Ecopoetry with Jared Stanley

Poet and UNR creative writing professor Jared Stanley hosts a poetry reading and discussion about the intersection of ecopoetry and environmental art. Stanley’s poetry explores the way language heightens our relationship with the world, taking cues from installation art, fine press printing, informational signage design, and the lava writing along Eight Mile Flat east of Fallon.
 
Jared Stanley is the author of four collections of poetry, So Tough, EARS, The Weeds, and Book Made of Forest. He teaches creative writing in the MFA Program at the University of Nevada, Reno and lives in Reno, Nevada with an historian and their daughter.

Discovering Flora with the Nevada Native Plant Society

Learn about the incredibly diverse flora in our region with Emma Wynn, President of the Nevada Native Plant Society. She shares how the nonprofit organization started and ways to engage with Nevada’s 2800+ wild plant species.
 
 
This is part of an Art Bite series featuring local conservation and sustainability organizations, which complements Into the Time Horizon.  

Branches of Life: Forest Resilience and Collaboration on the Truckee River

When we protect our forests, we protect life. Healthy, resilient forests along the Truckee River reduce wildfire risk, safeguard water quality, and preserve the beauty and biodiversity that define Northern Nevada. 

Learn how the Nevada Chapter of The Nature Conservancy is working to improve forest health – before catastrophic wildfires occur – by restoring the natural role of fire, strengthening forest ecosystems, enhancing community safety, and honoring Indigenous knowledge. 

This is part of an Art Bite series featuring local conservation and sustainability organizations, which complements Into the Time Horizon.  

Fly Fishing, Water Protectors, and River Justice with Autumn Harry

Autumn Harry (Paiute), an artist and a leader of River Justice, discusses how the Indigenous-led project advocates for the just stewardship and riparian health of the Truckee River. River Justice prioritizes river stewardship in consideration of Numu (Northern Paiute) communities downstream who are impacted by policy decisions, planning, and developmental threats to surface water. 
 
Harry is from Kooyooe Pa’a Panunadu, also known as Pyramid Lake, and is the first Numu woman fly-fishing guide at Pyramid Lake’s famed Lahontan Cutthroat Trout fishery.

Michael P. Cohen and A Garden of Bristlecones

Michael P. Cohen will talk about what he discovered about human responses to Great Basin Bristlecone Pines when he wrote his important book A Garden of Bristlecones: Tales of Change. He explores the relationship between humans and these iconic trees, how through scientific study (mostly dendrochronology), they shed light on human and climate history, and motivated cultural stories and artistic representations. He will explore some of these as personal stories, motivations, and controversies surrounding those who studied them and others who made them into cultural icons. These trees have become a lens to examine modern humanity’s interaction with nature. 

Petyarre and Atnangkere (Our Cave)

Join us for a screening of the films Petyarre and Atnangkere, two related short films both depicting the search by the artist Gloria Petyarre and her family for a cave that has great significance in the culture of her people. The filmmaker Viviana Petyarre, an Alyawarre filmmaker, shares personal and cultural stories connected to her family and their land. These short documentaries give a heartfelt look into the strength of family, culture, and connection to the land in Aboriginal Australia. 

Mr. Patterns and Too Many Captain Cooks

Embark on a journey through Australia’s cultural landscape with two poignant documentaries that illuminate Indigenous perspectives on art, history, and identity. Mr. Patterns chronicles the transformative impact of Geoff Bardon, an art teacher who, in the early 1970s, introduced Western desert Aboriginal communities to the medium of dot painting. Working alongside the Papunya artists, Bardon facilitated the resurgence of traditional designs, intertwining cultural expression with economic independence. In Too Many Captain Cooks, Rembarrnga elder Paddy Fordham Wainburranga offers a critical retelling of Captain James Cook’s arrival from an Aboriginal perspective.

Mr. Patterns generously provided by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia

Too Many Captain Cooks generously provided by Ronin Films

 

The Art of Science

Join Desert Research Institute Associate Research Scientist  and Scientific Illustrator, Tiffany Pereira as she explores the union of art and science. Learn how she incorporates artistic principles into her research in Nevada and the Desert Southwest. 

Fossils and Fashions in the Time of Mary Anning

Mary Anning was a pioneering paleontologist and fossil collector, yet little is known about her life. Anning’s history is incomplete and contradictory, her lifetime was a constellation of firsts. Join us for a discussion with Megan Bellister, Nell J. Redfield Curator of Learning and Engagement, as she places Mary Anning in historical and cultural context through the fashions of the time.

Denise Dutton, Statue of Mary Anning, 2022

Center for Art + Environment Fellow Tristan Duke on Glacial Optics

Using camera lenses made of glacier ice, artist Tristan Duke explores our current moment of climate crisis. As Peter E. Pool Fellow at the Nevada Museum of Art’s Center for Art + Environment, the artist used his ice-lens camera to document the rapidly melting glaciers of the Sierra Nevada. Join us for a talk concluding his fellowship, and a preview of his book “Glacial Optics” forthcoming from Radius Books.