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Below, work by Jim McCormick (left) and Dan Kerr.
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960 e1 T n e G S c n - I of Art so ity t y t h ew i ve r s i s r a ive M Un 9. U n ay a t t t h e e p t . e S l h a p t: T is er gh Ou on d Cent throu r Fa 75 is dge no, 1 9 ow l e , Re Kn vada Ne
JULY 19, 2012
FAR OUT , ON DISPLAY NOW AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, RENO, SHOWCASES ART MADE AT THE UNIVERSITY IN THE 1960S AND ’70S.
ALT MCNAMARA
is shuffling around with a level and a focused expression in an upstairs hallway at Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center at the University of Nevada, Reno. “As a sculptor, I always feel installing sculpture is similar to creating it,” he says. He’s one of a handful of people fussing over canvas placement and glass exhibition cases and other final details of an art exhibit. McNamara’s piece in the show is an abstract wooden sculpture, upright enough to hint at looking like a human figure. It has no face, but it does have a smooth, slightly curved, playfully exaggerated appendage that seems like a tongue hanging down to what would be knee level if the sculpture had legs. Anyone who knows Nevada art, even a little, could identify its blocky curves and rustic/urban sensibility as classically McNamara from 50 feet away. And it’s easy to see how this sculpture probably precedes by a few decades the sculptor’s sleeker, more assertively
tooled works. Same with McNamara himself—since the 1950s, when he was a student at UNR, (then just “UN”), his beard has gone from hipster length to shorter and whiter, and his gait, still spritely, reveals that he’s in his early 70s, but he’s still quick-witted and earnest and looks a lot like he did then. Just like the exhibit he’s hanging suggests, some things change, and some things don’t. McNamara is co-curator, along with fellow long-time artist Jim McCormack, of Far Out: The University Art Scene 19601975. It’s a collection of works by 28 artists from the ’60s and ’70s, including a few pieces all the way into the ’80s. It was conceived as a follow-up to last year’s Post-War Bohemians exhibit, which featured artwork from the university from 1945-65.
CH-CH-CHANGES Co-curator Jim McCormick has long been known as a collage artist and retired professor. Back in the ’60s, he too was a student at UNR, where he made, large, pastel-leaning abstract expressionist paintings.
Recently, he reminisced about the changes the art department underwent in the early 1960s. Reporting from his couch, where he was taking a mid-day rest, McCormick remembered, “The day we walked into the Church Fine Arts Building, it was already crowded.” That’s the building facing Virginia Street that still houses the art department. “Prior to 1960, the entire art department had been housed in four dilapidated Quonset huts tucked away in a corner of the University of Nevada campus called Skunk Hollow,” wrote McCormick in a detailed exhibit catalog he penned, which is available at the exhibit. He said later by phone, “Reno in 1960 was 15 years past World War II, and the population started to explode at that point. People were moving in. A lot of kids came in from ranches, and there was a rapid increase in faculty size. It had been more rural before then.” The university commissioned Viennaborn, Los Angeles-based Frank Lloyd Wright protégé Richard Neutra to design the Church Fine Art Building, which opened in 1960. When McCormack says the building was crowded, he’s not exaggerating. As Edw Martinez, then a student, now a revered ceramic artist and retired professor, put it, “I used both the men’s and women’s restrooms as photo darkrooms.” The artwork students and faculty members made then more-or-less mirrored what was going on nationally and internationally, as McNamara recalls it.
