Resident Artist Program Summer 2019 News

Silver City, Nevada - The Resident Artist Program in Silver City hosted remarkable visiting artists this summer from the United Kingdom, New York City, and Philadelphia.

Stewart Easton and Claire Scully of London sketched and photographed Silver City scenes while they were here in June. Claire, who is an illustrator and author, as well as an instructor at University of Brighton in England, was invited to speak during Carson City’s artists lecture series at the Brick. Stewart, who works in thread, ink, paint and digital, has shown his unique artwork at the V & A and Tate Modern in London, and the Ashmolean at Oxford University, as well as in galleries in New York, LA and beyond since he was last at the Resident Artist Program in 2016.

Philadelphia-based artist Morgan Craig toured historic mills in Silver City and the Comstock in July and hopes to complete new paintings based on what he saw here. We hope he’ll come back to show the new paintings. He was also invited to speak during Carson City’s artists lecture series this summer, and was interviewed by Joe McCarthy for a piece appearing in Nevada Capital News and KNVC radio. During the interview Morgan explained that he uses “painting as a tool to get people to question … what the 1%, corporations, and capitalists have done to this planet in the name of profit, with no moral compass whatsoever." Morgan Craig has received numerous awards for his work, including the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant. From Silver City, he went immediately to a Residency in Zambia, Africa.

Playwright, opera librettist, and theater critic David Cote is based in New York City. His latest opera, Blind Justice, was sold out for 5 months and received glowing reviews. His opera libretti have been in operas at Nashville Opera, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Chicago Opera Theater and beyond. He's written companion books for several hit Broadway musicals, including Wicked. David was also invited to speak during Carson City’s artists lecture series, and was also interviewed by Joe McCarthy for a piece appearing in Nevada Capital News. While here, he offered playwriting workshops for locals, and contributed a sketch that skillfully satirized “the greed and delusions of companies trying to capitalize on the mythologies of the past.” He also began and completed his own play titled “S’Aint Joe” during his residency!

The Program was also delighted to host Siena College sociology professor Dr. Beverly Yuen Thompson this summer while she was working on her latest book. Her previous book is "Covered in Ink: Tattoos, Women and the Politics of the Body" (NYU Press, 2015). Her research as a sociologist centers on gender; drug policy; subcultures; and activism. From McCormick House, Dr. Thompson went immediately to Australia, and then to Hong Kong. She was quoted at length in a Sept. 2019 article. Albany, New York’s Times Union reporter Rebecca Carballo wrote, "While the protests [in Hong Kong] are a deterrent for some people to return, Beverly Thompson, a sociology professor, purposely scheduled her recent trip in the midst of the demonstrations. She’d read about the protest all summer long, but she wanted to see them for herself. The unity among the protesters and the turnout is what struck her the most...Thompson said she witnessed people from all different walks of life come together to protest.”

Silver City Arts Group News

Silver City, Nevada – Although the founder and facilitator of the Silver City Arts group, Dr. Carol Godwin, recently moved to be closer to her grandchildren, she left the community with years of her carefully kept agendas, minutes, and e-newsletters on the group so it could continue with a record of its history.

After a lively arts townhall conversation in Silver City in February 2014 hosted by the Nevada Arts Council, Godwin led locals to form the Silver City Arts group. Since then, the energetic group of volunteers from all walks of life have hosted music, visual arts, and poetry events and programs. They draw on the community's own rich resource of artists, artisans and musicians and arts groups, and they also connect with regional and statewide nonprofits to bring in visual and performing artists from other parts of the U.S. and the world.

Sometimes the group organizes its own events, such as a pop-up show with Danish artist Nes Lerpa or exhibitions featuring local artists such as Larry Kotik. But often, the group acts as a sort of Coalition of local arts and culture groups, working collaboratively to organize music concerts, workshops, poetry readings or art shows with the Silver City Historic Preservation Society, the Resident Artist Program in Silver City, Yellow Truck Productions, Evangeline Presents, etc.

At the latest Silver City Arts meeting on September 11,2019 the enthusiasm continued. The group is brainstorming about the possibilties for funding murals that celebrate the strengths of Silver City.

They're also interested in communicating with the other arts groups across Nevada, perhaps creating exchanges in which artists from other parts of the state visit and attend our events, and/or share their art with Silver City, while artists from Silver City visit other towns to attend their events and/or share their skills through lectures, shows or projects.

Also discussed: possibilities for a temporary, and then a permanent and public home, for the beautiful ship model art piece locals worked with Oakland-based artist Scott MacLeod to build in 2016 while he was at the local artist-in-residence program.

Finally, the group intends to continue with development of a new play by locals about the community of Silver City, and its past, present and desired future. This summer, New York -based playwright/ opera librettist/theatre critic/arts journalist David Cote led play writing workshops at the Schoolhouse during his time with the Resident Artist Program in Silver City. He supported locals in brainstorming possible structures for a play about the town. They liked the idea of a play set within a town meeting, with transhistorical characters from the 1860s to present (and maybe even future) giving "public comment" in the form of songs, soliloquies, or monologues.

Cote contributed a stellar sketch of his own in which a mine owner dubbed "Al Dorado" gives a rousing song and dance to the townspeople that exposes the "greed and delusions of companies trying to capitalize on the mythologies of the past." Cote even offered to expand upon it for inclusion in the full play locals are developing about Silver City, if wanted. You can find his first reading of the sketch at this link: https://www.facebook.com/silvercitynevadaresidentartistprogram/videos/334753703904247/

Silver City Arts group's next meeting is Thursday, October 10 at 7 pm in the Silver City Schoolhouse. Come be part of this group of inspired volunteers who put on great concerts, art shows and fun events!

Comstock Foundation Doublespeak

The Comstock Foundation for History and Culture’s stated goals are: “to Protect, Preserve, Restore, Educate and Celebrate [sic] the historic structures, artifacts, landscapes and profound culture of the Comstock Historic District and our National Landmark for all to appreciate.” I could go on for a few hundred pages about why this is an astonishing assertion, but for the space of this column, I’ll offer a Cliff Notes brief summary.

To begin with, there’s not much space between The Comstock Foundation for History and Culture and Comstock Mining Inc. (CMI), which seeks to pit mine in and adjacent to historic Silver City, and in other areas of the Comstock that are also within the National Landmark. The Foundation’s website shows that CMI’s CEO is the board chair of The Foundation’s five-member Board of Directors. One of the Foundation’s recent Facebook posts was a giddy promotion for Corrado De Gasperis (CMI’s CEO) and his upcoming talk for the Foundation called “The Future of Gold Mining & the Yellow Metal.” The Foundation’s other board members are ardent and longtime supporters of and/or beneficiaries of CMI.

How does the Foundation’s stated goal to “preserve landscapes of the Comstock Historic District and our National Landmark” align with CMI’s goals to scoop and bulldoze our historic region for private profit? Seriously, someone explain that one. If Orwell was around today he might use it an additional example in his essay, “Politics and the English Language.”

Next, let’s consider the Foundation’s stated goal to preserve the “profound culture” of the region. One would think the history of the last half century would count. Since the 1960s, the communities in the National Landmark region reinvented themselves as tourism destinations (Virgina City) and cultural resource production centers (Silver City). At the same time, Comstock towns have worked hard to preserve their 19th century history “for all to appreciate.” Modern pit mining in and adjacent to residential communities is not a way to honor our “profound culture.”

Finally, I continue to wonder about The Foundation’s frequent erasure of Silver City in their public relations attempts. Often in their social media posts, videos, and press releases, they refer to the historic Donovan Mill, which they purchased, as being in Virginia City rather than in Silver City. For instance, in their 2019 promotional video, “The Donovan Mill: Preserving A Piece of Nevada Mining History”, the narrator performs verbal acrobatics in order to make it seem as if the Donovan Mill is in Virginia City, saying,“there’s a group that’s looking to bring back a piece of Virginia City’s past. This is the Donovan Mill.” Later in the video, Foundation director Steven Saylor chuckles about the townwide noise and vibration the Foundation plans to make with the old stamping mill at the Donovan (a machine that was used in the past to pound and crush ore as part of the process to extract silver and gold).

Preserving our history is the opposite of recreating the most unpleasant parts of it. Vibrating our surviving historic structures, promoting the bulldozing of our National Landmark, creating unwelcome townwide noise, and allowing modern robber barons to cosplay the Gilded Age has nothing to do with genuine motives to “protect, preserve, restore and celebrate the Comstock Historic District and National Landmark for all to appreciate.”

*Originally published as a column by Quest Lakes in the MVN in Sept. 2019.