Oakland Artists Work with Locals to Craft Silver City Podium and Postcards

Silver City, Nevada-Sue Mark and Bruce Douglas, a husband-wife artist team based in Oakland, California who describe themselves as “cultural researchers, creators of conversations, and locators of lost history,” spent the summer in Silver City doing just that.

Fresh from their latest research project in Japan, they arrived at the Resident Artist Program in Silver City in June, with their 8-year-old son Roli. They were welcomed by the tiny Comstock community with a town dinner where they shared a slide show about their previous projects, and welcomed input about their ideas for projects with Silver City. Over the summer, locals shared their photographs, newspaper clippings, and memories about what makes Silver City special. They invited Sue and Bruce to county commission meetings and local meetings, helped them locate relevant newspaper archives at the State Library, and invited them into their homes to share meals, memories and insights about the community. They showed them their favorite historic sites and walking trails in the Silver City “outback.” Local archaeologist Ron Reno gave them a tour of the artifacts from the Silver City School House stored at the Comstock History Center.

To gather further information, Bruce created a dome shaped message receptacle that looks like McCormick House, the guest housing for artists who come to the Resident Artist Program. The message dome was placed in the Post Office in Silver City all summer, and people were invited to answer questions such as, “What are Silver City’s Golden Rules?” and “Who or What are Silver City’s Icons?” and “What is Silver City’s Legacy?”

The result of their summer long immersion in the community, and many hours of reading documents such as Silver City’s recent town survey and report, were two remarkable gifts to the community. Sue took photographs of locals doing some of the things that make the community special to them – walking the high mountain trails, baking bread and gardening together, preservation of the town’s unusual history. She then combined 12 of those images with abbrieviated comments such as, “share your food, music, love” collected from the message dome, and created town post cards. Marksearch had them printed, and donated several hundred postcards to the town, and gifted the digital files to the Resident Artist Program where they’ll be shared through various local group websites.

Secondly, Bruce asked locals for help locating scrap metal and wood to help create a new town podium. Diane and Larry Kotik and others helped locate scrap metal on their properties, and local multi-disciplinary artist Doug Beverly Brown welcomed marksearch into his large shop to complete the podium. While Bruce focused on transforming the scrap metal, Doug focused on adding the wood to the podium and included many of the signature details he’s known for.

The result, presented during a well-attended town concert and dinner in honor of marksearch’s gift, was a finely crafted piece of art that also serves as a town podium and inspiration for sharing town stories. Sue Mark describes the podium as a structure “dedicated to righteous stories, authentic free speech, and preserving a rural community's spirit of generosity and openness.” The top edge of the podium is familiar to locals as the silhouette of surrounding mountain ranges, and the front of the podium has translucent pockets for holding the new town postcards. During the town dinner, around a dozen townsfolk came to the podium to share colorful stories of the town since the 1960s.

About marksearch: Sue and Bruce have completed many projects across the U.S., Europe and Asia. Their methodology synthesizes their academic backgrounds. Bruce Douglas, a fabricator and professional mechanical engineer, meshes his values of building community and using recycled materials. Sue Mark, with degrees in philosophy, linguistics and fine arts, creates national and international projects about local history, culture and community challenges.

In partnership with non-profits, community groups, and municipalities worldwide, they’ve created diverse projects. For instance, in 2013, they researched the disappearance of handicraft and agricultural practices in a region of Portugal comprising more than 2 dozen villages. They created portraits of traditional makers of baskets, shoes, olive oil, bread, wine, tools, and more. These portraits, permanently installed in each of the region's 26 villages, now form a new cultural landmark. In 2016, they spent 6 months in Japan through an opportunity with the National Endowment for the Arts and the US-Japan Creative Artists Program. Their residency in Kanazawa, Japan was spent studying traditional Japanese architecture such as townhouses from the Edo period (1603-1867). For more information about their past projects, see marksearch.org

What is the Resident Artist Program in Silver City? The visiting artist program, which began in 2014, is privately funded and provides a venue for those from other parts of the U.S. and the world to engage with the Northern Nevada community through the arts. People creating in the performing, visual, design or literary arts are invited to reside for up to 3 months at McCormick House, a geodesic dome designed in the 1970s by Nevada artist and UNR professor Jim McCormick. In exchange, the visitors offer public performances, exhibitions, readings, workshops, etc. in the community. Previous residents have included London-based artist Stewart Easton, whose work has been shown at the Tate Modern and Oxford University’s Ashmolean museum; internationally acclaimed photographer Frances Melhop; Pulitizer Prize-nominated poet David Lee; New Zealand painter Sophie Scott, and many others. For more information, contact director Quest Lakes at (775) 847-0742.

Sue Mark and Bruce Douglas of marksearch write, "This summer we had the honor to work with the creatives of Silver City, Nevada, a community of less than 200 people... Through conversations, meetings, gatherings, hikes, and shared meals, we learned about the town's layered history. The community is now fighting open pit gold mining, a toxic process that threatens the town. Based on their powerful stories and pressing needs, we developed a set of advocacy tools to support the town's activism." For more images of the work marksearch completed in partnership with the community of Silver City during summer 2017, see the Resident Artist Program in Silver City photo albums https://www.facebook.com/silvercitynevadaresidentartistprogram/ and marksearch.org


A shorter version of this article was published in the weekly Mason Valley News column "Silver City Neighbors."

Frances Melhop’s Award-Winning Image of the Stein House

Silver City, Nevada - Frances Melhop's award winning photograph “Triangle” is of the Stein house in historic Silver City, Nevada. Her photo of the A-frame, which was home to artists Barbara and Ralph Stein in the 1970s, has been shown in galleries across the U.S., including Gallery 19 in Chicago. It’s currently on view at the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art’s exhibition in Georgia, and will also be on display at the Haldan Gallery at Lake Tahoe Sept 28 -Dec. 1, 2017. Frances Melhop was an artist-in-residence in Silver City in 2016. 

BARBARA STEIN AT HER SILVER CITY HOME, LATE 1970s. PHOTO FROM SAM TOLL'S GERMINO ARCHIVES.

Barbara Stein trained at the Art Students League in New York under German expressionist artist George Grosz, whose work influenced social realists such as Ben Shahn and William Gropper. In Silver City, she is remembered as the artist who created the iconic poster for the town’s short-lived Silver City Free School.

PHOTO OF RALPH STEIN

In a memoir, Ralph Stein wrote that when he lived in New York City in the early 1950s, "he spent time at an artists’ hangout, the Waldorf Cafeteria in Greenwich Village, where he met Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. He was drawn to Pollock’s abstract style." After having a stroke in 1962 at the age of 33, Ralph moved with his wife, artist Barbara Stein, and their children "to Silver City, seeking a quiet, remote location to help his recovery and to allow him to pursue his passion - painting in Pollock’s abstract expressionist style."

“He was really an expressionist, and he believed he was painting from his subconscious,” said his son, Thomas.

Ralph wrote that "he helped create an artisan cooperative [the Craft Guild in nearby Mound House] before eventually moving back to Sausalito, CA where he built his own house boat. In his final two years,he lived at Walnut Place in Point Reyes Station, CA.

While living in the Bay Area he continued to paint and was also involved in activism against war and the death penalty.

“He was an eighty-five year old hippie radical,” said friend Paul Worsch, who also lives at Walnut Place, "and even had a colorfully painted van. It was kind of psychedelic looking,” he added.

Stein, who was born in Milwaukee in 1928, passed away in Feb of 2014. In his honor, a group of friends organized an exhibition of his paintings at the Dance Palace Cultural Center at Point Reyes Station, California in 2014.

About Frances Melhop: Frances Melhop is a visual artist, curator and gallery director, born in New Zealand, now living in the U.S. at Lake Tahoe. She has worked globally in the fashion industry as a photographer, constructing imagery; conceptualizing, shooting, and directing stories for publications such as Vogue Italy editions, Vogue Australia, Elle Portugal, and Marie Claire Italy. In 2009, Luerzer's Archive named Melhop one of The World’s 200 Best Advertising Photographers for the images she created for the campaign of Descamps, France. In 2014 she was awarded the NNDA Comstock Innovator of the Year Award for her arts and community work at St Mary’s Art Center, in Virginia City. Melhop’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions worldwide. She works in photography, stitching, printmaking, installation and oil paint, exploring the tensions between the virtual and physical ways we experience the world. PHOTO BY FRANCES MELHOP of the Stein's A-frame in Silver City titled, "Triangle." 

 

About Silver City, Nevada and its unusual homes and buildings: Since the 1960s, Silver City denizens have rehabed, restored, and rebuilt most of the town's historic buildings, turning them into architecturally unique residences. Today the town is a checkerboard of historic buildings and energy efficient homes on hillsides. Silver City is located within one of the nation's largest federally designated historic landmarks, a few miles from Virginia City, and 30 miles from Reno and from Lake Tahoe. Although today Silver City is often mischaracterized as a ghost town, it's actually a thriving little village with a rich tradition of public music and art events, as well as activities for locals. Home to an unusual number of well-known artists, musicians, writers and academics, Silver City's historic buildings and sites attract plein air painters and photographers from both near and far.

Essay information about Ralph Stein adapted from David Mitchell’s August 10th, 2014 post on his Sparsely Sage and Timely blog, and from a post by Samantha Kimmey in the Point Reyes Light newspaper called “Stein paintings at 
Dance Palace.”

http://www.sparselysageandtimely.com/blog/?p=25251

https://www.ptreyeslight.com/article/stein-paintings-dance-palace

Biographical information about Barbara Stein from recollections of UNR art Professor Emeritus Jim McCormick.

Silver City, Nevada - More Artists Than Trees

A shorter version of the following essay appeared in the Mason Valley News in Sept 2017.

Silver City, Nevada - During a 2014 Arts Town Hall meeting in Silver City hosted by the Nevada Arts Council, one resident quipped that, "Silver City has more artists than trees."

A 2014 Cultural Resources Inventory of the Comstock region funded by the Nevada Arts Council and National Endowment for the Arts showed why someone might have that impression. The Inventory showed that fully 1/3 of Silver City adults are involved in producing work in the visual, theater, literary, folk, or musical arts or are working in some aspect of archaeology, anthropology, or historic preservation, consulting or publishing, or are skilled craftspeople working with gemstones, metals, wood, etc.

With a concentration of people working in the arts and/or career fields related to cultural resources, over the last 50 years the community of less than 200 people has been responsible for a remarkable body of work that has had a demonstrably positive impact on the town, the state and beyond. Residents have contributed their diverse talents and skills to produce regionally and nationally recognized work in archaeology, visual art, theater, music, historic preservation, and academic research and projects resulting in technical reports and a variety of other publications.

Yet other residents have created hand-crafted items in silver, wood, gemstones, clay, etc. and examples can be found in a wide range of places, from the Smithsonian American Art Museum to the region's historic cemeteries and buildings.

An Arts and Cultural Resources Production Center: Accordingly, in 2014 the Silver City Advisory Board resolved to recognize the existing character of Silver City as an "Arts and Cultural Resources Production Center", and formally recognized the considerable work residents have contributed and continue to contribute to the production of important work in the areas of arts and cultural resources.

The Board also formally recognized the extraordinary support the entire community has given and continues to give to local arts and cultural resources production, events, and programming. Today the town has arts and preservation groups, a resident artist program and a summer arts and science program that create public programming such as concerts, exhibitions, lectures, poetry readings, film screenings, etc.

Recent Examples: To name just a few recent contributions by locals to the arts and culture resources fields, Dr. Robert Elston, who was awarded the Nevada Archaeology Association's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014, received a National Science Foundation grant this year for a multi-year archaeological project in Grass Valley, Nevada, in collaboration with grant recipients Dave Zeanah of Sacramento State, Brian Codding of the University of Utah, and Craig Young of the Far Western Anthropological Group.

*Long time Silver City resident Erich Obermayr, along with Robert W. McQueen, used archaeological “data as a foundation to tell the story of life in one of Nevada’s most intriguing, long-lived mining districts” in their recently published book, Historical Archaeology in the Cortez Mining District.

*Over the last two years, artist Karen Kreyeski’s "The Women Project", highlighting contributions of women from the Comstock region, has been the focus of exhibitions at St. Mary’s Art Center in Virginia City, the Jeanne Dini Arts Center in Yerington, the Carson City Art Gallery, etc. and her writing has also been showcased in readings at several venues.

*Local musician Will Rose has recorded more of his original music during the last few months, including a title track he was commissinoned to write for an independent film.

*In recent work by local groups, this summer the Silver City Arts group hosted retrospectives of paintings by Silver City residents Larry Kotik and Molly Brunhild. The Silver City Historic Preservation Society; Evangeline Presents; Yellow Truck Productions; and the Resident Artist Program were among local groups hosting concerts with everything from blues, reggae, rock, and folk to opera and show tunes.

*And finally, over the last two years, the Resident Artist Program in Silver City has hosted people from around the U.S. and the world who've created poems, art, archival portrait projects, sculptures and more. In just a few of many examples, Pulitizer Prize-nominated poet David Lee wrote a number of poems during his stay, including one about Silver City that was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Internationally acclaimed photographer Frances Melhop held one of the photo shoots for her award winning Comstock Portrait Project while at the Program, and some of her photos documenting Comstock citizens and houses have since earned inclusion in shows in Chicago, Georgia, Lake Tahoe, and Spain. Michigan-based artist Brian Schorn’s exhibition featuring 22 assemblages created with Comstock “found objects” while he was at the Program in 2015 has been in demand, with 3 solo shows in Reno, and in Virginia City so far. New Zealand artist Sophie Scott’s artwork based on historic photos of the Northern Nevada region was the subject of a 2015 exhibition in Silver City that attracted art collectors and history buffs from around Northern Nevada, and her painting based on an 1860s photo of Silver City was selected for the Nevada Legislature’s 2017 display of fine art. Oakland-based artist Scott MacLeod's ship art piece, created in partnership with locals, has been on display at St. Mary's Art Center, and several of his very popular public art pieces can be found in the hills around Silver City. Sue Mark and Bruce Douglas of marksearch.org created a unique art piece that doubles as a town podium, along with post cards celebrating the town's sense of community.

Definition

Silver City falls within the definition of a rural arts and cultural resources production district in that it has a concentration of residents actively producing work in relevant fields and 2)has many home studios, workshops and offices related to these endeavors and 3)has a well -established tradition of public and community programs related to arts and culture 4)has a center for arts and culture activities, i.e., the School House Community Center and the Silver Pavilion outdoor performance stage, 5) has an active arts group, a resident artist program with diverse public programming, and a volunteer library that all show dedication to local arts and culture 6)has an ongoing, long history of cross-sector community support for arts and culture production, events and programming and a record of collaboration amongst local, state, and regional groups to support the same.

Review of Silver City's Summer 2017 Art, Music, Science Programming

Silver City, Nevada – The historic Comstock town Silver City offers a wide range of public programming year round, but the community really goes "all out" during the summer months.

This summer, Silver City Arts group sponsored two exhibitions, one with artwork by local artist Larry Kotik, well-known for his remarkable mural in the Dayton Elementary School multi-purpose room, and the other with paintings by local artist Molly Brunhild, whose work is featured in the first chapter of Mary Beth Hepp-Elam’s book Mining the Treasures: Contemporary Comstock Artists. The group also continued to host their monthly acoustic music jams at the Silver City School House and Park, and their Poetry Corner at the Post Office, with featured poems and/or song lyrics by Shaun Griffin, David Lee, Will Rose, and Jim McCormick. PHOTO BY CATHERINE BACHAND OF RECEPTION FOR MOLLY BRUNHILD'S EXHIBITION.

MUSIC: A number of groups - Evangeline Presents, Yellow Truck Productions, Silver City Historic Preservation Society, Comstock Residents Association, and the Resident Artist Program - sponsored concerts in Silver City over the summer, with everything from blues, folk, classic rock, ukulele, and opera to show tunes. Musicians and bands included Red Rose, the Ukulocos, Constant Coogan, Wayne Thomas, Robert Elston, Mylo McCormick, Trevor Thomas, Gabe Sosa, Roger Haas and others.

CONSTANT COOGAN CONCERT IN CONJUNCTION WITH EXTENDED EXHIBITION OF LARRY KOTIK PAINTINGS

Through the Resident Artist Program in Silver City, Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet David Lee came to the town again and offered another of his popular poetry readings, including a poem he wrote about Silver City that’s been nominated for the prestigious literary award, the Pushcart Prize. The Program's summer guests, Sue Mark and Bruce Douglas of marksearch.org, immersed themselves in the community for 10 weeks and held a number of gatherings and events focused on preserving local history through art. The result was an artpiece built by Bruce Douglas and local artist Doug Beverly Brown that doubles as a town podium, plus a dozen new postcard designs by Sue Mark celebrating the town's sense of community and recent history.

Additionally, each summer since 2003, local and regional groups and volunteers come together to offer a free children’s program to the region. Healthy Communities Coalition of Lyon and Storey (HCC) helps organize and co-sponsor some of the programming in STEAM – Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math - that the town offers annually in partnership with nearly a dozen groups and volunteers.

This summer, HCC co-sponsored a wide range of educational activites led by guest teachers from the Society of Women Engineers (Sierra Nevada region), The Sonic Screwdrivers, University of Nevada Cooperative Extension, Safe Routes to Schools, the Resident Artist Program in Silver City, the Silver City Volunteer Library, United Way of Northern Nevada and the Sierra, Nevada Families First, Parents as Teachers, Community Chest, Lyon County Human Services, etc.

With hands-on, interactive activities and experiments, visiting experts taught concepts in environmental and mechanical engineering, robotics, scientific uses of drone technology, bicycle safety, Co2 and water pollution, etc. Events also included a music concert by Mylo McCormick, a cloth diaper "how to" workshop with Marielle Toll, a school readiness fair for preschoolers and their parents, a Harry Potter library display (20th anniversary of the first book’s publication) and summer reading promotion.

People from Dayton, Virginia City, Mound House, Carson City, Reno, Fernley, Silver City and beyond attended the public events.

For more information about the annual summer program, contact Quest Lakes at 847-0742.