Carson City gallery hosting art by UNR students

Sculptures by students from the University of Nevada, Reno, are being displayed in Carson City courtesy of the Capital City Arts Initiative.

The student exhibition, titled ART from UNR, is being displayed at the Community Development Building, 108 E. Proctor St.

The building is open daily from 8 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4 p.m. The free exhibition opened July 11 and will remain in the building’s lobby exhibition space through Oct. 19.

This past semester, 36 University of Nevada, Reno students collaborated to create two large sculptures inspired by Louise Nevelson, one of America’s most distinguished artists.

Each student built a wood box and created their own composition of gathered found-wood pieces; the boxes were then combined into the large sculptures. Nevelson provides the inspiration for students to explore formal elements of sculpture — mass, plane, line, color, and texture, along with compositional elements including positive and negative space, directional quality, and repetition.

The project also gives students the opportunity for hands-on experience in the wood shop and general sculpture studio utilizing both stationary tools (table saw, panel saw, band saw, miter saw, drill press, etc.) and hand tools (hammers, hand saws, drills, brad guns, etc.)

The students who created the Composition in White include: Shane Andrews, Denae Ball, Holly Carter, Owen Craugh, Celeste Dunn, Barrie Fenton, Kyle Hoffman, Tyler Jessell, Sandra Kramp, Tatum Lochner, Makenna Mahar I, Joseph Oliva, Isabel Olmedo, Rayne Roberts, Amanda Singleton, Tyler Stanley, Julia Stead, Samantha Vanillo, and Dustin Waters.

The students who created the Composition in Black include: Christopher DeFalco, Lindsey Depaola, Yvette Diaz, Rebekah Dominik, Griffin Drew, Laura Gracia, Joseph Klippenstein, Martha Rebecca Lopez, Courtney Martinez, Brianna Oki, Isabel Pittman, Nico Quatrale, Gabriel Rojas, Kevin Ruano, Kaleigh Rubio, Tyler Scranton, and Demetria Smolko.

Beginning Sculpture at the University of Nevada, Reno fulfills a component of the University’s Core Curriculum, specifically the Fine Arts Core Objective. The Fine Arts Core Objective is meant to develop an understanding of human creative practice and provide the student with an informed appreciation of the world’s visual and performing arts artistic heritage, both historical and contemporary. The Fine Arts Core Objective equips students to recognize the crucial role the arts play in shaping our experiences in and understandings of the world.

There are no prerequisites for students to enroll in Beginning Sculpture. As a result, many if not most of the students enrolled have never taken an art class before and are coming to this course from diverse fields of study such as psychology, engineering, biology, and geology, just to name a few examples from this past year. The Louise Nevelson wood construction sculpture project synthesizes and integrates information from contemporary and historical art in an applied studio art environment in order to contribute to the creative and scholarly experience of students from across the university.

The course was guided by Art Department Associate Professor Tamara Scronce, who was awarded the University’s prestigious Tibbits Distinguished Teacher Award for excellence in teaching this spring. Instructor and grad student Cullen Wegman taught the Composition in Black course section. Instructor Kevin Kremler taught the Composition in White course section; he earned a MFA at the university in 2012.

The Capital City Arts Initiative is an artist-centered organization committed to the encouragement and support of artists and the arts and culture of Carson City and the surrounding region. The Initiative is committed to community building for the area’s diverse adult and youth populations through art projects and exhibitions, live events, arts education programs, artist residencies, and its online projects.

CCAI is funded in part by John Ben Snow Memorial Trust, Nevada Arts Council and National Endowment for the Arts, City of Carson City, Nevada Humanities and National Endowment for the Humanities, NV Energy Foundation, Robert Z Hawkins Foundation, U.S. Bank Foundation, and John and Grace Nauman Foundation.

For information, visit CCAI’s website at www.arts-initiative.org.