CCAI Moving Day

Capital City Arts Initiative

CCAI is moving its blog to its redesigned website at arts-initiative.org. Please come visit to read news of CCAI events and area cultural activities. Thank you for all your support for CCAI and the arts in northern Nevada.

[image from Wikimedia Commons search for moving van]

Mick Sheldon: Still Lifes for Cowpokes

Capital City Arts Initiative
Still Lifes for Cowpokes
at the
CCAI Courthouse Gallery [map]
885 East Musser Street
Carson City


Mick Sheldon’s exhibition, Still Lifes for Cowpokes, continues at the Capital City Arts Initiative's [CCAI] Courthouse Gallery through Friday, January 6. The gallery is open to the public M-F, 9am - 5pm.

The exhibition features still life paintings by artist Mick Sheldon, a Reno native and UNR alum. Still life paintings with commonplace objects as subjects are an art tradition that goes back millennia. This exhibition’s paintings grew out of an assignment the artist gave to his students and to himself as well: paint a still life. “The gourds, the skulls, the thick rope, the student-made lopsided pots and bottles, the cactus, the bullet-riddled cans, the broken glass, and especially the cloth kept tumbling around and over each other” revealed themselves to be players in the rodeos and cowboy western movies he remembered from his youth: skulls as the cowboys, cacti as the pine trees, desk lamps as the light source.

Sheldon earned a MFA degree in painting from the University of California at Davis in 1992. In 2004, he began teaching at American River College where he is now tenured and serves as Director of the James Kaneko Gallery. Sheldon lives with his wife in Yolo, California.

CCAI commissioned Phoebe Finch to write the exhibition essay, A Hybrid of the Brash and the Curious, for Still Lifes for Cowpokes. Ms. Finch is a senior at UNR studying both art history and Spanish.

[image is a gallery installation photo of Still Lifes for Cowpokes]

Tracy McQuay at the Carson City Library

Capital City Arts Initiative
Books & Writers
at the
Carson City Library
900 N. Roop Street
Carson City

Tracy McQuay:
reading Friday, November 4, 7 - 8pm
writing workshop, Saturday, November 5, noon - 1pm


As part of its Books & Writers series, CCAI will present a literary reading by writer Tracy McQuay on Friday, November 4, 7pm at the Carson City Library. Tracy will also conduct a writing workshop at the Library on Saturday, November 5 from 11am – noon. Both events are free and open to the public.

Tracy McQuay teaches first grade at Mark Twain Elementary School in Carson City where, for the past seven years, she developed and facilitated an after-school poetry program for the school's students. Her current work received a 2011 Artists Fellowship Honorable Mention from the Nevada Arts Council. She is a recent graduate of Lesley University where she earned a MA in Integrating Arts into Education. Her writing has appeared in several literary journals and she published a story in "Chicken Soup for the Christmas Soul" in 2008. She is a member of Ash Canyon Poets, GCW (a women's critique group), and the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

The Carson City Library co-sponsors the Books & Writers series with CCAI.

Art in the BRIC II

Capital City Arts Initiative
Art in the BRIC II
at the
Business Resource Innovation Center
108 E Proctor Street
Carson City

Wednesday, November 2, 4:30 - 6pm

The Capital City Arts Initiative [CCAI] and the Carson City Library are delighted to present Art in the BRIC II, a group exhibition of art work by northern Nevada artists and architects. A reception for the artists will be held at the Carson City’s Business Resource Innovation Center [BRIC] Wednesday, November 2, 4:30 - 6pm, 108 E Proctor Street, Carson City. The reception is free and the public is cordially invited.

Gallery visitors will find the artworks throughout the BRIC's first floor offices and conference rooms. To enable to public ample opportunity to view the artists' work, the exhibition will run through August 2012.

The artists and architects in this group show include photography by Mike Bates, ceramics by Jill Brugler, prints by Susan Kotler, all from Carson City; sculpture by Bryan Christiansen from Reno; drawings by H+K Architects of Reno; painting by Jean LeGassick and Jeff Nicholson, both from Silver City; and a printmaking/photography installation by Nancy Raven from Minden.

As part of Art in the BRIC II, the Carson City Library presents the architectural renderings for the new Carson City Knowledge + Discovery Center created by H+K Architects of Reno. Among its recent major accomplishments, the firm has created the designs for UNR's Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center and WNC's Joe Dini, Jr. Library and Student Center.

Artworks above: on left - Lost Soles by Nancy Raven; on right - Alexis by Mike Bates

Mick Sheldon: Gone 30 Years But Still a Nevadan

Capital City Arts Initiative
Nevada Neighbors
at the
Carson City Library
900 N. Roop Street
Carson City

Wednesday, October 26: reception 6:15pm, talk 7pm

Mick Sheldon's talk, Gone 30 Years But Still a Nevadan, is another in the Nevada Neighbors series of public talks presented by the Capital City Arts Initiative [CCAI] on contemporary art practice. Mick will speak at the Carson City Library Wednesday, October 26 at 7 pm; an informal reception for the artist will begin at 6:15pm. The reception and talk are free and the public is cordially invited.

Mick's talk is a companion piece to his exhibition, Still Lifes for Cowpokes, at the CCAI Courthouse Gallery, 885 E Musser St, Carson City. The exhibition closes Friday, January 6, 2012.

Mick Sheldon, a tenured professor at American River College in Sacramento and a working artist for most of his adult life, will discuss his unique approach to creating and composing artworks of various mediums and styles: sculpture, oil painting and woodblocks. His talk, with a generous dose of his idiosyncratic humor, will center on how he vigorously approaches his art on a daily basis, driven by his appreciation of contemporary life in the West. Mick’s work embodies a synthesis of formal and expressive styles that assemble figures, light, color and space qualities that celebrate the heroic energy of our region.

Mick is a Reno native and UNR alumnus. He earned a MFA degree in painting from the University of California at Davis in 1992. After working a series of “dead end jobs,” he started teaching at two schools and a prison back in the late eighties. In 2004, he began teaching as a full-time professor at American River College where he is now tenured and serves as Director of the James Kaneko Gallery. Sheldon lives with his wife in Yolo, California.

[Mick Sheldon painting: Last Out of the Rodeo, oil on linen, 2009]

Gailmarie Pahmeier at Carson City Library

Capital City Arts Initiative
Books & Writers
at the
Carson City Library
900 N. Roop Street
Carson City

Thursday, October 13:
workshop 4pm
reading 7pm


CCAI will present a poetry workshop and a reading by poet Gailmarie Pahmeier on Thursday, October 13 at the Carson City Library The writing workshop takes place from 4 - 5pm; the poetry reading begins at 7pm. Both events are free and open to the public.

Gailmarie Pahmeier, a Nevadan for 30 years, teaches creative writing and contemporary literature at the University of Nevada, Reno where she has been honored with the Alan Bible Teaching Excellence Award and the University Distinguished Teacher Award.

Ms Pahmeier’s work has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies, including Booth, Passager, Interim, Mudfish, New Poets of the AmericanWest (for which she won the Editor’s Choice Award), Literary Nevada, and the Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary Poetry. Her poetry collection includes The House on Breakaheart Road, and two chapbooks from Black Rock Press. Her recent chapbook, Shake It and It Snows, won the 2009 Coal Hill Chapbook Award; poems from this collection were nominated for Pushcart Prizes. Her literary awards include a Witter Bynner Poetry Fellowship and two Artists Fellowships from the Nevada Arts Council. In 2007, she received the Nevada Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.

She said, “I’ve read my work locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. I’m particularly interested in conducting workshops and giving readings in “under-served” communities, wherever they might be or think they are. I love Nevada, love getting out and into our various communities. My material comes from interactions and observations I make while out on the road, and I learn as much or more from community workshop participants as they might learn from me.”

[image from a Goggle search for Ms. Pahmeier]

October FWAC at the BRIC

Capital City Arts Initiative
Wednesday, October 5, 4:30-6pm
First Wednesday Arts Coffee
at the BRIC
108 E. Proctor Street * [map]
Carson City

CCAI invites you to attend its monthly gathering of artists and arts & culture enthusiasts. Join us for conversation, coffee, cookies, and an ongoing exhibition of art by northern Nevada artists at the BRIC.

Everyone is welcome. CCAI encourages you to bring some of your new artworks to share.

* located at the corner of E. Proctor and Plaza Streets in historic Carson City just north of City Hall.

[image from Wikimedia Commons search for 'afternoon coffee']

Mark Chavez: Emerging Animation

Capital City Arts Initiative
Nevada Neighbors
at the
Carson City Library
900 N. Roop Street
Carson City

Wednesday, September 28, 7pm

Emerging Animation is another in CCAI's Nevada Neighbors series of stimulating public talks on contemporary art practice. Mark Chavez, an early adopter in computer animation and a leading animation industry expert, will present an overview of emerging animation technology and its artistic and cultural impact. The talk will take place at the Carson City Library Wednesday, September 28 at 7pm; a reception for the artist will precede the talk at 6:15pm. Nevada Neighbors events are free and the public is cordially invited.

Mark Chavez, a MFA graduate from UCLA in the 1980’s, has worked for more than 25 years creating cutting-edge animation techniques and live-action visual effects for many major feature films, console games, television commercials, experimental digital film making and interactive media. He is a leader in the digital animation industry, both as an artist animator and a modeler, creating photo-realistic props, sets, characters for live-action feature films and character animation fantasies for major film production studios such as DreamWorks Feature Animation and Rhythm, Hues Studios Los Angeles, Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Brothers Pictures. He has contributed to the development of large-scale projected laser animation for concert venues and pioneered emergent interactive media, motion picture graphics and motion capture for the Tokyo Broadcast System and Acclaim, Inc. In 2004, Mark was recruited to be a founding faculty member in the newly established Nanyang Technology University’s (NTU) School of Art, Design and Media (ADM) in Singapore.

For additional information, please call CCAI at 775.720.0331 or the Library at 775.887.2244.

Mick Sheldon: Still Lifes for Cowpokes

CCAI Courthouse Gallery [map]
885 East Musser Street
Carson City

Opening Reception: Friday, September 16, 5 - 7pm

The Capital City Arts Initiative opens Mick Sheldon’s exhibition, Still Lifes for Cowpokes at the CCAI Courthouse Gallery on Friday, September 16 with a reception for the artist from 5 - 7pm. The exhibition and reception are free and the public is cordially invited.

The exhibition features still life paintings by artist Mick Sheldon, a Reno native and UNR alum. Still life paintings with commonplace objects as subjects are an art tradition that goes back millennia. This exhibition’s paintings grew out of an assignment the artist gave to his students and to himself as well: paint a still life. “The gourds, the skulls, the thick rope, the student-made lopsided pots and bottles, the cactus, the bullet-riddled cans, the broken glass, and especially the cloth kept tumbling around and over each other” revealed themselves to be players in the rodeos and cowboy western movies he remembered from his youth: skulls as the cowboys, cacti as the pine trees, desk lamps as the light source.

Sheldon earned a MFA degree in painting from the University of California at Davis in 1992. After working a series of “dead end jobs,” he started teaching at two schools and a prison back in the late eighties. In 2004, he began teaching as a full-time professor at American River College where he is now tenured and serves as Director of the James Kaneko Gallery. Sheldon lives with his wife in Yolo, California.

CCAI has commissioned Phoebe Finch to write the exhibition essay for Still Lifes for Cowpokes. Ms. Finch is a senior at UNR studying both art history and Spanish.

[Mick Sheldon painting: Last Out of the Rodeo, oil on linen, 2009]

September FWAC at the BRIC

Wednesday, September 7, 4:30-6pm
First Wednesday Arts Chat
BRIC
Carson City's Business Resource and Innovation Center
108 E. Proctor Street * [map]
Carson City

CCAI invites you to attend its monthly gathering of artists and arts & culture enthusiasts. Join us for conversation, lemonade, and an ongoing exhibition of art by northern Nevada artists at the BRIC.
CCAI encourages you to bring some of your new artworks to share. Everyone is welcome.

* located at the corner of E. Proctor and Plaza Streets in historic Carson City just north of City Hall.

[image from Wikimedia Commons search for lemonade]

Splendor in the Glass Closes September 9

Splendor in the Glass
through September 9

CCAI Courthouse Gallery [map]
885 E Musser Street
Carson City

There is one more week to visit Splendor in the Glass, the Capital City Arts Initiative's exhibition of Carole and William Hutchison’s XXL Variation III Kaleidoscope at the CCAI Courthouse Gallery. September 9 is the last day that the exhibition will be in the gallery. The exhibition is free and you are invited.

The Hutchison Studio’s XXL Variation III kaleidoscope has eight 28” diameter interchangeable wheels. The Hutchisons created the brilliantly colored wheels using a variety of glass techniques including stained, etching, foiled fused, blown tube glass, tack-fused glass, full flat fused glass, plus flower transparencies and glass jewels.

August FWAC at the Bliss

FWAC • First Wednesday Arts Coffee
Bliss Mansion

608 Elizabeth Street*

Carson City

Wednesday, August 3, 4:30 - 6pm

CCAI invites you to attend our monthly gathering of artists and arts & culture enthusiasts. Join us this month for lemonade and conversation at the Bliss Mansion. CCAI encourages you to bring some of your new artworks to share.

Everyone is welcome. Specials thanks to FWAC's terrific host, Cyndy Brenneman.

* located at the corner of Robinson and Elizabeth Streets in Carson City's Historic District across the street from the Governor's Mansion.

[image from a Goggle search for lemonade]

Art in the BRIC I

CCAI at the BRIC
Business Resource and Innovation Center
108 E. Proctor Street * [map]
Carson City

Since last fall, the Capital City Arts Initiative [CCAI] has presented Art in the BRIC I, a group exhibition by northern artists in the City's Business Resource Innovation Center [BRIC]. The show includes work by Carol Brown, Galen Brown, Bryan Christiansen, Sue Coleman, Jim Eidel, Carole and William Hutchison, Eunkang Koh, Sharon Tetly, and Sharon Thompson.

The exhibition is free and the public is cordially invited to stop by the BRIC to see the show. The art works are spread throughout the first floor offices and conference rooms. The building is open to the public M - F, 8am - 5pm.

Artworks in the photo are prints by Sharon Tetly from her Soul Music series. The exhibition will continue through late August.

* located at the corner of E. Proctor and Plaza Streets in historic Carson City just north of City Hall.

Splendor in the Glass Continues at CCAI Courthouse Gallery

Splendor in the Glass
through September 9
at the
CCAI Courthouse Gallery [map]
885 East Musser Street
Carson City

The Capital City Arts Initiative's exhibition of Carole and William Hutchison’s XXL Variation III Kaleidoscope continues at the CCAI Courthouse Gallery through September 9. The exhibition is free and you're invited.

The Hutchison Studio’s XXL Variation III kaleidoscope has eight 28” diameter interchangeable wheels; the photo to the right shows William changing a wheel. The Hutchisons created the brilliantly colored wheels using a variety of glass techniques including stained, etching, foiled fused, blown tube glass, tack-fused glass, full flat fused glass, plus flower transparencies and glass jewels.

July FWAC on Holiday

First Wednesday Arts Coffee
July 6 gathering postponed to August 3

To extend the 4th of July celebration by a couple of days, CCAI's monthly artist gathering, FWAC [First Wednesday Arts Coffee], is on holiday and will not meet Wednesday, July 6.

FWAC [First Wednesday Arts Coffee] will return on Wednesday, August 3, 4:30 - 6pm. Location to be announced on this blog. Please stay tuned.

[image from Wikimedia Commons by Pharaoh Hound]

Happy 4th of July!

Dear CCAI friends, members, supporters, artists, and colleagues,

The CCAI board and staff sends their most sincere thank yous to each of you for your enthusiasm, support, and participation that made CCAI's eighth season a great success. We also send our best wishes for a happy 4th of July. Thank you all for helping make CCAI programs possible.


[image from a Goggle search for Liberty]

Justin Favel: COUNTYCENTER

Rotunda Gallery
Clark County Government Center
500 S. Grand Center Parkway
Las Vegas

An alumni of CCAI's recent spring exhibition, The Radiant City, Justin Favela incorporates humor and art history into this site-specific sculpture installation in the Rotunda Gallery. Borrowing from works in the public art collection at CityCenter, the artist re-imagines these objects for the employees and visitors of the Clark County Government Center. CityCenter’s permanent collection of 20th and 21st century art features works by internationally acclaimed artists. Justin Favela’s COUNTYCENTER features mixed media cardboard works that cover Maya Lin’s Silver River, Frank Stella’s Damascus Gate I, Jenny Holzer’s Las Vegas, and more; all have been appropriated and modified for the Government Center site.

The Las Vegas Weekly's review of COUNTYCENTER is online at:
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2011/jun/01/riffing-citycenter/

COUNTYCENTER will be in the in the Rotunda Gallery through July 22. For more information contact Wendy Kveck at 869-9002 or wendyccnv@gmail.com or Patrick Gaffey at the Winchester Center 455-7340. The gallery is free and open to the public. The Government Center Hours are M-F 8am - 5pm.

[image by Wendy Kveck, text from the Clark County Parks and Recreation press release]

Capital City Arts Initiative at Douglas High School

CCAI at Douglas High School
1670 Hwy 88
Minden

This spring, Douglas High School photography students participated in a six-week CCAI artist residency with Howard Goldbaum, artist and Associate Professor at UNR’s Reynolds School of Journalism.

As an artist/historian/journalist, Mr. Goldbaum specializes in creating virtual reality websites focused on areas of historical interest in both Nevada and abroad. The websites integrate panoramic photography with historical documentation, and allow the viewer to interact with the location through 360° views, detailed close-ups, background information, and on-site interviews.

Students photographed and researched the antique store and bar on main street along with other historic Genoa sites including the Genoa cemetery. Ron Bommarito, owner of the antique store and long-time Genoa resident, welcomed the students to look at his impressive antique collection, and provided interesting insights during an the interview. The students’ photographs and interviews are online at:
http://allaroundreno.com/?cat=14

CCAI support for the residency project came, in part, from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Carson City Office of Business Development; Community Foundation of Western Nevada; Nevada Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts; U.S. Bancorp Foundation; and Douglas High School.

[image and text from DHS faculty and CCAI staff]

CCAI Banner Headlines

Capital City Arts Initiative [CCAI]
above Carson Street
Carson City

To help promote the arts in Carson City, CCAI dedicated its summer banner week to informing pedestrians and the driving public about this blog. CCAI invites you to visit frequently to learn about CCAI events and projects. This site also features information about many northern Nevada arts organizations' events and activities. Have great summer and stay tuned!

[image and text by CCAI]

Mark NeuCollins: "a thousand ways ...."

a thousand ways . . . .
at the
Saint Mary's Art Center
55 North R Street
Virginia City



CCAI invites you to visit the Mark NeuCollins' residency exhibition at St. Mary's Art Center [SMAC] in Virginia City. Each spring, CCAI collaborates with SMAC to produce a two-week artist residency and exhibition. This year CCAI and SMAC hosted Mark NeuCollins from the Iowa heartland to experience life and art-making on the Comstock. Katie Grace McGowan wrote the exhibition essay "An Exquisite Balance" available in the gallery and soon online. The exhibition is open to the public Friday - Sunday, 11am - 4pm, through June 26.

NeuCollins' installation uses local natural materials, with a large earth mandala on the floor forming the centerpiece created from Virginia City's vivid native soils. Hanging paper made from sage brush and a gate made from branches adds to the sense of transition and ephemerality. NeuCollins said about the exhibition, "This is a meditation on the environment and our existence within it. By gathering local materials and making these materials the focus of the installation, I hope to create a sense of reverence for the beauty that surrounds us every day."

[exhibition photography by CCAI]