Elder’s talk at Arts Council centers on landscapes

Artist Nina Elder will give a free and open-to-the-public talk at the Art Center tomorrow afternoon.

The talk will begin at 4 p.m. and will be followed by a reception for the artist from 5-7 p.m. For information, call the Churchill Arts Council at 775-423-1440.

The talk is in conjunction with “Marred Landscapes,” an exhibition of her paintings and drawings which is on view in the E.L. Wiegand Gallery at the Art Center.

Her work deals with the visual evidence of land use in the American West and documents the often overlooked remnants of industrial expansion in desert environments, such as high voltage power lines and abandoned or no longer used structures.

Her images are deeply rooted in the vernacular of landscape painting, but her choices of subject matter are not what is usually found in the genre.

By painting parking lots, desolate and abandoned factories and junk piles of discarded waste the artist examines the cycles of production, consumption and waste in isolated environments, and explores the shifting boundaries between land and landscape, between beauty and banality.

Elder currently lives in Santa Fe and grew up in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and New Mexico.

After earning her MFA degree from the San Francisco Art Institute she returned to New Mexico where she co-founded an off-the-grid artists’ residency program called PLAND: Practice Liberating Art through Necessary Dislocation.

Her work has been exhibited regionally and nationally and included in a number of publications including “Art in America” and “New American Paintings.”

The Special Collections department of the Library at UNR is organizing an exhibition dealing with gaming and casino life which will be on view throughout the summer. Also in preparation is the Churchill Arts Council’s brochure on its 2013-2014 events.

We’ll have more info on the UNR exhibition and CAC’s plans for the new season in the next few weeks.

Kirk Robertson covers the Churchill Arts Council scene.