Truckee Meadows Community College Workshop Participants Wrap up NV AWE: Tiny Treasures Project

 For a year, we have been creating these little NV AWE discs for a fundraiser for DoubleScoop at RTIA 2024.  TMCC folks finished up the remaining discs and we are now officially finished. I can't wait to see them all displayed in September! - Candace 

Here is what Micaela Rubalcava wrote about the discs she finished up: I love the playdough texture of the first layer on two of the discs made by children and the geometric shapes on the first layer of the other two discs. Those first layers made me think about interactions, harmonious and strained, between cultures, people, and animals in our high desert environment. I added high desert animals I've seen in Reno: brown rabbits, a frog, a tortoise. One rabbit leaps over a fence, posing a fairy tale question inspired by the child artist who made the fence and my own adult musings as I develop children's literature curriculum for this academic year: Is the rabbit going from the wilderness into someone's yard, or escaping a yard for freedom in the wilderness? Why? Is this rabbit trying to partake in someone's vegetable garden or escaping a trap? I imagine a happy little frog jumping for joy atop a mountain. I imagine a rabbit wanting to talk to the tortoise as both negotiate an urban skyscape. Another rabbit sprints between mountains purposefully, fleeing a foe or meeting a friend?

The Lilley NV AWE workshops this summer

 

August Love!

 

Discs documented on July 26

 

July is Artown in Reno

 

July 14

 

July 13 documentation

 

Chickadee Ridge by Penny Pemberton

 Inspired by an art journalling day on July 7, 2012

Chickadee ridge, Mount Rose, with Carol Neel, Penny Pemberton & Candace Garlock. Feeding the Chickadees &  sketching.

“I hear you call

Your call comes to me

From a distant tree

Chickadee dee dee

I love the birds I hear & see

But my favorite is the Chickadee.”

Tich Nhat Hanh, Grand Shambala 

“When we see that the Earth is not just the environment, that the Earth is in us, at that moment you can have real communion with the Earth.  The Earth is a living, sentient being.  The Earth gave birth to us, and the Earth will receive us again.  Nothing is lost.  Nothing is born.  Nothing dies.  We don’t need to wait until after our body has disintegrated to go back to Mother Earth.  We are going back to Mother Earth at every moment.  The Earth is a Bodhisattva, a great and compassionate being.  A Bodhisattva is a being who has awakening, understanding and love .  A Bodhisattva doesn’t have to be human being. Touching the earth, you touch the nature of no birth and no death.”

We were touched by a Bodhisattva, a Chickadee.

“ I heard her song, and I replied

‘Will you come to me?’

She heard my song, and came to see

‘Who is calling me?’

Gently she perched on my hand,

 & accepted my sunflower seed.

Unafraid, nonjudgmental & free.

Today I was touched by a Bodhisattva,

A Chickadee”. 

Penny Pemberton

More on July 12

 

Desert Life by Tina Drakulich

This piece was made by Auriel King and Tina Drakulich.  In thinking of Nevada, it is our fabric; our lives are woven in as we are both native Nevadans.  Our desert life is awe-inspiring.  The sunsets, the mountains, the wetlands, the playa; these comfort and inspire.  We make paper because the environmental impact is minimal, and perhaps positive. The medium is simple, versatile, and expressive.  Tina folds cranes of handmade paper as an outward expression of prayer. In this case, prayer is for Nevada Earth. Materials: wood, handmade rag paper, sharpies and mod podge.

This piece, “Area 51” is made by Auriel King and Luana Ritch (deceased, July 2, 2024).  Luana, a Nevadan, was awe-inspiring as an artist, friend and community member.  She was a creative, expressive, and inventive paper maker with vast experience in public health and military service. Auriel King is an imaginative young artist who loves Nevada treks, hikes and waters. It is with awe that these two artists formed this piece in a collaboration.  Materials: Abaca, beads, wire, sharpie, ribbon.