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 March series in 2024, participating artists are Luke Rizzotto, J. Charboneau, and [NO]BODY.
MARCH 2024 ARTISTS + WORKS
Location #1: S McCarran & E Glendale
Artist: Luke Rizzotto
Artwork: Upcoming Forecasts, Digital Collage and 3D Render, 2024
Website | Instagram
Bio:Luke Rizzotto is a digital media artist whose work examines memory, nostalgia, and yearning as it relates to place and travel through the creation of unreal landscapes and liminal spaces. Originally from the New Orleans, Louisiana area, he currently resides and works in Reno, Nevada. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and he is currently a Master of Fine Arts Candidate and Instructor at the University of Nevada, Reno, graduating in the spring of 2024. His recent exhibitions include regional showings at the Holland Project in Reno, NV, The Desert Biennial Project at the Jean Dry Lake Bed, NV, and Studio 540 in Cedarville, CA, as well as national outings at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS and BFree Studio in La Jolla, CA. He has been honored as an Artist-in-Residence with the Friends of Black Rock-High Rock as well as awarded the Outstanding Graduate Student Artist at the University of Nevada, Reno, among other honors. Professionally, he works as an Instructor at the University of Nevada, Reno, Curator at the Depot Gallery in Sparks, and picks up freelance work as an animator and designer, as well as volunteers at the Holland Project.
Statement:Through travel, one enters a state of transience – vulnerability, both physically and emotionally, as one goes from one place of safety to another. This feeling of liminality is pronounced when looking out at the land while traveling, and especially while driving – watching the landscape slowly morph and change over time, becoming something else. Witnessing this can remind the viewer that, much like the human body, even the massive landforms we see, no matter how impressive and grand, were formed through natural processes and will eventually erode to nothing again. The process of experiencing these emotions are not just similar to travel, but also to yearning. The yearning for something else is, to many, what drives the desire to explore and experience something new – whether that’s far-off physical spaces, nonexistent memories, or utopian tomorrows. My digital realms are an analog for this dissonance as it greets the yearning for exploration with ephemeral interaction. From here, the viewer can attempt to make sense of the fantastical forms in front of them, not unlike a dream.
Location #2: Oddie & Silverada
Artist:J. Charboneau
Artwork: MEMORANDUM #4, ink and charcoal on stonehenge paper, 2023
Website | Instagram
Statement: My art should be as malleable as the world we live in. It should not be stagnant. It should possess life and inspire the looker to Give and take life from it.” Inspired by travel and exploration of new places and social environments my work typically reflects subtle observations of people, landscapes, and social dialog. What begin as simple pen sketches and captured moments in prose, later become refined gestural abstractions of form and movement. These ‘Visual Philosophies’ enlighten the eye with bold chaotic brushstrokes while an intentional vagueness of form and space allows the subjective experience to be relative to all. With poetic context introduced in haiku and prose form my artworks have entangled the world of the literary and visual. Some muses that influence my artwork are: impressionism. expressionism. street art. nature. philosophy. jazz. haiku & prose poetry. and people watching social anthropology. I am a visual philosopher who is out to absorb all that this life has to show… then spit it out onto canvas and paper as chaotically and yet beautifully as it was first observed.
Location #3: 4th at I-580, Casale’s Halfway Club
Artist:B̶O̶D̶Y̶ [pronounced “NOBODY”; at times represented as [NO]BODY or CROSSBODY]
Artwork: A prompt for future use (no title); The work in question was constructed as a prompt for the upcoming special issue of @[at]ODDS: an experimental, freeform, underground, political, outside arts publication, thus far only existing in physical print., Multimodal quantum assemblage, 2024
Bio:What B̶O̶D̶Y̶ lacks in established biography they make up in resourcefulness. What little we do know: B̶O̶D̶Y̶ is an *outside* artist — outsider than one might care to admit, and has been described by acquaintances as “sociopolitically recalcitrant”. They employ only found + reused materials towards a practice of economic offdropping. Because B̶O̶D̶Y̶ is or isn’t who they claim to be, there is not much else to say on the matter.