Truckee Meadows Community College art galleries are displaying four new exhibitions! This includes two local artists, a curated show by Professor Rossitza Todorova’s Galleries Practice class, and the ART 299 Advanced Photo Group Show instructed by Professor Dean Burton, accessible Monday, Nov. 14 – Thursday, Dec. 8 at four locations around the Dandini Campus. The exhibitions are free and open to the public.
Create With the Heart, Build With the Mind
The Red Mountain Gallery, located on the third floor adjacent to Admissions, features Anomalous Behaviour of Helium at Absolute Zero and Other Ways to Win at Black Jack by Nicole Bernstein. Bernstein is a resident of Reno, and holds a bachelor of fine arts with a minor in art history from Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, Ohio. Her work has been shown in the Ohio region, most notably at the Columbus International Airport and the Lancaster Festival celebrating art and music in Lancaster, Ohio. Her artwork focuses on the human figure and its interactions with its immediate environment, and depicts our response to our surroundings as humans and how we simultaneously reflect and create our collective reality. This is the directing influence she uses while creating her pieces.
The Erik Lauritzen Gallery, located on the third floor of the Red Mountain Building near office 321, features Privacy Policy by Nathaniel Benjamin. Benjamin is a printmaker whose work examines the interaction between self and other. Raised mostly in the Midwest, his religious childhood inspired him to study mysticism and mythology; subjects that inform the mood of his craft as well as its imagery. He uses his art practice as a means to uncover where we find meaning and a sense of self in the context of digital technology. Our perception of our bodies, of each other, and of the surrounding world, shift as the devices we interface with evolve. Depicting this through grotesque interactions between biological bodies and technological devices, he questions the effect the digital world has on our experience. He earned his bachelor of fine arts with an emphasis in printmaking from the University of Nevada, Reno. Recently, he has expanded his practice to include hand-printed apparel and mural painting. He is a founding member of Laika Press, a community printmaking space operating in Reno.
The Red Mountain Student Gallery, also located on the third floor, features Pain & Pleasure, a curated show by Professor Rossitza Todorova’s Galleries Practices class. Pleasure and pain are inherently connected, and the same chemical, dopamine, is released when we experience both. This poses the questions, “What is the difference?” "Are they only separated by our perspective?" The exhibition strives to depict and express many individuals’ views on pleasure and pain and where the two overlap. It is organized and curated by the students of the Fall 2022 ART 209 Gallery Practices class: Mads Hambleton, Ryan Hartman, Austen Loftus, Maxwell Neidhold, and Linda Pinching. The exhibition includes current students, alumni, and Reno and Sparks art community members.
The TMCC Main Art Gallery, located in the Red Mountain Building near the Student Center, features ART 299: LAND by Professor Dean Burton’s Advanced Photography Class. This is a collection of Northern Nevada artists with a shared interest in photography who collaborate at TMCC. They have monthly critiques in which new work is presented with lively discussion and moral support. They manage post-production together, share techniques learned, and showcase in places like the Reno Arts Collective in downtown Reno, Sierra Arts Gallery, St. Mary's Art Center, Washoe County Library, and most recently at the Reno Tahoe International Art Show. Individually, the members have shared their pieces with the City of Reno Art Galleries, the Nevada Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, and Black and White Magazine. Burton’s class is motivated to make landscape photographs for many reasons. It is a challenging genre that requires patience and persistence. It takes planning and preparation that is often upset by weather or natural disasters. It ultimately involves a certain amount of luck, or at least being in the right place at the right time. It is a form of exercise that is both physical and mental. Land is something that contains us. We move through it. Photography allows us to shrink it down, take it home, and look at it later.
All art galleries are located at 7000 Dandini Boulevard, Red Mountain Building, Reno, NV, and are open during building hours. For more information, contact Kyle Karrasch at 775-674-7681, or visit the Art Galleries Page.