Freyer believes that wood is one of nature’s riches gifts. It can be as light and luminescent as water or as dense and opaque as stone. Sculpted by a craftsman, wood expresses and inspires emotion by transcending its function to touch the soul. Join local wood worker Eric Freyer as he discusses the process behind creating studio furniture and the importance of craft and tradition in the community.

Support for the Art Bite series comes from Nevada Arts Council and Nevada Humanities.

NOTE: All seats in the Museum’s Theater have been sold to this event. This registration is for the simulcast presentation which will be a live video feed of Michael Branch’s presentation. 

Michael Branch, writer, humorist and environmentalist unveils his newest book “Raising Wild: Dispatches from a Home in the Wilderness,” creative nonfiction reflecting on raising children in an extreme desert landscape.

Reception and book signing to follow presentation. Live music following talk by Shiloh.

Join Barbara L. Gordon as she shares her journey as a collector navigating the wonderfully intuitive and accessible designs, colors and shapes that make up American Folk Art. From her first purchase of a particularly elegant birdhouse with a green painted tin roof, plucked from a row of items in a country field, to her triumphant and long awaited acquisition of Edward Hicks’ masterpiece, The Peaceable Kingdom, Gordon discusses the thrill of the hunt and the passion and discipline it takes to build a world class collection.

Join guest curator of A Shared Legacy: Folk Art in America, Richard Miller as he examines the aesthetic and meaning of the large body of work that has come to be known as American Folk Art.  The paintings, sculpture, and furniture in the Gordon collection were made between 1800 and 1920–years that bookend a period of rapid and dramatic change in the United States.  The art in this exhibition represents a period that may feel distant, but these objects that held special meaning for Americans show that their aspirations were little different from ours today: celebration of family, pride in heritage, and leaving some evidence of our lives and accomplishments after us.

Dr. Bernhard Bach’s background is in diffractive, and space flight optics, he serves as the UNR Director of Undergraduate Laboratories.  Join him in conversation as he explores the physics of light as it relates to the immersive light installation Swell.  Swell, which represents innovation in immersive light installations, draws explicit connections between wave forms, the liquid motion of floating objects and sculptural objects made of light, modified and shaped over time.

Support for the Art Bite series comes from Nevada Arts Council and Nevada Humanities.

David Sanchez Burr is a mixed-media artist and assistant professor of media arts and technology at New Mexico Highlands University.  Join him in discussion about New Citadel II and his efforts to convey ideas of maintenance, generation and decay of the complex systems and structures that surround us. New Citadel is an ongoing project that presents a view of social, urban and ecological change through time based art and speaks to theories of urbanism, the postindustrial landscape and shelter as a perpetual social struggle. The work allows for the design, construction, and disintegration of a city to reveal and critique the chaotic processes that make our urban landscape.

Support for the Art Bite series comes from Nevada Arts Council and Nevada Humanities.

Join University of Nevada, Reno Art and Digital Media Professor Joseph DeLappe as he discusses his collaborative project to create an installation to map, via sculptural and electronic components, the history of ongoing US drone strikes in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan. The work includes 3D printed paper reproductions of MQ9 Predator Drones, arranged in a pattern of documented drone strikes around the town of Mir Ali.

Support for the Art Bite series comes from Nevada Arts Council and Nevada Humanities.

Join Dr. Janet Baker, Curator of Asian Art at the Phoenix Art Museum, as she discusses her personal experiences, Ai Weiwei’s career, and the zodiac heads in historical and cross-cultural contexts. Dr. Baker draws upon the time she spent in New York City getting to know many contemporary Chinese artists, including Ai Weiwei.

Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Gold, currently on display in the Feature Gallery North, engages issues of looting, repatriation, and cultural heritage while expanding upon ongoing themes in Ai’s work of the fake and copy in relation to the original.  Dr. Baker’s lecture brings the zodiac head to life by providing her unique insights into the complex cultural relationships in the East and the role of Ai Weiwei’s social activism.

Born in Kuwait and educated in New York and New Mexico, Tarek Al-Ghoussein returned to his native land to document its history and discovered a landscape transformed by development. The prominent photographer is best known for his works that combine elements of landscape and portrait photography. 

This exhibition features twelve photographic prints from the artist’s K-Files series, as well as a sampling of new works from his Al Sawaber series, both focused on his experience in his native Kuwait. Join Al-Ghoussein, whose work has been featured in the Venice Biennale, as he discusses his work, in conversation with Curator of Contemporary Art JoAnne Northrup.

Support for the Art Bite series comes from Nevada Arts Council and Nevada Humanities.

Dennis Parks is a ceramist who moved to the rural ghost town of Tuscarora in 1966, where he established the internationally-known Tuscarora Pottery School. Parks pioneered a process using native clays that are single-fired in kilns fueled with recycled crankcase oil. Recognized for his innovative use of text, Parks often imprints written fragments from classical literature, political puns, and poetry onto his works.

His stoneware has been honored worldwide for its wide range of inventive forms and his work has been exhibited in museums in over twenty countries around the world.  In celebration of the opening of Land, Language and Clay, join Dennis Parks for an intimate and informal evening of dialogue and conversation about his life and work.