Five years ago, Brunswick Farms came to be. The family farming operation sold homemade pumpkin butter and used the profits to fund a traveling variety show.
The story of the family's history and travels has drawn the attention of visitors across the country, even though the family doesn't exist.
Brunswick Farms is a conceptual project designed by photographer Tara Cuthbert, along with her husband, Stuart Solzberg. The pair created the history and genealogy of the fictional Brunswick Family.
The pair travels the country, posing as Joe Rotto and his wife, Violet Gray, running the variety show, interacting with people and gathering photographic material.
"Miniature Worlds: Memories and Myths" an exhibition of Cuthbert's work is on display in the Nevada Arts Council Gallery, located in the Washington Square Building.
"Miniature Worlds" is an ongoing photography narrative based around the fictional traveling variety show. Through staged scenarios from this imagined world, Cuthbert hopes to explore ideas of family, self and reality.
The exhibition depicts the imagined cast and crew performing the traveling variety show as well as performers traveling through landscapes communicating philosophical ponderings of life and death with title cards.
"In each of these series a tangible fiction has been created, existing in the spaces between illusions and truth," Cuthbert said.
Nevada Arts Council Artist Services Coordinator Fran Morrow said the exhibition is part of the Office eXhibition Series, which annually highlights six visiting artists recognized through the council's programs.
Cuthbert received a Nevada Arts Council Jackpot Grant and is a 2006 Artist Fellowship Honorable Mention.
Morrow said the judges were struck by the scale and idea behind Cuthbert's work.
"One of them said they couldn't help but be interested in the weird scale of the pieces," Morrow said.
• Contact reporter Jarid Shipley at jshipley@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1217.
If You Go
What: "Miniature Worlds: Memories and Myths" photography exhibit by Tara Cuthbert
When: Through June 9 from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday
Where: OXS gallery, located in Nevada Arts Council office at 716 N. Carson St., Suite A
Information: 687-6680 or www.nevadaculture.org
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