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Jose Davila IV
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Jan 22, 2024 4:57 pm
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Veronica Diament's "Rabbitbrush Foothills" hanging in Sierra Arts Gallery.
East of the Sierra Veronica Diament Sierra Arts Gallery Reno Jan. 2 – 27, 2024
Honestly, there are few better places to see visual art in Reno than the Sierra Arts Gallery in the old Riverside Hotel. The stark, concrete space accentuates the art hanging on its walls. And the natural light, plus the soft jazz playing in the background on this particular visit, sets a chill vibe for considering pieces. It’s a space that encourages you to take your time.
That time is well-spent in appreciation of Veronica Diament’s new show East of the Sierra at the Sierra Arts Foundation’s gallery by the river. The show, which contains oil paintings on canvas, runs through Jan. 27. It’s a small collection split into two halves. One set of paintings capture large mountain landscapes. The other half focus on singular flowering plants.
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Jose Davila IV
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Jan 3, 2024 5:04 pm
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Bluesman Trent Black Rabbit Mead Company Dec. 22, 2023
I just finished reading the bawdy, anti-Western novel The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt. Later turned into a movie starring Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly, the story is about two darkly funny brothers who work as contract killers in the American West at the height of the California Gold Rush.
At Black Rabbit Mead Company in Reno on the Friday before Christmas, I saw Bluesman Trent perform a solo set of mostly originals armed only with his acoustic guitar. It would’ve made a perfectly appropriate soundtrack for that movie. Trent’s weathered, gravelly Nevada voice, his lyrics about family and romance, and his throwback “bluesgrass” sound fit the tall tales and outlaws of the Old West.
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Jose Davila IV
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Dec 12, 2023 2:25 pm
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Two of Esters' photos hang in the Front Door Gallery.
Birthed from the soil Iyana Esters Front Door Gallery at UNR Reno Through Jan. 1, 2024
You have to get close to some of Iyana Esters’ photographs to make out what they show. That’s because one set of photos is printed on browned banana leaves, with hints of lively green pushed to the edges.
Once you do get up close and personal with leaves, you see images, imprinted by the sun, of simple farm tools and workers using them. Esters’ choice of the banana leaves helps the viewer understand more deeply the work that goes into running an Alabama farm.
Guillermo Bert says all of his art starts with an idea, a concept. From there, he figures out the best way to represent that idea.
The result of his most recent effort is a mismatched catalogue of mixed media that includes gold-leaf barcodes, shiny plastic boxes with QR codes stamped onto them, and tumbleweeds that double as projection screens.
Music wasn’t playing, but people were moving up onstage. It was a bit odd. Even odder was dancer Sam Shepard (not to be confused with the playwright) doing his best impression of Charlie Brown’s teacher.
“Wah-wah, wah wah…”
And the dancers were moving along to the beat he set. I’ve never seen something like that.
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Jose Davila IV
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Oct 30, 2023 4:46 pm
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Honey Plant perform at Cypress.
Freaky Funky Fright Night Phat Mark, R Cade Daddies, Honey Plant The Cypress 761 S. Virginia St., Reno Oct. 27, 2023
A werewolf, a vampire, a skeleton, and Satan (?) step onto a stage and start ripping dancey electro funk. In little time, the werewolf is howling at the moon, and they’re all a bit out of breath.
That’s how Friday night’s all-locals Freaky Funky Fright Night kicked off at Cypress in Reno.
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Jose Davila IV
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Oct 13, 2023 11:23 am
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Jose Davila IV Photo
Stumpf’s Nature’s Weavers hangs as a part of the Clothesline exhibition.
Clothesline Fiber Arts Group University of Nevada Reno Through Nov. 10
Two black-headed birds hang upside down and keep watch. Another, fully in view and sporting bright orange and yellow feathers everywhere but the wings, helps a friend into a nest. A different bird watches them from a perch above. Rounding out the colony, two others mostly hide in their nests, only a few tail feathers poking out of the front of each dwelling. They might be feeding their chicks inside.
These seven birds aren’t living among the pines, though, and you can’t find them in the wild. Instead, they’ve made their home in a white, woolen, blanket-like object hanging on an art gallery wall. How odd.
Maybe their incredibly still, pottery-esque nature explains their choice of residence.
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Jose Davila IV
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Oct 4, 2023 11:11 am
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(Clockwise from top left) Worm Shot, Meat Blanket, the Human Condition, and Elleanor Burke, four of the eight bands playing frenetic 16-minute sets in honor of the 16th anniversary of "the best fucking place" in Reno to hear live music.
Fertilizer Fest The Holland Project 140 Vesta St, Reno, NV Sept. 30, 2023
Saturday’s Fertilizer Fest at the all-ages art space The Holland Project fried my brain so much that when I went to the liquor store after I gave the cashier the wrong age and generally stumbled through the rest of my 30-second conversation with him.
The sounds of connection wafted through the hall as I meandered through the art in Hall 3 at the Reno Sparks Convention Center on Sunday afternoon.
“This piece is about my brother who died of a fentanyl overdose,” one artist said to two attendees.
“It’s just so fun to see all these styles,” a different artist said to another.
The event, the 2023 Reno Tahoe International Art Show, fostered artistic connections across place and style. The second annual show expanded its footprint this year but also increased its liveliness through an improved setup and increased visibility of local art. Sections dedicated to Burning Man art, local working artists, and those who used to ply their trade in Reno shined alongside national and international studios. For the sake of reviewing a show that has over 200 artists showing and selling their work, I stuck mostly to the local art sections of the event. The tagline for this show is “Reno, NV … Who Knew?” after all.
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Jose Davila IV
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Sep 11, 2023 2:10 pm
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The duo performs at Pignic.
By Karrie O’Neill’s own admittance, it was a weird night at Pignic Pub & Patio in Reno. At one point during her first set, her iPad with her music glitched and she had to restart a song. Later, an audience member whom she didn’t know insisted on coming up to the mic and singing with her for a tune. The audience was even treated to a traditional dance by a different zealous attendee when O’Neill and her partner on the fiddle, Kat MacMartin, played an Irish folk tune.
As O’Neill told the audience, “you never know what’s going to happen” when you play live music.
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Jose Davila IV
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Sep 4, 2023 8:54 am
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On display in Atlantica exhibit: foreground, a diorama of the installation titled I Got a BackUp Plan to the BackUp Plan to BackUp My BackUp Plan II (foreground); parts of Your Failure is Not a Victory For Me, Dune, One Thigh Snack Fry Dry Please, and I Remember My Skin Had Ash Like Pompei (background).
After stepping back onto Earth (in this case, the third floor hallway of the Nevada Museum of Art), through the portal from the planet of Atlantica, a friendly immigration agent (In this case, a museum guard) suggested we get our passports stamped after our journey.
It wasn’t a very long, arduous, or expensive journey, to be clear. The portal, filled with faux green houseplants and sounds of the Guinea-Bissauan band Super Mama Djombo, instantly whisked the traveler to a place of plenty: a land of glitter, body positivity, and Black diasporic joy. I was told any Earthling simply needs four or five houseplants to set up a portal of their own.
Without your own portal though, you can travel on that journey to April Bey’s Atlantica, The Gilda Region at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno through Feb. 4.
