Thomas Bachand has been a professional photographer for over twenty years. His photography of Lake Tahoe captures the allure and fragility of this beloved landmark and destination. Join Tom as he explores his own body of work, the historic photography of Carleton Watkins, and how photography informs our perception of the landscape.

Peter Goin is a photographer best known for his work with transformed landscapes and is currently serving as Foundation Professor of Art in Photography and Time Based Media/(Videography) at the University of Nevada, Reno. Join Peter as he discusses his Nuclear Landscapes, featured in the Museums Altered Landscape collection, and the important and evolving role of the research artist.

Recipient of the Nevada Governor’s Arts Award and the Nevada Heritage Award, Great Basin buckaroo and braider Doug Groves makes finely crafted artisan horse gear.  Learning rawhide braiding from peers in the bunkhouse and beyond, he now passes on the skills and techniques for turning rawhide into beautiful and functional gear.  Join Doug as he discusses the history of rawhide, its traditional uses as horse gear, and how our ranching history is passed on with this skill through stories and folklore.

Support for the Art Bite series comes from Nevada Arts Council and Nevada Humanities.

The Nevada Woodchucks are dedicated to teaching the skills of woodworking to Northern Nevada.  Through the sharing of ideas, accomplishments, techniques and woodworking projects, this organization is keeping traditional craft alive and sharing the joy of handmade toys with children in the community.  Join Woodchucks President and avid woodworker Rick Barbieri for a lively discussion of toys, tools and community. 

Support for the Art Bite series comes from Nevada Arts Council and Nevada Humanities.

Freyer believes that wood is one of nature’s riches gifts. It can be as light and luminescent as water or as dense and opaque as stone. Sculpted by a craftsman, wood expresses and inspires emotion by transcending its function to touch the soul. Join local wood worker Eric Freyer as he discusses the process behind creating studio furniture and the importance of craft and tradition in the community.

Support for the Art Bite series comes from Nevada Arts Council and Nevada Humanities.

NOTE: All seats in the Museum’s Theater have been sold to this event. This registration is for the simulcast presentation which will be a live video feed of Michael Branch’s presentation. 

Michael Branch, writer, humorist and environmentalist unveils his newest book “Raising Wild: Dispatches from a Home in the Wilderness,” creative nonfiction reflecting on raising children in an extreme desert landscape.

Reception and book signing to follow presentation. Live music following talk by Shiloh.

Join Barbara L. Gordon as she shares her journey as a collector navigating the wonderfully intuitive and accessible designs, colors and shapes that make up American Folk Art. From her first purchase of a particularly elegant birdhouse with a green painted tin roof, plucked from a row of items in a country field, to her triumphant and long awaited acquisition of Edward Hicks’ masterpiece, The Peaceable Kingdom, Gordon discusses the thrill of the hunt and the passion and discipline it takes to build a world class collection.

Join guest curator of A Shared Legacy: Folk Art in America, Richard Miller as he examines the aesthetic and meaning of the large body of work that has come to be known as American Folk Art.  The paintings, sculpture, and furniture in the Gordon collection were made between 1800 and 1920–years that bookend a period of rapid and dramatic change in the United States.  The art in this exhibition represents a period that may feel distant, but these objects that held special meaning for Americans show that their aspirations were little different from ours today: celebration of family, pride in heritage, and leaving some evidence of our lives and accomplishments after us.

Dr. Bernhard Bach’s background is in diffractive, and space flight optics, he serves as the UNR Director of Undergraduate Laboratories.  Join him in conversation as he explores the physics of light as it relates to the immersive light installation Swell.  Swell, which represents innovation in immersive light installations, draws explicit connections between wave forms, the liquid motion of floating objects and sculptural objects made of light, modified and shaped over time.

Support for the Art Bite series comes from Nevada Arts Council and Nevada Humanities.

David Sanchez Burr is a mixed-media artist and assistant professor of media arts and technology at New Mexico Highlands University.  Join him in discussion about New Citadel II and his efforts to convey ideas of maintenance, generation and decay of the complex systems and structures that surround us. New Citadel is an ongoing project that presents a view of social, urban and ecological change through time based art and speaks to theories of urbanism, the postindustrial landscape and shelter as a perpetual social struggle. The work allows for the design, construction, and disintegration of a city to reveal and critique the chaotic processes that make our urban landscape.

Support for the Art Bite series comes from Nevada Arts Council and Nevada Humanities.