Capital City Arts Initiative

Artists’ Interview: Stephen Reid Visits with Ibarra & Piedra
Nevada Neighbors Talk

The Capital City Art Initiative’s Nevada Neighbors series of public talks includes interviews with artists in their studios or in a gallery setting. Here, CCAI presents Stephen Reid with artists Robert Ibarra and Cesar Piedra discussing their work in the Courthouse Gallery exhibition Two Views. Viewers are invited to watch the presentation online here https://youtu.be/mjYDJK9w4r8

Stephen Reid is a visual artist whose work has been shown nationally and in Japan. His paintings reside in the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical College as well as several private collections. He earned a MFA in 2006 from the University of Massachusetts and a BFA in 2001 from the Virginia Commonwealth University. He has taught as an adjunct instructor at Keene College in Keene, New Hampshire, and at Western Nevada College in Carson City. Reid has been the Artist Services Specialist with the Nevada Arts Council since 2017 where he manages the exhibition installations for the agency’s visual arts programs: the Nevada Touring Initiative-Traveling Exhibition and LXS-Legislative exhibition Series. He lives in Dayton, Nevada, with his family.

Cesar Piedra is a child of Mexican immigrants. This status as a first-generation individual can be filled with political, cultural, and historic conflict that can manifest itself as an identity crisis. This internal clash informs how he communicates through his art practice, and helps elicit a conversation about the existence of those caught in the in-between. Through his art, he seeks a visual language that connects both his Mexican and American heritages. These two identities often combine to create an amalgamation of the two. Piedra said, “My mashup of aesthetics, culture, and history allows me to explore my identity through visual language, granting myself and my viewer an opportunity to critique how we are swayed by external sources to define and establish identity, for ourselves and others.”

Piedra is an interdisciplinary artist, born in southern California and raised in northern Nevada. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in ceramics and a minor in art history at the University of Nevada Reno in 2021.

Robert Ibarra’s work involves self-portraiture where he investigates emotions tied to his personal experiences. He said, “My drawings involve the human figure and attempts to find a balance between realism and abstraction to convey emotion that is tied to personal experiences. My work serves as a way to relate to and evoke genuine reactions and feelings from the viewer. I want to provide viewers with an opening for dialogue about their own personal struggles.

“All my life I have struggled with personal battles such as Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), physical health issues, shyness, sensitivity, and anxiety. I had also found it extremely difficult to process and express these feelings, especially at a young age, being unable to understand what these struggles were, and I’m still having these same difficulties now in adulthood. I allow myself to be vulnerable and begin to develop the confidence to display and talk about my flaws. My hope is that viewers can find it in themselves to release what has been building up inside them for so long — that they may be free from their internal conflicts.” Ibarra received a BFA from the University of Nevada, Reno in 2021.

CCAI is an artist-centered nonprofit organization committed to community engagement in contemporary visual arts through exhibitions, illustrated talks, arts education programs, artist residencies, and online activities.

The Initiative is funded by the Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Nevada Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, John and Grace Nauman Foundation, Carson City Cultural Commission, Kaplan Family Charitable Fund, U.S. Bank Foundation, Southwest Gas Corporation Foundation, Steele & Associates LLC, and CCAI sponsors and members.

top right image: Stephen Reid interviewing Cesar Piedra, April 2022
left image: Stephen Reid interviewing Robert Ibarra, April 2022
bottom image: Nevada Neighbors flier for Artist Interview: Reid with Ibarra and Piedra