At the beginning of the new year, the Resident Artist Program in Silver City would like to express sincere gratitude for the many gifts artists shared during 2025.

In September, the duo Kantu Inka gifted a free, public concert featuring the folkloric music of the Andes, co-hosted by the Resident Artist Program and the Silver City Preservation Society. The audience members at the Silver City Schoolhouse responded enthusiastically to the beautiful music, clapping with the beat and tapping their toes. An Andean musician and composer, Carlos Ocampo of Kantu Inka is proficient on zampoña, quena, bombo, charango, and guitar. Julie Lozada Ocampo is a national board certified Spanish teacher who plays zampoña and percussion for Kantu Inka. Since 2003, Kantu Inka has been teaching culture through music with an emphasis on the Andes and Perú. They have shared their music with thousands of students in K-12 schools, and at universities, libraries and dozens of other venues.

Sandy Imperatori’s plein air painting group came to Silver City again, a treat they’ve given the community several times over the last decade. This year, their annual retreat at nearby St. Mary’s Art Center in Virginia City included artists and photographers from Mexico, Maine, California, Delaware, Washington, Illinois and Nevada. It was our pleasure to welcome them to Silver City and to see them with their easels and cameras, capturing scenes of the town’s landscape and historic homes. Sandy is an award-winning California artist who was the owner of the fine art gallery The Artworks, and a former Senior Art Director of award winning publications including Kansas City Magazine and Touring Times Magazine.

Multi-talented artist and writer Scott MacLeod, who has relocated from the Bay Area to Austin, Texas, came to Nevada again this year. In October Scott gave an illustrated talk at the Silver City Schoolhouse about his recently completed, 240-page catalog documenting decades of his creative activities in the U.S. and Europe. The catalog, titled “Serious Projects”, includes color photos of artwork he created and gifted to the community and/or Program during his 2016 residency with us. Scott donated copies to the local library, the Resident Artist Program, and St. Mary’s Art Center, and later generously shared it online as a free ebook. He also donated copies of his many other new publications to the Program (we might now have a complete collection of Scott’s books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry)!

We had a very welcome visit to the Program’s off-grid cabin from David Lee and Jan Lee this fall. Now splitting their time between Spain and their home in Oregon, the couple were on their way back from the annual Cliff Notes Writing Conference in Utah, where Dave and his son, Jon Lee, were among the conference presenters. David Lee, Utah’s first and longest serving Poet Laureate and professor emeritus at Southern Utah University, dedicated his 2019 collection of poems, Mine Tailings, to the community of Silver City. He has given free, public readings of his poetry at the Silver City Schoolhouse many times since his first residency in 2016.

In other good news, this year the Program gratefully received the loan of “Lady in the Bath,” an artwork by Tamara Burnet and Fred Swanson. “Soapy,” as she’s affectionately known, is now installed near the Program’s off-grid cabin.

During the month of October, a tribute exhibition dedicated to the memories of Nevada artists Galen Brown and Jim McCormick was on view at Sierra Arts Foundation’s gallery in Reno (the housing for our visiting artists, McCormick House, was designed by artist and UNR professor Jim McCormick in 1972). The show, titled “Layers of Re-iteration”, was brilliantly curated by Candace Garlock and Frances Melhop. It included art by Galen Brown and Jim McCormick, alongside art by members of the Printmakers’ Conspiracy group. Nine outstanding Nevada artists -Anne Hoff, Bobbie Ann Howell, Candace Garlock, Carole-Ann Ricketts, Carol Brown, Frances Melhop, Lynn Schmidt, Nolan Preece and Rachel Stiff – created “their own pieces, inspired by their memories of these two influential figures.” In addition to a gorgeous catalog for the exhibition, Frances Melhop has created a hardcover book to complement the show. The show was a priceless gift to the friends, family and fans of Galen Brown and Jim McCormick.

What is the Resident Artist Program? The Program includes a unique house (McCormick House) where award-winning visual artists, writers and musicians from around the world have stayed, and an off-grid cabin where visiting artists can read, write or simply take in the mountain views. McCormick House, designed in 1972 by UNR art professor Jim McCormick, is surrounded by several acres of privately owned land with hiking paths that follow naturally occuring wildlife corridors. Visiting artists stay for up to several months in exchange for offering free public performances, exhibitions, workshops, poetry readings, etc. in Silver City, a historic Comstock town, and other communities in the Northern Nevada region.

The Program was featured by Nevada First Lady Kathy Sisolak in her statewide program called “ The First Lady Presents…”, and was selected for inclusion in the “First Lady Presents” inaugural exhibition at the Nevada Governor’s Mansion in 2021. Program director Quest Lakes’ essay and photos about the Program were published in Nevada Humanities’ Heart to Heart series, and included in Nevada Humanities’ Heart to Heart exhibition in Las Vegas. In 2022 the Program organized and co-hosted Silver City’s first poetry festival, featuring then Nevada poet laureate Gailmarie Pahmeier, Utah’s first and longest serving poet laureate David Lee, and Virginia City poet Shaun Griffin, who is currently Nevada’s poet laureate. The Resident Artist Program in Silver City was co-founded by Theo McCormick and Quest Lakes in 2015.

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