Black Rock Desert Artists-in-Residence Exhibition

Featuring:

Leave No Trace
by collaborative artistic team: Courtney Sennish & Lisa Rock

Restoration
by Mark Maynard

McKinley Arts & Culture Center, Gallery West
925 Riverside Dr, Reno, NV 89503

Exhibition: October 17 – December 9, 2022
Reception: October 20, 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Gallery West in the McKinley Arts & Culture Center is proud to host an exhibition featuring works from the 2022 Black Rock Desert Artists-in-Residence Program.

The exhibition includes two parts: “Leave No Trace” by a collaborative artistic team of Courtney Sennish and Lisa Rock, and “Restoration” by Mark Maynard. The residency program is a partnership between Friends of Black Rock-High Rock and the Bureau of Land Management Black Rock Field Office. The exhibition will run from October 17 – December 9, 2022 in McKinley Arts and Culture Center, Gallery West. Media are invited to cover the exhibition and attend the artists’ reception on Thursday, October 27 from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.

“Leave No Trace”

Courtney Sennish and Lisa Rock come to the Black Rock Desert residency as a collaborative team that hail from the Bay Area. Both artists explore the urban landscape from different perspectives. Sennish makes sculptures that reshape and reimagine forms found in the urban environment using industrial materials and roadside waste. Rock makes paintings that explore nature’s relationship to manmade. For this exhibition they have shifted to create work that is directly inspired by the landscape. Drawing inspiration from the forms, colors and shapes found within the landscape they created works that have a conversation with one another about the Black Rock Desert.

About the Artists:

Lisa Rock (b. 1985 in Marlborough, Massachusetts) is a painter living in Oakland, CA. She received her MFA in Studio Art from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and her BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. Recent solo exhibitions include Merge Visible at NIAD Art Center in Richmond, CA and a solo exhibition at the Monterey Museum of Art’s Currents Gallery. Rock was an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center and the Black Rock Desert NCA Artist in Residence program. She paints out of her studio in Alameda, CA.

Courtney Sennish (b. 1991 in Saginaw, MI) lives and works in Emeryville, CA. She received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and graduated from her MFA at California College of the Arts. In 2015, she received the Headland’s Graduate Fellowship Alternate. Sennish was an artist in residence at Kala Art Institute, Incahoots and the Black Rock Desert NCA Artist in Residence program. Courtney has been showing around the Bay Area, in multiple group shows. In 2016 she had a solo show at Johansson Projects and a solo exhibition at the Monterey Museum of Art’s Currents Gallery in 2019.

“Restoration”

Restoration is a collection of sketches and short essays documenting the artist’s time in the Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area. Part of a larger work-in-progress tentatively titled Resident, Restoration is an unrestrained look at how we conduct ourselves in wild places, and the power of landscapes to shape character, heal pain, and bring unlikely collaborators together in public spaces.

About the Artist:

Mark Maynard’s work has appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Baobab Press’s This Side of the Divide, Tahoe Blues (Bona Fide Books), and The Films of Clint Eastwood (University of New Mexico Press). His 2012 collection of short stories Grind (Torrey House Press) was selected as the 2016-17 Nevada Reads Book by the Nevada State Library. In 2015, Mark was awarded the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame Silver Pen Award. He is currently at work on Piconland: The Quest for the Picon Punch, a documentary film about the unofficial state cocktail of Nevada.

Mark teaches English, journalism, and creative writing at Truckee Meadows Community College (TMCC) in Reno, NV. He has taught college-level writing for 17 years at TMCC, the University of Nevada, Reno, and Sierra Nevada University. In addition to teaching, he has worked as a journalist, and a marketing writer for a major video game publisher.

Mark earned his B.A. in English from the University of San Diego and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. He is currently enrolled in the Masters of Journalism program at the University of Nevada, Reno.

About the Program:

The Black Rock Desert Artist-in-Residence program promotes awareness through art of the exceptional places protected within the BLM’s National Conservation Lands. The experience provides an opportunity for learning and dialogue about the value of preserving public lands in the Black Rock Desert National Conservation Area. It will engage and inform an audience through public programs by participants and will provide time for artists to pursue their work.

To learn more about the Black Rock Artist-in-Residence Program:
https://blackrockdesert.org/artist-residence-program-2022/