CCAI Nevada Neighbors Talk by Galen Brown

On Tuesday, October 11, the Capital City Arts Initiative (CCAI) will present a talk by artist Galen Brown. His illustrated talk, Untilted, is part of CCAI’s ongoing Nevada Neighbors series and will take place at 7pm at the Community Development building (the Brick), 108 E Proctor St, Carson City. There will be an informal reception for Brown preceding the event at 6:15 p.m. The presentation and reception are free, and the public is cordially invited.

In his talk, Galen Brown will give a virtual studio tour of his art work. His recent work focuses on America’s throwaway culture — that concern compelled him to make sculptures with discarded Christmas trees. He collects and dries the trees, then strips them of bark and limbs, and sands the bare trunks to a marble-like surface. In the final creative steps, he embellishes each with wire or string or sewing thread or toothpicks or paint to enhance its form. Then Brown presents the Trees as a “forest” although they hang upside-down from their original growth pattern.

The Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada, has featured Brown’s Trees in its Tilting the Basin: Contemporary Art of Nevada exhibition, a state-wide survey of 35 artists’ art. Brown’s Nevada Neighbors talk is concurrent with the Museum’s show.

Brown’s experience growing up in a Lake Tahoe beach house watching the weather and the water change constantly, has also influenced his creative process. Repetition of pattern is key to his recording of subtle shifts in mood and texture. He uses common materials such as #2 pencils and standard writing ball-point pens in his drawings.

Brown received both his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1990 and his BFA in 1988 from the San Francisco Art Institute. He has studied printmaking and painting in New York, China, and Mexico and at San Francisco’s distinguished Crown Point Press. He lives and works in Carson City, Nevada.

As part of his Nevada Neighbors activities, Brown will give his talk to art students and faculty at Dayton High School and at Sierra Nevada College.

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 planning and building for the area’s diverse adult and youth populations through art projects and exhibitions, live events, arts education programs, artist residencies, and online projects.

The Capital City Arts Initiative (CCAI) is funded in part by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Nevada Arts Council, NV Energy Foundation, Robert Z. Hawkins Foundation, Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, City of Carson City, U.S. Bank Foundation, and John and Grace Nauman Foundation.

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