiator from bigger markets like Los Angeles or Chicago, where creative scenes can be more fragmented.

A tangible first issue—plus journalism that matters

The debut issue is set for a target release in May, and Slonina is leaning hard into the beauty of print. She’s partnering with VGM printers to produce a glossy, oversized, 72-page “visual feast” designed with coffee-table quality in mind. In an era where most arts coverage is scrolled past, she wants something “beautiful and tangible” back in people’s hands.

But AC⚡️LV isn’t just a showcase. Slonina also wants the magazine to ask timely questions about the city’s cultural identity—like where art still lives in the Arts District as the neighborhood fills with bars, breweries, and restaurants. Alongside profiles and portfolios, she envisions reported stories with stakes for the local community, including coverage of the current fight for sex workers’ rights unfolding around Sheri’s Ranch in Nevada—an issue with potential ripple effects far beyond the state.

The editorial approach is intentionally cross-disciplinary. Slonina wants poets next to philanthropists, contortionists next to painters—an interwoven portrait of a city that’s often flattened into stereotypes.

Who it’s for: people who think Vegas is only the Strip

Slonina is candid about her target audience: anyone who hears she lives in Las Vegas and immediately asks if she gambles—or assumes she lives on the Strip. AC⚡️LV is designed to counter the movie-version of Vegas with the lived-in reality of neighborhoods, studios, stages, and community.

In that sense, she describes the magazine less as a mirror and more as a megaphone. In a city without abundant gallery and museum infrastructure, being featured—beautifully, credibly, and in print—can create opportunities for artists trying to move from emerging to established.

How to get involved now

Ahead of launch, Slonina is inviting early participation through the AC⚡️LV website and a crowdfunding campaign. The goal isn’t only to print the magazine, but to pay local contributors—writers, poets, photographers—so that the money raised to spotlight talent circulates back into the community. Businesses can also support by purchasing ad space aimed at what she calls an “art-loving crowd,” and submissions for photographers and writers will open soon.

And because this is still Robin Slonina, the artist, the conversation returns to process: she edits with coffee (wine—or vodka—comes after the workday), and she thrives surrounded by sketchbooks and oddly shaped canvases, bouncing between projects in a studio arranged for creative “marination.”

In the end, her purpose is simple, and she states it as a final sentence: “AC⚡️LV exists because people need to see how much talent exists in Las Vegas.”