Capital City Arts Initiative

Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Reception, 6:15pm
Talk, 7pm
at the BRIC
108 E Proctor Street, Carson City

YOU ARE HERE
CCAI Nevada Neighbors Talk by Julia Schwadron

On Wednesday, February 19, the Capital City Arts Initiative [CCAI] will present a talk by artist Julia Schwadron. Her illustrated talk, “You Are Here” is the next in CCAI’s Nevada Neighbors series. The talk will take place at 7pm at the BRIC, 108 E Proctor St, Carson City. There will be an informal reception for Ms. Schwadron preceding the event at 6:15pm. The presentation and reception are free, and the public is cordially invited.

Schwadron will discuss her art including the series of paintings she titled YOU ARE HERE. These works recognize the traveler’s experience, and simultaneously questions the idea of what is foreign or familiar across various kinds of boundaries. This collection of paintings works literally and conceptually to map the interrelated psychic, social, and visual landscapes of her year as a visitor in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The project uses the lenses of interior and exterior looking to collect, wonder, and record an individualistic and collective searching for ‘self’ in the contexts of cultural translation, difference, sameness and awe-inspiring beauty. It is largely the gratitude and sheer amazement at the sights/sites of personal exploration and growth that YOU ARE HERE makes most powerfully visible.

Schwadron said: “This show develops a series of paintings I began before coming to Thailand, which are based on the covers of vintage Self-Help and Psychology books published in the West in the 1960s and 70s. Almost humorously consumed with ‘self-truths’, these books are part of a condition of modern Western culture by which we constantly attempt to know ourselves better. I thought it was even stranger to find these books in second-hand shops here, in English, left by tourists over the course of many years. I see these books as remnants left as western guidebooks for future travelers, or perhaps souvenirs of a more universal quest for meaning. I pair these paintings with paintings featuring memories of moments spent within the Thai landscape, and still others inspired by my process of beginning to understand and speak the Thai language. I wanted to create a group of paintings that reflects my own experiences of tangible and intangible discovery, in the hopes that it would evoke a spirit of introspection through a layered idea of place.”

As part of her CCAI visit, Ms. Schwadron will give her talk to art students and faculty at Dayton and Douglas high schools.

American artist Julia Schwadron has shown her work nationally as well as in Thailand. She has had recent solo exhibitions at HGallery Project Space in Bangkok, and at the Farnham Galleries at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. Schwadron was a Visiting Professor and Artist in Painting at Chiang Mai University from 2010 – 2011, and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Painting at the University of Iowa from 2007-2009. In 2006, Schwadron was awarded a Joan Mitchell Fellowship for residency at the Vermont Studio Center, in Johnson, VT. She was a founding member of the “Matzo Files,” an artist flat file project inside Streit’s Matzo store on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 2004. As a Jacob Javits Fellow from 2002-2004, she facilitated an exchange in conjunction with the Transmedia Postgraduate Program in Art and Design in Brussels, Belgium. She was also a resident at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2000. Schwadron received a BA in Studio art from UC San Diego in 1998 and a MFA in Painting from the Tyler School of Art in 2004. She currently lives and works in South Lake Tahoe, California with her husband and son.

Thailand. She has had recent solo exhibitions at HGallery Project Space in Bangkok, and at the Farnham Galleries at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. Schwadron was a Visiting Professor and Artist in Painting at Chiang Mai University from 2010 – 2011, and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Painting at the University of Iowa from 2007-2009. In 2006, Schwadron was awarded a Joan Mitchell Fellowship for residency at the Vermont Studio Center, in Johnson, VT. She was a founding member of the “Matzo Files,” an artist flat file project inside Streit’s Matzo store on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 2004. As a Jacob Javits Fellow from 2002-2004, she facilitated an exchange in conjunction with the Transmedia Postgraduate Program in Art and Design in Brussels, Belgium. She was also a resident at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2000. Schwadron received a BA in Studio art from UC San Diego in 1998 and a MFA in Painting from the Tyler School of Art in 2004. She currently lives and works in South Lake Tahoe, California with her husband and son.

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 online projects.

The Carson City Library co-sponsors the Nevada Neighbors series with CCAI. The Capital City Arts Initiative [CCAI] is funded in part by the John Ben Snow Memorial Trust, Nevada Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, City of Carson City, Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, U.S. Bank Foundation, and John and Grace Nauman Foundation.

° 1st image: Ms Schwadron with painting “Turning Points”; oil, acrylic, charcoal on canvas over board;  52 x 42 cm; 2011
° 2nd image: Ms Schwadron giving her talk to art students at Dayton High School
° 3nd image: Ms. Schwadron giving her public talk at the BRIC
° 4rd image: post talk visiting at the BRIC with artists (l-r) Erika Harsch, Sarah Lillegard (back to camera), Joe DeLappe, Austin Pratt
° bottom image: CCAI Nevada Neighbors flier, winter/spring 2014