Shell of a good time

There’s a stretch of Main Street in Fernley, the little bedroom community of less than 20,000 people about 30 miles east of Sparks, that contains first-rate public artworks—large roadside-attraction sculptures, which inspire passersby to stop the car, step out, walk around and gawk. These sculptures were brought to the town by the Burning Man-affiliated Black Rock Arts Foundation and a National Endowment for the Arts grant for bringing large artworks to small towns. Most of the art will rotate out, but one sculpture is a permanent installation, partly because it’s essentially too heavy to move.

“It’ll be here forever,” said Reno artist Pan Pantoja. “Long after this town blows away, this thing will still be sitting here. It’s over 70 tons. There’s no way to move it. No way it’s ever going to go anywhere.”

The sculpture, called “Desert Tortoise,” is just that—a large desert tortoise made of intricately carved granite boulders. Pantoja led a team of about 20 artists who worked on the project. In addition to the many artists who worked on it, Pantoja and company also involved the community of Fernley, recruiting thousands of kids from all the schools in the city to contribute paintings on small square tiles, representing classic Nevada imagery like bighorn sheep, wild horses, Highway 50 and Mark Twain, as well as personal imagery, like personal photos and memorials to fallen friends. The artists collected so many of these tiles that they’ve decided to build another piece, a snake shaped bench to accompany the tortoise.

Pantoja chose the image of the tortoise partly because it’s the Nevada state reptile, and also because of mythological references to the mystical powers of tortoises, but also because it was an image he was able to create with a simple mock-up of rocks he found near his own home, with a limited amount of time to submit the grant proposal.

“I walked out into my front yard and I grabbed six rocks and put them into a shape and called it a tortoise,” he said.

“It’s more than just a public art piece,” said Aric Shapiro, another Reno artist who worked on the sculpture. “It’s literally a monument. It’s unmovable.”

Pantoja and the other artists spent hundreds of hours going to schools to collect the tiles, negotiating for transportation of the granite, as well as actually creating and installing the sculpture.

“You’ve got to pick the right rocks,” said Shapiro. “We spent a good three weeks driving from quarry to quarry to quarry.”

With the involvement of the school kids and its installation in a relatively small town, “The Desert Tortoise” is an unusually community-oriented sculpture.

“We had such a huge amount of community support,” said Shapiro. “Everybody really wanted to be involved and was really happy about it. … The whole time we were installing, just putting these tiles in place, there was a constant stream of people.”

It’s the rare sculpture that catches the eye from the road and also reveals its personal details up close. And with its recognizable animal shape, it has all-ages appeal.

“It’s kind of a blessing from the public point of view because we’ve never had anything like this,” said Bill Keever, building inspector for the city of Fernley. “We have regular parks that serve the public, but this is something new. This is something that the city grasped their personalities around. They can see what the artists are trying to portray and their ambition.”