Truckee River Gallery

Don’t be fooled by the tiny size and cramped quarters of the Truckee River Gallery—they have big plans for the month of July. During the four weeks of Artown, the gallery will be showing off the work of approximately 45 different local artists.

The concept behind this ambitious series of shows: Each week of July will be divided up thematically by medium. The first week will feature photography, followed the next week by oil and acrylic painting, then watercolor, and, finally, drawing, printmaking, and “the kitchen sink.” The gallery is also planning a Saturday of plein air painting where some of the artists will be creating their works along the Riverwalk.

With only 250 square feet of space in which to pull all this off, it seems like a near-impossible feat to fit the work of about 10 different artists in the gallery each week. Yet the gallery has gotten creative with constructing spaces for work to hang. Pieces of heavy fabric are strategically hung from the ceiling on wooden dowels and weighted down by rocks that look like they could have been pulled out of the Truckee River. These “walls” create a narrow, maze-like space for viewing the art.

The artwork that will be displayed in the exhibitions includes a panoramic photograph of Lake Tahoe by gallery owner Mark Hammon printed on a canvas that measures more than six feet across, and Barbara Katz’s mixed-media paintings, made with watered-down oils and acrylics on paper. Katz creates washes and textured backgrounds, which are then outlined with ink to define certain areas—making for an abstract landscape effect reminiscent of the Nevada desert. Sarah McCoy will display cute, bronze sculptures that are small in scale, stylized and very contemporary.

The subject matter of the artwork is truly a hodge-podge and ranges from figurative to abstract.

While most of the work is two-dimensional physically, some of the pieces have more conceptual depth. Mike Callahan is an oil painter who paints Nevada landscapes and ranch scenes with beautiful technique and detail. Remarkably, he is primarily self-taught and, even more intriguing, he limits himself to a three-color palette—cyan, magenta, and yellow, plus white—for all of his paintings. He creates rich textures and colors.

Another painter, Erik Holland, who specializes in depicting old buildings, recently created a series with the parameter that everything he painted be within one square mile of his home at the Riverside Artist’s Lofts—with compelling results.

In the attempt to show as much work as possible in this short time, there is an eclectic mix of art that, according to Naomi Nickerson, gallery manager, “will offer something for everyone as far as personal taste, education and budget.” There is a wide range of work—which makes it hard to talk about the series of exhibitions as a whole. The space has the feel of a salon-style art show, a mixed bag or conglomeration of sorts, and with an amount of perusal, there likely will be something to whet the interest of any art enthusiast.