Dogs and Water

UNR School of the Arts Art Department
Sheppard Fine Arts Gallery
Church Fine Arts Building
1664 N. Virginia Street
Reno

Ryan Pierce: Fear of Dogs and Water

"Pierce’s work draws on ecological theories to portray possible futures. He both questions and interprets post-apocalyptic fear in our culture, especially as related to landscape, nature and animals. His timely large-scale paintings are stunningly created and represent an excellent example of contemporary painting."

Through December 15

[Graphic and text from art department website.]

40 Years Between Edw Martinez & Robert Morrison

Sheppard Gallery
Church Fine Arts Building
University of Nevada, Reno
summer hours: TuWTh 12 – 2 pm

The House of Last Week's Work:
40 Years Between Edw Martinez & Robert Morrison

Opening Night Reception
Thursday July 23 5 – 7 pm

through August 13, 2009

"celebrating 40 years of friendship and art-making between UNR Professor Robert Morrison and Professor Emeritus Edw Martinez. As the title may suggest, there is hidden meaning stemming from 40 years of their creative dialogue. Below are descriptions gleaned from the words of the artists themselves.

40 years......As newly hired art faculty, Bob Morrison and Edw Martinez had their first university exhibit when they were given their "first" show in Spring 1969. Neither of them can recall what they showed. Since Edw was brought in to teach ceramics, he thinks his work probably included some kind of clay globs, hanging from plastic sheeting from the ceiling, and Bob may have been making sandblasted imagery upon glass stands or cases. As they say, it doesn't really matter since they are not trying to do a retrospective or a follow-up on 40 years of making art. Martinez remembers that the response to the show was puzzlement.

House…..Morrison was creating metal framework house structures with nets and butterflies. Edw saw one at South Tahoe and really liked it. He then came up with the idea that he could build or replicate Morrison's form or shape/size house in his own material and that they could show the two structures together in a big white empty room. That was the start of the house 'thing', they say.

Last week's work.....The artists have a running joke between them: “Last week's work.” Both Morrison and Martinez admit to having a suspect reputation that they let things slide, that they are always frantic to the last minute before an exhibition, even sometimes several hours before the doors are to open."

[Text from gallery press release. Graphic from Western Nevada College Gallery flier for Edw Martinez 2008 exhibition "Carson Cairn" [left] and 2005 Nevada Museum of Art exhibition "Robert Morrison: A Retrospective" [right]. Caption: "Robert Morrison, Tongues: The Half Life of Morphine, 1987, steel, fiberglass, electronics, thirty steel cots, each approximately 48 x 36 x 72, installation variable dimensions.]

Essential Comfort

Sheppard Fine Arts Gallery
Church Fine Arts Building
University of Nevada, Reno

April 28 – May 9, 2008
reception: Mon, May 1, 5-7 p.m.

Devin Hosselkus
BFA Thesis Exhibition
Essential Comfort

"This multi-media exhibition examines current issues within our society. How socially conscious is our community? Are there societal problems that seem to be overlooked and/or ignored? As individuals have we let our pursuit of a ‘personal paradise’ affect our sense of responsibility to humanity?

Artwork includes mural sized drawings and paintings, a sculptural installation, and a table conversation with the artist. The conversation gives the audience an opportunity to dialogue with Hosselkus about the exhibition, art, society, and other topics.

Devin Hosselkus, a graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts student, is concerned about and interested in the current social climate. The issues he portrays in his artwork are ones he experiences first hand. The situations and the figures in his works are sketched from public observation. Devin Hosselkus’ visual style is influenced by German Expressionism. He uses a vast color palette in his two-dimensional works as well as expressionistic mark and line. Also, there is a destructive element in some of his pieces. Smashed edges, splintered wood panel, scratches and burns appear in paintings and sculptural environments.

Along with his studio practice, Devin Hosselkus creates public artworks for the City of Reno ; some works include the “HeLLo ReNo” mural on First and Virginia Streets and various traffic light boxes in the downtown Reno area."

Sheppard Gallery | William L. Fox lecture

Sheppard Fine Arts Gallery
Church Fine Arts Building
University of Nevada, Reno

Closing Lecture for the Walker & Walker exhibition ill heard, ill seen:

William L. Fox
Thursday, April 3, 2008
5:30 - 6:30pm

William L. Fox is a writer, independent scholar, and poet whose work is a sustained inquiry into how human cognition transforms land into landscape. His numerous nonfiction books rely upon fieldwork with artists and scientists in extreme environments to provide the narratives through which he conducts his investigations. Fox was born in San Diego and attended Claremont McKenna College . He has edited several literary magazines and presses, among them the West Coast Poetry Review, and worked as a consulting editor for university presses, as well as being the former director of the poetry program at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

In the visual arts, Fox has exhibited text works in more than two dozen group and solo exhibitions in seven countries, served as the Associate Director of the Nevada Museum of Art, and then as the visual arts and architecture critic for the Reno Gazette-Journal newspaper. In late 1979 he went to work at the Nevada Arts Council, first as the Coordinator of the Artists-in-Residence Program, then Deputy Director, and in 1984 Executive Director, a post he held until leaving in 1993 to write full time.

Fox has published poems, articles, reviews, and essays in more than seventy magazines, has had fourteen collections of poetry published in three countries, and has written eight nonfiction books about the relationships among art, cognition, and landscape. He has taught rock-climbing at the University of Nevada , as well as led treks in the Himalaya . In 2001-02 he spent two-and-a-half months in the Antarctic with the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Visiting Artists and Writers Program. Fox has also worked as a team member of NASA's Haughton-Mars Project, which tests methods of exploring Mars on Devon Island in the Canadian High Arctic. He was a visiting scholar in residence at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, has twice been a Lannan Foundation writer-in-residence, and has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

[nb: CCAI commissioned an essay by William L. Fox' in 2003 as part of the inaugural talk of our Nevada Neighbors series.]

[photo from William L. Fox' Web site]

ill heard, ill seen

Sheppard Fine Arts Gallery
Church Fine Arts Building
University of Nevada, Reno

February 25 - April 4, 2008
Walker & Walker
ill heard, ill seen

Feb. 28: Opening lecture 5:00-6:30 with artists led by Prof. Claire Daigle, 6:30-8:30 reception, Room 153 (Note earlier time for lecture)

Closing Keynote Lecture: April 3, William L. Fox, 5:30 - 6:30 with reception following - both events in gallery

Sheppard Gallery is very pleased to present artists Walker & Walker, who are brothers and collaborative partners. The artists, Joe and Pat, will mount their first American West solo exhibition, which includes sculpture, neon, film and mixed-media. Their imagery focuses on landscape as the space for man's projected soul searching, a complimentary subject matter for Northern Nevada . Walker & Walker research and consider the allegorical opposites of darkness and light and the Romantic interpretation of the sublime as a passion best aroused by uncertainty. For three weeks the artists will be in residence on campus and Las Vegas , where they will also present an artist lecture at Dust Gallery. Having exhibited in Ireland , England , America and other countries, Walker & Walker, as Irish artists, were chosen to represent their country in the 51st Venice Biennale International Art Exposition.

On opening night, starting a little earlier than usual, contemporary art historian Claire Daigle, a professor in Interdisciplinary Studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, will give a lecture and then introduce the artists, who in turn will give a lecture showing and discussing their work. Internationally known writer William L Fox will present a closing keynote lecture on the exhibition, which features new works, at the close of the exhibition in April. The catalog will be available at that time, as it will include images from the actual Sheppard Gallery installation. It will not be available until the middle of the exhibition run. If you would like a copy to be held for you, please contact the gallery."

[image from UNR press release.]