The Holland Project’s Billboard Gallery showcases the work of exceptional emerging and established regional artists on billboards throughout Reno-Sparks. Three new artists are installed every four weeks. For our first series in 2024, participating artists are Rossitza Todorova, Eunkang Koh, and Eva Shipley.
FEBRUARY 2024 ARTISTS + WORKS
Location #1: 2nd St and Kirman Ave (across from Renown)
Artist: Rossitza Todorova Artwork: Tufa Tower, Winnemucca Lake, oil on linen, 2023 Website | Instagram
Bio: Rossitza Todorova is a professional artist and a Professor of Art at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada. Todorova holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, School of Art at Arizona State University, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Nevada, Reno. Todorova’s artwork has been featured in exhibitions nationally and internationally and can be found in the permanent collections of various institutions, including the Nevada Museum of Art, the John and Geraldine Lilley Museum of Art, the Tucson Museum of Art, the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson, the Arizona State University Art Museum and the Museum of Painting and Sculpture in Istanbul, Turkey.
As a child, Todorova emigrated from Sofia, Bulgaria, to the Western United States, where her passion for the desert was ignited. Her art delves into the concepts of time and transformation, investigating how the perception of the passage of time, space, and memory intersect. Drawing on the influence of the Great Basin and the West’s boom-and-bust built environment, Todorova’s work often uses landscape and geometry, occupying a space between representation and abstraction as she strives to create visual movement.
Statement: In the painting Tufa Tower, Winnemucca Lake, I depict tufa rock formations shaped by ancient seas. They are a representation of geological time as they were formed by the waters of the Great Basin, which have long since receded. The towers have endured for countless ages, surpassing humanity’s existence. Yet, on the tufa rocks of Winnemucca Lake lies a profound testament to human creativity—the oldest petroglyphs in North America, crafted by artists over 14,800 to 10,500 years ago. Walking in the footsteps of these ancient people, I feel a deep connection with them, sharing a desire to create and portray what is meaningful and beautiful. While we are a mere reflection of the Earth, transient beings drifting through its magnificent landscape, these ancient people left behind a mark that helps us remember to take in the ephemeral splendor of each fleeting moment.
The series “Learning to be Lost” is an introspective journey that embraces the vastness of the desert landscape as a metaphor for navigating life’s uncertainties. Drawing inspiration from the desert’s survival strategies and illusory mirages, I seek to evoke a visceral experience of being lost, ultimately finding solace in the shared human pursuit of navigating uncertainty.
Location #2: Kietzke Ln & Mill St
Artist: Eva Shipley Artwork: Involved, oil on panel, 2024 Instagram
Bio: Eva Shipley is an artist based in Reno, Nevada, who primarily works with oil paint. Shipley is currently working towards a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Reno, Nevada, and has been featured several times in the university’s art and literary magazine, “Brushfire.” Shipley is currently creating a body of work that focuses on her own interactions with textiles, and their influence on her life.
Statement: Eva Shipley is a painter and fiber artist who likes taking things apart and putting them back together. She works mainly with oil paint to create paintings that exist in both two-dimensional space and three-dimensional space, exploring the relationship that images and objects have with each other. Shipley also spends time experimenting with art forms traditionally viewed as “craft,” like quilting, beading, mosaic, and embroidery, and incorporates them into her work. Shipley considers the finished products of these methods to be “paintings.” Mostly, she likes to take small things, like brush strokes, beads, quilt squares, and mosaic tiles, and puzzle-piece them together into a larger image. Shipley is influenced by the history of women in fiber art, contemporary fiber art, and the Pattern and Decoration movement.
Location #3: Kietzke Ln & Gentry Wy
Artist: Eunkang Koh Artwork: A Bevy of Quail, relief, 2023 Website | Instagram
Bio: Eunkang Koh received her B.F.A. from Hong-Ik University in Seoul, South Korea and M.F.A. from California State University, Long Beach, California. Koh sees within our contemporary society a new illusion created by a systemic world since the invention of the internet and social media. She works in various media- printmaking, bookart, drawing, painting and installation to address human desires.
Koh has shown her devotion to art and the art making process. She has had significant solo exhibitions that include Main Gallery, The Society of Northern Alberta Print-Artists in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; and La Taller in Bilbao, Spain. She also has participated national and international group exhibitions such as Centro Civico Pati Limona in Barcelona, Spain; Art Space Jungmiso in Seoul, South Korea; Mei Lun Gallery at Huan Fine Art Institute in Changsha, China; and Central Booking in New York City, New York. Koh has been invited to artist-in-residencies including Seacourt, Bangor, Northern Ireland, Frans Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee, Belgium; Gualan Original Printmaking Base in Shenzhen, China; Chhaap Printmaking Studio in Baroda, India and Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California. Koh is Associate Professor in printmaking in the Art Department at the University of Nevada Reno.
Statement: In my artwork, I draw from the human circumstances that flourish between reality and perception. Born and raised in the Korean myth culture and adopting Buddhist philosophy, I assume that the world we are living in is not real but is an illusion that we perceive. I doubt that there is anything like truth in a concrete sense. I aim to create my own illusion in my art. My images are my way of seeing the world without pretense.
I always use mixed animal and human figures in my work. Those hybrid creatures represent the portrait of us, human as social animals and the society that we live in. They portray the society that we are living in through the creation of creature hybrids, which express the absurdity of the human world. They portray ironic gestures that create a mixture of humor and grotesqueness, reflecting life in our society. The creatures are symbolic of those humans who are dimwitted and un-knowing, or who choose not to see anything beyond the ‘Illusion’ that they are taught.
My recent work is responding to lifestyles and thinking processes that are often ruled by consumerism. I see about our contemporary society as new illusion that created by systemic world since the invention of internet and social media. Through the internet and social media, human lives are controlled and monitored and this new system that controls us consistently promotes consumerism as they get information from watching and monitoring us. Trying to fit into this consumer culture makes individuals loses the sense of their own identities and personalities while we follow and being followed. My creatures are a portrait of us, human who reside in this illusionary world that is created by the system we created ourselves.
To show the mass consumer culture where humans live in today’s contemporary society, my medium varies in different types of prints incorporating other media such as relief, intaglio, screen printing, as well as digital process, and new technology like laser cutter and 3D printer and combine them with sewing, ceramics, book binding etc. I also experiment with human-made materials such as plastic boxes, vinyl sheets, and paper bags, products that symbolize our micromanaged and controlled society through my project.