Avant-Garde Tahoe

by Chérie L. Turner

Sierra Nevada College, based in Incline Village, Nevada, has recently been in the news as the site of the new Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences and as a possible site for a performing arts center. But there's another aspect of this private college that has become an invaluable part of the Tahoe community: its fine art department. Founded in 1969, Sierra Nevada College (SNC) has quietly developed a reputation for providing a superior liberal arts education. Among SNC's claims to fame: it is one of the few non-art-specific schools in the nation to offer a "New Genres" curriculum to undergraduates. It also hosts a nationally recognized summer art workshop program, open to the public. The campus' gallery regularly shows cutting-edge contemporary artwork not often seen in the area.

The success of the SNC art department is due, in large part, to the passion, talent and ambition of the instructors, among them: Sheri Leigh, Mary Kenny, Russell Dudley and J. Damron. They are each dedicated teachers and talented working artists, fully engaged in the larger art world. Together they provide students the unique opportunity to participate in a contemporary art dialogue rarely available outside major cities. This conversation expands out to the greater community via the workshops and the campus gallery, as well as the cultural contribution made by the instructors and their students.

Sheri Leigh

When Sheri Leigh was eight years old, her mother bought her a papier-mâché kit. Having soon used all the material, Leigh returned to the art supply store for more. On the shelf next to the papiermâché supplies was clay, which Leigh also purchased. She was immediately taken with the medium that has shaped her life ever since.

Leigh started throwing clay on the wheel at age 13, took ceramics classes at night at a local college when she was in high school and attended pottery workshops throughout her teens and beyond. A fine arts major at Colorado University, Leigh went on to earn her MFA at Claremont University, where she studied under legendary ceramicist Paul Soldner. Among other accolades, Soldner is credited for creating "American Raku" (interestingly, American Raku is now being done in Japan, the birthplace of Raku). He was also the first graduate student to study under Peter Voulkos who is known for his role in pushing ceramics beyond craft into the realm of fine art.

Coming from such a line of innovative thought, Leigh's work is similarly non-traditional. She is best known for architectonic pieces that are built according to the rules of architecture and incorporate colorful, fun elements like masks or geckos. Leigh is also working on a series of two-legged horses that she calls "Horsen." These curious creatures are as fun as they are disarming; over time, they begin to look "normal" even though they are so disturbingly not.

Though disparate in appearance, these creations do share a common bond: Leigh's imagination and personality. Possessing whimsy and structure, the works are the perfect meld of little-girl play and serious, technical artistic exploration. And it all stems from Leigh's curiosity. "I follow ideas to their logical end," she explains. Ideas that are all her own: "What I'm doing, no one else is doing."

Leigh has been a member of the Sierra Nevada faculty for eight years. In addition to instructing (and temporarily serving as chair of the art department), she runs the highly acclaimed summer workshop program that marked its twenty-first year last summer. During the season, SNC hosts two workshops a week, one a ceramics workshop and the other focusing on another artform, from painting to jewelry making to digital art. Workshops are led by nationally and internationally recognized artists from around the country, including many whom Leigh counts among her personal friends. Indeed, Leigh brings a world of experience to The Lake, having lectured and led workshops throughout the United States and in Japan. Her work has also been featured in Clay Times and Ceramics Monthly magazines.

Russell Dudley

Russell Dudley has been an influential force in the SNC art department since 1990. Having come to the faculty with a volume of experience and unwavering artistic energy, he has been instrumental in guiding the department from wonderfully bohemian to avant-garde. Among other contributions, he founded the "New Genres" major. Dudley is also responsible for the SNC gallery program, which, under his tenure, has featured some of the most exciting new work to be shown at The Lake. The gallery is also the venue for the Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate shows. "One of the best things that we do is give these students a solo show," notes Dudley. The experience is unique to an undergraduate program; most BFA students finish their degrees as part of a large group show put together by the faculty.

"Because we don't have graduate students," says Dudley, "we can treat our students like graduate students." Of his own artistic beginnings, Dudley, 44, states: "Since I was tiny, I always knew I wanted to be an artist. Some of my first memories were knowing that." In pursuit of his passion, Dudley studied art at the University of Oregon in Eugene and then, after a three-year stint in New York City, earned his MFA in experimental photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Dudley has since worked primarily in sculpture and photography, often incorporating his works into performance pieces. Influenced by artists like Joseph Beuys and Joseph Cornell, Dudley's work is conceptual, though pieces often stand on their own simply as aesthetically pleasing (or perplexing) objects.

"I've always been attracted to conceptual applications of beauty and mystery," he explains. Also evident in much of Dudley's works are elements of danger and morbidity. Their impact, however, is tempered by being presented in a somewhat ambiguous way (in one image he uses, it is difficult to determine if the subject is dead or sleeping; he is dead). You feel uneasy, but only subtly so, due to the lack of in-your-face gruesomeness.

Recently, Russell was part of the group collaborative d3ms (www.d3ms.net), which also included J. Damron as well as three other artists. Now defunct, the group created numerous performance pieces that were recognized and shown both nationally and internationally.

Dudley's current work is moving toward a more simple objective: "In the last two years," he says, "I've worked really hard trying to make pictures accessible just as pictures." These recent images are simply beautiful while still possessing those compelling elements of danger and mystery. His images will be on show January through February, 2006, at a new (yet to be named) gallery in Los Angeles, at Truckee Meadows Community College next October through November and as part of a group show at Stremmel Gallery, Reno, also next fall.

J. Damron

Quiet and thoughtful, J. Damron, 35, is as dedicated to teaching and exploring academic discourse as he is to his own artistic pursuits. A Verdi, Nevada, native, Damron earned his undergraduate degree in studio art at University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) and then earned his MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI).

Damron's artistic interests were firmly established at UNR, where he "created sculptural installations," he says, "and played with performance art. I was interested in objects and images that were working together in a space in a collective way." SFAI provided Damron further opportunity to investigate performance and installation art. It was here that he also began to weave his interest in language into his art, using text in his works. He also began to write critically about art, feeding intellectual passions that appear as strong as his need to create.

Upon returning to the Reno area, Damron taught at-risk youth through the Sierra Arts program and, five years ago, began teaching at Sierra Nevada College. He instructs everything from experimental film and video art to photography to world art. "I'm interested in how I might be able to facilitate students into becoming more critical thinkers," he says, "having stronger, more informed opinions about themselves and their place in the world."

Damron's artistic pursuits are as much about ideas as they are about creating something aesthetically compelling. "I'm coming from a place between ritual and play," he explains. "Over the years I've created work that asks questions like, 'What culture is that from? Who does that belong to?' Yet if the work is just a strange poetic presence, that's fine with me." One of Damron's most recent pieces is a beautiful slab table with finely sculpted handles on either end. It gives the appearance of being functional, but what purpose do the handles serve?

Over the past several years, Damron has spent most of his creative efforts working with the d3ms collaborative and in two-man collaborations with Russell Dudley. His work will also be included in the group exhibition at Stremmel Gallery next fall.

Mary Kenny

"When I was nine years old I knew I wanted to be an artist," recalls Mary Kenny, 32. "I remember sitting down and drawing a profile of Princess Diana. That day, I told my mom: This is what I want to do." Kenny has pursued art education ever since, even though, she says with a laugh, "My parents wanted me to be a business major."

For her undergraduate degree, Kenny attended Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. It was there, in her first printmaking class, that Kenny discovered the medium that would become her creative focus. "It's very methodical," she says about printmaking. "I love the technical aspects of it. In printmaking you have so many options, so many possibilities."

Kenny earned her MFA in printmaking at Kent State, Ohio, and was then hired, three years ago, to teach printing and drawing at Sierra Nevada. "I love it when the students see their progress," says Kenny. "That's what I like about teaching."

Kenny continually attends printmaking workshops to hone her skills and expand her printing repertoire. "Printmaking is such an old art; there's so much to learn," she says.

The form of printmaking Kenny most often employs is collograph. In terms of subject, Kenny reveals, "I like the idea of found printed material. I get most of my images from children's books, science books and experiment books from the '50s to the '70s."

Many of Kenny's works combine images in unexpected ways. "I find images I like," she says, "and I take them out of their environment and plunk them into another, in some cases sinister, environment or something that people have to think about, or I hope they think about."

Kenny currently sticks to the four basic colors employed in commercial printing: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. In one work called "Reward," she combines the image of a boy whose mouth has been erased out ("I like giving people no mouth," says Kenny, "or covering their eyes") with that of a rat; the youth and varmint are connected by a series of wires attached to caps on their heads. "It's about communication," she explains, "or really lack of communication. I think of that a lot. And mice and mazes, how we go through the maze of everyday life to get things."

In much of her other work, Kenny says she incorporates "multiples. I especially like to use the same images facing each other and images printed on top of each other." To further emphasize repetition, Kenny often employs stamping. The resulting works are at once harmonic and unsettling.

"I play," says Kenny. "I just like how printmaking works. Prints are established in layers and that's exactly how I think. My prints often hang out for a while, then I'll go back and look at them and finish them."

Having prolifically created work over the past several years, Kenny is now focusing her energy on exhibiting work. Most recently, she was included in the group exhibition "Remote Viewing 2," which was held over a weekend this summer at a temporary location in Tahoe City.