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."
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