Graphic for Grad Night. Photograph: Disneyland, Anaheim, California. 1967. Commercial photographer unknown. Collection of Dennis Swanson, Las Vegas, Nevada.]

Grad Night

In conjunction with the Grad Night exhibition of work by the University of Nevada Reno and Sierra Nevada College BFA and MFA Classes of 2009 at the CCAI Courthouse Gallery , we are honored to present the catalog essay below by UNR Art History faculty Brett M. Van Hoesen. Our thanks to Ms. Van Hoesen and the artists for their brilliant participation in Grad Night.

West of Worcester –– Reflections on ‘Grad Night’

IN 1978, my family prepared to move from Brookline, Massachusetts to Iowa City, Iowa. There was considerable confusion about the location of our new state. The prevailing question was, “Iowa – is that west of Worcester?” This was not your standard mix-up of states – Ohio or Idaho instead of Iowa. Rather, this comment was indicative of a strong regional bias unique to Massachusetts. From a Bostonian’s perspective in the late 1970s, western Mass was a virtual no-man’s land. While Worcester is only 46 miles west of Boston, Iowa is west by nearly 1,200 miles. Living in different parts of the country, I have grown accustomed to people’s misperceptions about certain locales. In tandem, I have given significant consideration to the legitimacy and role of regionalism. Are there tangible markers of place that characterize our thought and practice? Do regional zones such as East, West, South, or North have more impact than designators such as urban, rural or somewhere-in-between? Is there a discernable regional character to contemporary art production and art education in northern Nevada?

According to Curator Jon Winet, Grad Night is a “snapshot” of a time and place, showcasing the work of recent MFA and BFA graduates from the University of Nevada, Reno and Sierra Nevada College. Indeed, to a certain extent, the works exhibited reflect the philosophies and methods of faculty mentors as well as the interdisciplinary curricula at both institutions. The pieces selected for this show embrace a range of media and span a wide conceptual terrain. While there is expectedly no decipherable, overarching zeitgeist that unifies the output of our graduates, their work does self-consciously reference a number of stylistic, historical and ideological frameworks, some of which have strong regional roots.


Retooling Pop Surrealism and the Pop Art aesthetic

Over the past decade, Pop Surrealism has grown from being a West Coast trend to a global phenomenon. This popularized aestheticization of lowbrow culture celebrates the visual rhetoric of tattoos, cartoons, vintage sci-fi imagery and graphic novels. Ahren Hertel’s paintings retool aspects of the Pop Surrealist aesthetic, enabling him to break new ground. His recent work fuses inspiration from Dutch and Flemish Renaissance paintings with a fresh, dreamy feel. The ambiguous narratives depict female subjects in private meditation often accompanied by insects, birds or other wild animals. As evinced by his painting, From the Forest, the symbolic connection between these components is purposefully suspended. The lingering legacy of Pop art, a component of the Pop Surrealist movement, runs through the work of other graduates. Aimee Doran’s digital photo, You Betcha invigorates the mundane. Like Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein, she draws our attention to the kitsch appeal of advertisement culture. Although a seemingly innocent image, there are subversive undertones – the young boy who prematurely mimics the dress of a grown man (perhaps his father to the left) or the oddly sanitized transaction between the vendor’s plastic glove and the customer’s exposed cash. James Nagel’s Vittoria, a teasingly disturbing work, appropriates the genre of the reclining nude and the overt symbolism of memento mori (reminders of death), such as the stylized rose and skeletal hand. Despite the bright palette and straightforward illustrative quality, the image is playfully grotesque and macabre.


New Realism

Although Realism has never completely gone out of style, it is experiencing a renewed interest. The “new realist” work of recent graduates function as an homage to Renaissance and Modernist masters. Jonah Harjer’s drawings recall the portraits of the Florentine artist Ghirlandaio. Figurative studies such as Buck and Henry navigate between the crisp innocence of Isabel Bishop and the crude details characteristic of Ivan Albright. Jocelyn Meggait’s Pucci commemorates the visual enticement of the photogram, originally discovered by avant-garde photographers such as Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy. Meggait’s work also clearly honors the signature geometric patterns of Emilio Pucci’s mid-twentieth-century fashion designs.


Land Art and the Culture of Refurbished Materials

A reverence for the land and determined commitment to refurbishing materials connects the work of UNR graduates, Jeff Erickson, Bryan Christiansen and Jonathan Farber. Erickson’s Constellation 2.1 is part of a series of prints that seemingly portray the ethereal quality of the night sky. Erickson’s work dovetails between highly personal narratives and universal concepts of the sublime. The consistent materiality of his projects speaks to his nature as an installation artist, ever interested in the tension between everyday materials and traditional sculptural methods. Christiansen’s Buck and Doe, selected works from his BFA show entitled, Cervidae, eloquently reinvent a discarded loveseat and chair. Carefully keeping fragments of the authentic upholstery, padding and coil structure intact, Christiansen’s sculptures recall Robert Rauschenberg’s mixed-media combines. Jonathan Farber’s Constructed Deconstructed, a welded mass of found objects, creates a faux firearm that in form and concept appear to dramatically challenge the innocence of Christiansen’s doe and buck. Also from Farber’s BFA show titled, Mentalese, this piece wittingly teases the audience with its duality of intimidation and lightheartedness not unlike the work of Cady Noland.


Feminism and Identity Politics

The historical impact of Feminist theory and subsequent social structures such as Multiculturalism and identity politics run through the work of Dominique Palladino and Christina Lee. Palladino’s Mandorla a meditative object made from red yarn re-empowers the sacred almond shape found in religious art – particularly Christian and Buddhist. This piece in scale and idea respectfully resurrects the cerebral and emotive forms of Eva Hesse. Christina Lee’s impressive triptych, Passage of Knowledge implies the gendered ties between three generations. Referencing a specific, photo-based family history with homage to contemporary painters such as Hung Liu, Lee’s work convincingly communicates on a universal level. While neither Palladino nor Lee engages in a brand of feminism that is overtly polemical, they both touch upon themes of the maternal, and advocate for a conscientious connectivity between women.


While these four rubrics certainly do not encapsulate the totality of our graduates’ work, they do point to four prevailing conceptual arenas of interest to today’s contemporary artists. The diversity of approaches embodied in the work of these individuals points to the strength of the educational programs and creative community in northern Nevada. While regionalism can sometimes delimit one’s mentality, it can also engender open-mindedness. There are a host of noticeable, recent developments in the contemporary art scene here – they include the growth of the MFA program at UNR (Erickson and Hertel are the first class of graduates),
the resurgent enthusiasm for student associations such as UNR’s Art
Club and GASA (Graduate Art Student Association), and the prevalence
of a dynamic blogging culture at Sierra Nevada College. Additional promising endeavors include the Nevada Museum of Art’s Center for Art + Environment, Virginia City's Silverland and Reno's Holland Project. As our graduates continue to professionalize, attend graduate school and engage further with the local and wider art world, a better understanding of the tangible qualities of this regional scene will emerge. I look forward to being a witness.

In conclusion, I would like to congratulate the 2009 MFA and BFA graduates of Sierra Nevada College and the University of Nevada, Reno. I wish them the kind of success that builds upon the excellence of their northern Nevada education and which also propels them into a world of continued geographic and intellectual exploration.

Brett M. Van Hoesen
Reno, Nevada
June 2009

Brett M. Van Hoesen is Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Nevada, Reno. She joined the Art Department faculty in 2007. She did her doctoral studies in Art History at The University of Iowa and her M.A. degree in Art History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She lives in Reno with her husband and son..