Resident Artist Program in Silver City reflects on busy year

The Resident Artist Program in Silver City had a particularly busy year offering free public concerts, art exhibitions, poetry readings, and art workshops. Visual artists, musicians and poets brought their creativity, thoughtful engagement, and fascinating academic projects to the historic Comstock community during 2022.

As usual, locals found unique ways to welcome and support each artist-in-residence, from shoveling sidewalks so people could get to an exhibition reception during a sudden snowstorm, to inviting visiting artists to dinners and local hikes, to taking artists on adventures around Northern Nevada.

Director Quest Lakes said the Program is “grateful for support from the Nevada Arts Council for our April 2022 poetry festival, and to Healthy Communities Coalition of Lyon and Storey for their support for Michigan artist Brian Schorn’s stress-reducing meditation session for the public and his experimental music concert in the park with Mylo McCormick.”

Following are highlights of the Resident Artist Program’s 2022 public programming.

April 2022 Poetry Festival at the Silver City Schoolhouse

The Resident Artist Program’s multi-event poetry festival kicked off on April 3 with a reading by Nevada Poet Laureate Gailmarie Pahmeier, followed by one of Gailmarie’s first writing workshops for the “Nevadan to Nevadan” statewide poetry project with the Nevada Arts Council. Next, Pulitizer Prize nominated poet David Lee was back for his fourth poetry reading in Silver City on April 10th.

This time he read from his 2022 book, a collection of selected poems titled Rusty Barbed Wire. The book includes poems like “Silver City Dawn Psalm” from his 2019 poetry collection Mine Tailings, which was dedicated to the community of Silver City. The festival’s final event on April 24 was a reading by popular Nevada Writers Hall of Fame member Shaun Griffin. The Program also partnered with the Nevada Women’s History Project for a special event to note the literary contributions of one of Nevada’s significant poets, Irene Bruce, who lived in Silver City from about 1958 until 1971.

Summer concert in the park with Kantu Inka

Carlos Ocampo and Julie Lozada Ocampo of Kantu Inka brought a popular evening of music of Peru and the Andes to the Silver City Park stage in August. The evening included tidbits about traditional instruments such as the zampoña and the history of popular and traditional songs, as well as commentary in Quechua and Spanish by Carlos who said that “La música no tiene fronteras y hermana a los pueblos del Mundo" (Music has no borders and brings people of the world together). The Ray A. Isaac Endowment for the Arts helped fund this special end of summer event.

Brian Schorn filled the summer with music, art and meditation

Multi-disciplinary artist Brian Schorn was back for his second residency during summer 2022. Brian is an award-winning artist with MFA degrees in fine art photography, graphic design, creative writing and electronic music who teaches college art and design courses in Michigan.

His popular Comstock Wabi-Sabi exhibition, which has been featured in solo shows at Truckee Meadows Community College, St. Mary’s Art Center, the City of Sparks Depot Gallery and five other venues in Reno since 2015, was on view during the Silver City Preservation Society’s weekend music and art festival in July. Brian created the two dozen assemblages in Comstock Wabi-Sabi with “found objects” from Silver City during his previous residency in 2015. The 2022 show in Silver City was Comstock Wabi-Sabi’s last stop in Nevada before going back to Michigan with Brian where it was featured in an exhibition at Thunder Bay Arts Gallery this November – December.

Brian is also a certified meditation instructor, so he decided to offered the public a unique experience – a guided meditation session within the gallery setting of his Comstock Wabi-Sabi exhibition in the Silver City Schoolhouse. Attendees at the Tuesday morning event were enthusiastic about the experience and Brian’s skills as a meditation instructor.

With his skills as an arts educator, Brian also provided a free art and design career exploration workshop attended by about 40 teens from across Lyon County. The teens were part of Healthy Communities Coalition’s job training and internship program called Comstock Youth Works.

The culminating event of Brian’s 6-week residency was a 2 hour experimental electronic music concert with Silver City musician Mylo McCormick adding guitar treatments. The concert included improv plus recorded sounds Brian captured from Silver City's town park and local wildlife, as well as from the historic saloons and trains in nearby Virginia City. During his residency, Brian used a Garden Listener and a PlantWave to record the sounds of plants in Silver City. In addition to the plant sounds, Brian and Mylo used experimental electronics and looping guitar drones. The unusual performance included eight 15-minute improv/compositions with different instrument stations using a computer and many electronic and electro-acoustic devices.

Scott MacLeod’s art throughout Silver City

In October, the Resident Artist Program hosted Scott MacLeod Appreciation Day at the Silver City Volunteer Library and Schoolhouse to celebrate the “mooring” of the art ship the USS Silver Clipper in the library and Scott’s donation of eleven of his books. During his 2016 residency, Bay Area artist Scott MacLeod led a group project with locals to create the USS Silver Clipper art piece. The large ship (69 inches high!) is made from found objects, scavenged wood, fishing poles, etc. Permission was obtained this fall to install the ship at the Silver City Schoolhouse and library for all to enjoy.

Scott came to Scott MacLeod Day this October with many of his paintings and prints in hand, and gifted them to delighted locals. With the combination of Scott’s recent gifts of art to locals and his gifts of paintings, prints, and outdoor sculptures, assemblages and miniature ghost towns to the Resident Artist Program’s collection, Silver City is brimming with his artwork. Scott also generously donated a complete collection of his books to the Resident Artist Program. Silver City is one of many places that admire Scott’s art - during spring 2022, there was a retrospective of his art in Prague, Czech Republic, and his colorful "Desert Series" paintings were part of a summer group exhibition called “no-such-place” at Melhop Gallery 7077 at Tahoe.

Art inspires hope during the pandemic

Nevada Humanities’ “Heart to Heart” exhibition was on view at their Humanities Program Gallery in Las Vegas from October 6 – November 22, 2022, and is now viewable online. The show features art, writing and images by contributors from throughout the state, including a photo, recording and essay by Resident Artist Program director Quest Lakes about the hope both art and permaculture projects at the Resident Artist Program in Silver City inspire.

English researcher explores legacy of photograhic silver October – December 2022

Alice Cazenave is a London-based photographic artist and doctoral researcher who has exhibited internationally. Her current PhD research, with its focus on photographic silver, seemed like a perfect fit for the Silver City residency. She’s “examining how this material changes ecologies, geologies and lives” in its “meandering journeys...as it is extracted from, and reintroduced back to the earth through media-related pollution.” Alice has university degrees in Cellular and Molecular Medicine; Art and Science; and Social Anthropology. Before undertaking her PhD in Visual Anthropology at the University of Goldsmiths, London, she was lecturing in Applied Critical Thinking and Project Development at Canterbury Christ Church University, U.K.

During her 2 month residency in Silver City, Alice took a social anthropology approach to interviewing many locals, and carried out research at UNR archives and through interviews with local scholars. She also provided popular chemigram and cyanotype workshops for the public. At the end of her residency, she offered a display and talk at the Silver City Schoolhouse about her research and the unique work she created during her residency here. Her “visual work explores plant matter and chemistries to open up conversations into the complex and diverse ways in which ecologies and photography link materially.” Alice's residency was funded through the Resident Artist Program, with additional funding from the Ray A. Isaac Endowment for the Arts.

About the Resident Artist Program in Silver City

The Program includes almost 6 acres of privately owned land with a unique house (McCormick House) for visiting artists. Selected artists, musicians and writers from around the world stay at no cost for up to several months in exchange for offering free public performances, exhibitions, workshops, poetry readings, etc. in Silver City and other communities in the Northern Nevada region.

Part of the purpose of the Program is to support outcomes of innovative exhibitions and interactive and participatory projects and/or events that explore or transcend art disciplines. The Program is funded by Theo McCormick and Quest Lakes. Silver City is located within the historic Comstock region three miles south of Virginia City.