An area artist who uses pinhole photography — a method in which a small hole replaces the lens in a makeshift camera — is showing her work through July 6 at Carson City’s Business Resource Innovation Center, 108 E. Proctor St.
Pinhole Properties is a collection of work by artist Nancy Raven, who said she’s passionate about both music and photography. Her exhibition presents a series of photographs she took around Minden and Gardnerville’s historic buildings and sites.
“I first learned about pinhole photography in 2005 when I took a class from pinhole master Martha Casanave, who teaches at Monterey Peninsula College. The medium was fascinating to me, and I loved the quality of the photographs with their dreamy, noir look,” Raven said.
The artist made the exhibition photographs using a large tin can with a small hole drilled in the side, revealing a pinprick hole inside. She then loads the tin can camera with photographic paper, which becomes paper negative when it’s exposed. After it’s developed, she places the paper negative face-down on another piece of photographic paper and prints. The curve of the tin can creates the curvature in the final image.
Raven showed her Lost Soles found object/photography installation piece in CCAI’s Art in the BRIC II, 2011.
Raven earned a master’s in alternative education from San Diego State College and a bachelor’s and teaching credential from Long Beach State College. She directed a family co-op nursery school using children’s folk music as a primary part of the curriculum. In 1963, she began recording children’s folk music and performing in school libraries and giving workshops. Over the course of many years, she made 10 CDs of this music and taught music through the California Arts Council. Raven now lives in Minden.
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 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Nevada Arts Council, Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, City of Carson City, U.S. Bank Foundation, and the John and Grace Nauman Foundation.
The BRIC is open 8 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4 p.m. daily. Raven’s exhibition is free.
For more information, go to www.arts-initiative.org.