Excellent adventure

Museums and galleries invite their visitors to get lost in their own thoughts, to invert and momentarily detach from the world. And, though this sense of detachment is often quite beautiful, in the dog days of summer, when people are infused with a restless vivacity, it’s perhaps not the proper forum to collectively ingest culture and art.

It’s with a restless, adventurous spirit that the Holland Project, in collaboration with Bootleg Courier Co., Nevada Museum of Art, the Terry Lee Wells Nevada Discovery Museum, and Reno Bike Project, has conceived the Forage: A Roaming Gallery.

This year marks the third year of the event, which, though it changes thematically year to year, features art installations, murals, music and film, all of which are enjoyed interactively on a guided bike tour through Reno.

Sarah Lillegard of the Holland Project sees this event as a fulfillment of Holland’s mission. “A Roaming Gallery truly exemplifies the mission of the Holland Project by bringing together art, music and hands-on exploration while fostering community involvement. It’s a visual blow-out of the best kind.”

The key is the “hands-on” element to the Forage. At each stop, participants will engage in the art they view. It’s a mixture of art and activity. The stop at the Discovery Museum, for instance, will feature experiments and displays with which participants can engage, as well as a confetti-spewing volcano.

This year’s theme is “Science and Alchemy,” which is itself an apt description of the Forage itself. The goal of alchemy was to not only discover a mixture of common metals that would produce noble metals, but also to discover a panacea—a universal cure-all.

The diversity of the event comes not only from the art, but also the locations. As you cycle through town from stop to stop, your expectations change, and your senses are challenged. Music will stimulate your aural sense, the cycling will ignite your body, and as you move through the city, those common sights of which you’ve grown so accustomed will convert into visual gold. And, this will breathe life into any art lover’s soul.

Forage commences at the Holland Project at 4 p.m. on July 28. There, the gallery will feature the installation Strychnine Divine, an exhibit featuring Oakland’s Scott Greenwalt, as well as an array of local artists. From there, it will move onto the Carter Bros. lot, McKinley Park, the Discovery Museum, and finish at the Nevada Museum of Art.

At the Nevada Museum of Art, the Reno Bike Project will provide a bike valet service, and at 7:30 p.m., they will screen two silent classic science fiction films, which will feature an original score written by local talent Dan Ruby. Keeping true to the collaborative spirit of the Forage, Ruby worked on this with Grace Hutchinson of the Reno Philharmonic and Tim Wood of Reno High.

Excited to promote the event, but not wanting to give away too much, Ruby says, “The theme for this year is Science and Alchemy, so we chose films by directors that happen to be two of my favorites: Georges Melies and Jean Painleve. While we’re keeping the titles and details under wraps, we can say that the evening will be a fantastical science fiction adventure with surprises in store.”

Forage strives to be just that; an adventure. One that, when viewed with the spirit of a child, might perhaps convert the city into whatever fantastic world lies within the scope of the individual’s imagination.