Nevada Neighbors, the Capital City Arts Initiative’s ongoing series of illustrated public talks, will present artist Lexi Boeger. Her talk, Handspun Revolution: Blurring the Line Between Art and Craft, will take place on Wednesday, February 29 at 7pm at the Carson City Library, 900 N Roop Street, Carson City. There will be an informal reception for Ms. Boeger at 6:15 p.m. preceding her talk. The presentation and reception are free, and the public is cordially invited.

Lexi Boeger learned how to crochet in 2000 but she found that she was much more interested in the yarn itself than the object that she was crocheting. In fact, she noticed that as soon as she began to stitch the yarn, something in it was lost. She bought traditional handspun yarn from the local shop and discovered there was something about it that was just more alive than in commercial yarns. She immediately began learning to spin and to produce hand-spun yarns for her own art production. Ms. Boeger has written several books about spinning including Handspun Revolution and Intertwined.

Ms. Boeger studied at American River College and earned her degree in Fine Art at UC Davis. She gives workshops and lectures in New York, Tokyo, New Zealand, Vancouver, LA, Bristol, and many other cities here and abroad. She has shown her work in the western United States and in Norway and is an originator of the hand-spinning genre often referred to as Art Yarn. She lives with her family in Placerville, California.

The Capital City Arts Initiative announces its exhibition, Elapsed in Time, with prints by artist Jenny Robinson at the CCAI Courthouse Gallery from February 9 – May 18, 2012. CCAI will host a reception for the artist on Thursday, February 9 from 5 – 7pm. During the reception Ms. Robinson will give an informal talk about her work beginning at 5:30pm. The Courthouse is located at 885 East Musser Street, Carson City. The exhibition and reception are free and the public is cordially invited.

Robinson’s subject matter revolves around urban environments that are in a constant cycle of decay and renewal. By exploring the dichotomy of these often-abandoned structures, at once monumental and fragile, unsightly yet beautiful, she aims to bring attention to the drama of the overlooked and abandoned corners of the modern world. Her exquisite large compositions draw viewers in and encourage them to contemplate the ultimate fragility of our built environment.

Born in the United Kingdom and raised in Borneo, Jenny Robinson studied for her BFA degree at West Surrey College of Art and Design in England and has traveled extensively around the world. Since moving to San Francisco in 2000, she has had multiple exhibitions and has taught Printmaking in Art Colleges and Art Institutes throughout the US, including at Kala Art Institute, San Francisco Center for the Book, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in San Jose. She was recently a presenter at the Yuma Art Symposium.

Robinson has work in many private and public collections, including the Library of Congress Print Collection, Washington D.C.; Achenbach Fine Print Collection, San Francisco; Janet Turner Print Museum, Chico, California; and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford UK.

Jenny Robinson is a member of London’s Royal Society of Painter Printmakers (R.E.), the Los Angeles Printmaking Society, and the California Society of Printmakers. Frequently, she is an Artist in residence at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley.

The Capital City Arts Initiative [CCAI] invites you to attend a poetry reading and writing workshop Saturday, February 11 with Teresa Breeden and Krista Lukas, award-winning local writers. The free events will take place at the Business Resource Innovation Center [BRIC], 108 East Proctor Street, Carson City Nevada. The artists’ reading takes place at 1:00pm followed immediately by a writing workshop at 2:20pm. The Carson City Library co-sponsors these events with CCAI.

Teresa Breeden is an active member of the Ash Canyon Poets and has been writing poetry for more than half her life. The Amherst Review, California Quarterly, Cold Mountain Review, Hurricane Review, Loonfeather, Mid-America Poetry Review, Ruah, Spillway, White Heron, and the anthology 90 Poets of the Nineties have all published her poetry. In 2007, she was awarded a Nevada Arts Council Literary Arts Fellowship for her poetry. She regularly reads poetry at The Mile High Jazz Band’s poetry and jazz performances in Carson City.

A native of California but devotee of the Nevada high desert, Breeden currently resides in Carson City where she teaches AutoCAD(Computer Aided Drafting) and Art at Carson High School. She received her B.A. from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles where she majored in English with a poetry emphasis.

Krista Lukas’s stories and poems appear in The Best American Poetry 2006, Creative Writer’s Handbook, New Poets of the American West, and in literary journals including Margie and The Sun. Her awards include a Nevada Arts Council Literary Arts Fellowship and Sierra Arts Foundation’s Robert Gorrell Award for Literary Achievement. Lukas reads poetry for audiences at bookstores, schools, colleges, and locally for the Mile High Jazz Band’s Jazz and Poetry events.

Lukas was born in Truckee, California and grew up at Lake Tahoe. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Literature from the University of California, San Diego, and earned her K-12 teaching credentials at Sierra Nevada College. She now teaches at Jacks Valley Elementary School in Douglas County.

CCAI invites you to attend its monthly gathering of artists and arts & culture enthusiasts. Join us for conversation, coffee, cookies, and an ongoing exhibition of art by northern Nevada artists at the BRIC.
Everyone is welcome. CCAI encourages you to bring some of your new artworks to share.

* located at the corner of E. Proctor and Plaza Streets in historic Carson City just north of City Hall.

[image from Wikimedia Commons search for 'coffee']

The Museum of Bitter Sorrows presents “Life Is A Prison, Please Grant Me Release”
Scott MacLeod, CCAI Artist In Residence

a St. Mary’s Art Center and CCAI collaborative exhibition|residency project

press release
essay by Pam Grady
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CCAI Courthouse Gallery
February 9 – May 7, 2010

Work Bench Project
a site-specific exhibition | project by Jim McCormick

essay by Marcia Growdon
press release
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CCAI Courthouse Gallery
June 15 – September 2, 2009

Grad Night
an exhibition with the University of Nevada, Reno and Sierra Nevada College BFA and MFA Classes of 2009

• Bryan Christiansen
• Aimee Doran
• Jeff Erickson
• Jonathan Farber
• Jonah Harjer
• Ahren Hertel
• Christina Lee
• Jocelyn Meggait
• James Nagel
• Dominique Palladino

Brett M. Van Hoesen essay
views

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CCAI Courthouse Gallery
September 21 – December 14, 2007

Robert Morrison – Tamara Scronce

Essay by Brent Foster Jones
press release
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CCAI Courthouse Gallery
February 16 – May 26, 2006

Great Basin Gallery 20th Anniversary Exhibition
Jeff Nicholson, Jean LeGassick, Ron Arthaud

catalog essay by William L. “Bill” Fox
press release
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CCAI Courthouse Gallery
September 29 – December 15, 2005

What Up?
Nick Van Woert, Toni Ortega, Jake Lee-High, Amber Gutry, Jeff Erickson, Erik Burke

catalog essay by Kris Vagner
press release
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CCAI Courthouse Gallery
February 17 – May 26, 2005

Small Vanities: Works on Paper 1997 – 2004
Merrilee Hortt

catalog essay by Gregory Crosby
press release
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CCAI Courthouse Gallery
August 26 – November 30, 2004

CCAI UNR BFA Awards Exhibition
Jeanne Jo and Diana Snyder

• catalog essay by Ray Hardin
  press release
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CCAI Courthouse Gallery
February 26 – May 25, 2004

Carson City – Carson Valley Portrait Project
Allen Spore, CCAI Artist In Residence

catalog essay by Marcia Tanner
press release

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Special Projects 2007 – 2008

St. Mary’s Art Center, Virginia City
May 17 – June 29, 2008

Orphic Excavations
Anthony Alston, CCAI Artist In Residence

Essay by Gregory Crosby
press release

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In this grant cycle, of the 375 eligible applications, the NEA awarded 162 grants for a total of  $1,620,000. Forty seven of the grants awarded, or about 30 percent, went to first-time NEA grantees, including CCAI.

CCAI’s First Wednesday Arts Chat [FWAC] will not take place in December. FWAC will return Wednesday, January 4, 4:30 – 6pm at the BRIC, 108 E Proctor Street, Carson City.

CCAI’s board and staff sends their best wishes for the happiest of holiday seasons. We look forward to seeing you at the BRIC in January.

Saturday, December 3, 2011, 2 – 3:30pm

In recognition of World AIDS Day, and in collaboration with Northern Nevada Hopes, the Nevada Museum of Art presents We Were Here, a film by David Weissman. We Were Here is the first documentary to take a deep and reflective look back at the arrival and impact of AIDS in San Francisco. It explores how the city’s inhabitants were affected by, and how they responded to, that calamitous epidemic. An official selection for the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, a portion of the proceeds from the screening of the film will go to support Northern Nevada Hopes and AIDS education and awareness in Nevada.

Tickets: $10 / $8 Museum members
Tickets may be purchased online at www.nevadaart.org or call 775.329.3333.

[text and image from NMA website]

Wednesday, November 30, 2011, 6:30pm

The Black Rock Press is pleased to announce a reading by poet Steven Nightingale at Sundance Books. Mr. Nightingale will read from his new book of sonnets, The Golden Pilmgrimage.

Novelist and poet, Steven Nightingale was born in Reno and is an alumnus of Reno High School and Stanford University. His novels, The Lost Coast and The Thirteenth Daughter of the Moon were published by St. Martin’s Press. The Black Rock Press has published Mr. Nightingale’s books of sonnets including Cartwheels, Cinnamon Theologies, and The Golden Pilmgrimage.

For additional information, please call Sundance Books at 775.786.1188.

[image from Black Rock Press]

The Capital City Arts Initiative [CCAI] sends its best wishes to everyone impacted by the wind-driven wild fire that began early Friday and raged across southwest Reno forcing over 10,000 people to evacuate from their homes. The fire storm burned nearly 2000 acres and destroyed 29 homes.

Extensive lists of opportunities for help to the families impacted by the fire may be found online by searching for “reno fire donations”.

[image shared with CCAI by Cathleen Allison]