On Thursday, the Carson City Cultural Commission provided its annual update to the Carson City Board of Supervisors along with its upcoming Work Plan.
Arts and Culture Supervisor Anna Freeman provided the updates, discussing the art projects, music programs and more that have taken place throughout 2024 and 2025.
Freeman is the sole full-time employee of the city’s Arts & Culture Program, which is under the umbrella of Carson City Parks, Recreation and Open Space Department. Since taking on the position in 2023, she has been throwing herself into the task of expanding arts and culture programming within the capital city.
Art and Music Programs
Freeman hosted dozens of classes and workshops last year, including the tile painting for the “For Stan” art installation, which drew more than 300 participants who came and created tiles to be formed into a mosaic for Mills Park.
Freeman began hosting free Music & Art Tot Time classes, which immediately filled up and have had waitlists ever since. She said there is increasing demand, and she has invited other staff members within the recreation division who have experience with early childhood education to shadow her to learn how to teach the courses.
“This is for one to five year olds with a grown-up and we’re exploring skills and concepts for both music and visual art,” Freeman said. “There is still demand for more of these classes but additional qualified instructors are needed to further this program and similar opportunities.”
Other programs have included Cinco de Mayo festivities (which will be occurring again this year), opportunities within Camp Carson, partnerships with Nevada Humanities, and more.
Sierra Arts Foundation has been hosting classes and camps, and recently, the So Happy Sewing School began offering classes.
In addition, Freeman said Arts and Culture is seeking additional teachers to help expand programming; teachers set their own pricing and keep 70% with 30% going to the city.
Public Art
Freeman highlighted new additions of public art to the city’s collection: the “For Stan” tile installation in honor of former Supervisor Stan Jones, the “Rocky the Squirrel,” statute in Mills Park which was unveiled on “Squirrel Day,” the new disc golf statue “Catch” by Jael Hoffmann, donated by Disc Golf Landscape Architecture, and two new murals.
The two new murals are “From Headlights to Spotlight” and “Poppies” which were added in 2024, and two sculptures were also donated:
Freeman also highlighted the two of Carson City’s largest sculptures: “Inside the Mind of DaVinci,” the 10′ by 23′ installation of Leonardo DaVinci’s head originally created for Burning Man, and the new city-commissioned “Sense of Place” installation at the new downtown roundabout.
According to Freeman, DaVinci’s artist Mischell Riley has been donating her time in maintaining her creation at no cost to the city. Though Riley moved out of the area, she has continued to return to provide maintenance for DaVinci as a volunteer. Maintenance has included cleaning out smoke damage from an unauthorized campfire, and replacing the ground lights surrounding the statue.
Freeman also gave kudos to the Carson City Public Work’s street operation team who worked to reattach a fallen Basque sheep and replaced the pilot (also known as a “Cow Catcher”) on the train engine within Carson City’s metal art along the freeway.
The Public Art inventory can be viewed here, which Freeman says she is currently working to update to reflect the city’s full inventory, and has submitted her recommended edits for the Public Art Policy which should be coming before supervisors to review soon.
Events
The Bob Boldrick Theater inside the Community Center celebrated its 50th anniversary. As part of the celebrations, there was a backstage tour and face painting as part of the larger block party.
BOOnanza is one of the largest trick-or-treating activities in the capital city, and Freeman said it is definitely the biggest event on her plate.
“We no longer have hundreds — we have thousands of trick-or-treaters annually in Mills Park for this event,” Freeman said. “The businesses and organizations who volunteer to host the trick-or-treat booths continue to impress, and it’s a really fun family event.”
She said looking forward, she hopes to be able to spread the event more throughout the park to “alleviate some pinch points and crowding.”
“We have plenty of space in the park but we do need more lights and more volunteers in order to be able to expand,” Freeman said.
Grants
The Redevelopment Arts and Culture Grant Program has provided grant funding to nonprofits who provide arts and culture programming to the city. Nonprofits have included the Brewery Arts Center, the Historical Society, Mile High Jazz, Latino Arte & Culture, and more:
One change this year that occurred is that the program will switch to grants capped at $5,000 with a one-to-one match requirement.
In previous years, organizations have received between $2,000 and $15,000 for arts and culture events that “support the city’s quality of life goals.”
Under current eligibility requirements, funds must be used by northern Nevada nonprofits to support the execution of one arts and culture project, event, or series.
In FY 2023 and 2024, scores were weighted to prioritize new projects and organizations were allowed to submit one new project up to $10,000, and one recurring project of up to $5,000.
In FY 2025, organizations were only allowed to submit one project up to $5,000 and a one-to-one match requirement was added.
The overall program’s budget is currently on a “use it or lose it” basis, Freeman said, so while $50,000 was authorized to be spent in 2024, only $33,208 was from city funds, and $6,930 from grants.
However, the estimated expenditure for this year is the full $50,000 in allotted city funding, plus over $10,000 in grant funding awarded to the city.
There are a number of businesses who help sponsor arts programs in Carson City. Coming up is the new “Out of the Box” signal box painting program, which is being sponsored by McDonald’s, 395 Motorsports and Paint Mart.
This new program will allow local artists to beautiful traffic signal boxes, and is currently looking for artists.
Supervisors were impressed with the presentation, and commended both Freeman and the Parks and Recreation department for all the work they’ve done over the past year.
Supervisor Lisa Schuette said its programs like these that are exactly what gives Carson City its small town feel.
“It’s amazing, and we hear so much about wanting a small town feel and wanting that sense of community,” she said. “These examples are perfect examples of what community is and that sense of coming together — involving kids, involving adults, involving different kinds of art and different outreach. Kudos to you, and thank you for helping our lovely town have that small town feel.”
Regarding the upcoming Out Of The Box program, Mayor Lori Bagwell said she was excited to see its gaining widespread attention after being on the news, and credited a McDonald’s franchisee for “really wanting to make this happen.”
Freeman said they have been working to revamp artist submission application process to remove barriers that might keep new or upcoming artists from applying — especially artists who are local to Carson City specifically.
“I really want to encourage Carson City artists to apply, and we’ve tried to eliminate some of the barriers for that that are occurring in similar programs, so you do not have to submit a full resume and portfolio,” Freeman said. “It’s really just a small statement about the art you design and why it would be a good fit. It’s really a great opportunity for first-time public artists, [and] any artists under 18 can apply as long as they have their parent’s permission.”
Bagwell said looking forward, she hopes art and culture will be able to grow organically through ideas and programs like those Freeman presented.
“I think that’s what’s really special — we can organically grow the arts [by removing barriers], and we can see some unique perspectives, or maybe as Supervisor Schuette said, somebody will draw something that really does show why we’re the small town, and what we love about it.”
You can learn more, including how to apply, below:
View the presentation:
(Timestamp should begin at 47:47)
Want to know what else was happening at the meeting? Check that out here:
Editor’s Note: This story was updated April 23, 2025 to correct information relating to donations and the program’s budget.
