The Arts

Literature of Nuclear Nevada

The story of nuclear Nevada can be divided into two categories, reflecting the reality that Nevada has endured two nuclear ages. Artistic responses to these events constitute the literature of nuclear Nevada.

Vernacular Architecture in Nevada

Vernacular architecture is a term encompassing a range of building forms, types, and styles. In the past, the term referred to folk or traditional building by people with no formal architectural training. Today, scholars define the term more broadly to include the architecture of specific regions or popular, ordinary buildings, such as shopping malls, even if designed by trained architects. Vernacular architecture can also refer to an approach to architectural studies that examines the relationships between everyday life and people.

Literary Magazines in Nevada

A state caught in a population boom, Nevada has experienced something of an arts explosion in the period since 1995. Indeed, the growing number of residents has created a diverse community and contributed greatly to the development of cultural activities that at one time appeared relegated to states beyond Nevada's borders. One such activity includes the emergence of dynamic literary arts communities, both in the northern and the southern parts of the state.

Linda Hussa

Linda Hussa was born in 1941 in Nevada, but she came to womanhood in the relatively lush hills of Northern California, "at the base of the Diablo Meridian, a point from which California and Nevada are surveyed, mapped, locked into certainty." As a girl growing up surrounded by horses, she would ride to the top of Mount Diablo, and with her telescope look east, toward the desert of Nevada, a land of mirage. This desert drew her back eventually, and it is from the desert that she writes.

Linda Howe Hale

The life of Linda Howe Hale ended in tragedy on March 2, 1981—a single engine, commuter aircraft crashed near Fallon, Nevada, taking the life of its pilot and Hale, a well-known Reno artist and writer. Hale's career had many dimensions. She was an award-winning exhibitor and administrator in galleries around northern Nevada and the author-illustrator of a respected children's book. 

Virginia City and Early Nevada Mining

Virginia City and the Comstock Lode played a crucial role in the development of the region and the nation. The news of its importance has reverberated throughout the world for nearly 150 years. The wealth of the Comstock's fabulously rich mines affected presidential politics and gave Nevada international fame. Immigrants arrived from every continent, attracted by legendary amounts of gold and silver, which poured into the economy during the crisis of the Civil War.

Lilly Sanchez

Lilly V. Sanchez was born in Duckwater, Nevada, in 1923 and was raised in a traditional Native American, Western Shoshone family, helping her mother and grandmother gather willows for baskets. After her children were grown, Sanchez reawakened the basket making skills she learned as a child. For more than thirty years she has been creating beautiful cradleboards, winnowing trays, cone baskets, and other traditional forms in willow.

Virginia McCuin

Virginia McCuin grew up on a ranch in Railroad Valley, Nevada, and gained an early appreciation for practical crafts while watching her father work as a blacksmith. Her own work started with leather tooling, but soon moved to gold and silver smithing. McCuin is mostly self-taught, and she has created a unique three-dimensional style that she uses in belt buckles and pendants.

Lew Hymers

Seen About Town was Lew Hymers' (1892-1953) popular feature in the Nevada State Journal through the 1930s and 40s. The artist's specialty was swiftly rendered caricatures of Reno's movers and shakers. For many years Hymers maintained a studio in downtown Reno where he met the majority of the city's commercial art needs.

Leaving Las Vegas

Leaving Las Vegas (1995) is a much-honored film about the brief bonding of a prostitute and a suicidal alcoholic planning to leave Las Vegas—and life—by drinking himself to death.

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