On View- June 15, 2024 – August 1, 2024

Art Bar | Reception: June 21, 2024 5-7:30pm

Show title:

Yonder: A Saunter Through Skyways and Rumble Strips

Artist: Chelsea Houston

Artist website: chelseahouston.com

Artist Statement:

Looking skyward, what is reflected back? What has each sky seen? Skies are a holding pattern of reverie, meant for all . Each skyward spectacle is as unique as the day it cradles, never to be experienced again, but all the while familiar: the sky of my ancestors, the sky of yours; gratitude and comfort of smallness beneath such heavenly bodies, open space, the wild blue yonder. These are the themes I held close in creating this oeuvre.

Before you is a personal map of Reno, Fort Churchill, Fallon, Virginia City, and onward – our region’s electric sunrises, operatic sunsets, and cloud symphonies in between. I incorporated land coordinates to honor the exact space I happened to find myself looking up. I captured each expanse through varied sizes – intimate and vast – to explore my own spatial relationship with the sky (open space vs. window views) and to push my comfort with scale. I rendered each scene as I experienced it – the feelings translated to offbeat hues.

Utilizing oil as a means of patience and meditation keeps tempo with these phenomena, a method of classical rendering, and challenge to my process (which often borders feverish). Delicate wire and twinkling rhinestones tip their hats to Nevada in all its industrialized and glittering glory. Layering these materials in conjunction with light induces dimension– the play of shadow and sparkle having an impact on our environment.

This project has fostered intention and beckoned memories of moves by car and road trips. (Hope gliding on highways, clouds and rays by my side.) I have lived in Nevada off and on for 25 years now; countless land coordinates marking past and present. While I see what I saw years ago, each sky (though the same) acts as a nest of memories and imagination. Skies were and continue to be a safe space for me. Influences from the masters: Georgia O’Keeffe and Maynard Dixon, as well as contemporary artist, Tyana Arviso, all feed my curiosity and wonder with our High Desert land and its ever-dazzling skyscapes.

While land can be bought, sold, and stolen, clouds and skies belong to all who remember to look up.

I close my eyes to see and I open them to: understand.

I close my eyes to see and I open them to: remember.

I close my eyes to see and I open them to: forgive.

I close my eyes to see and I open them to: hope.