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 August-September series in 2024, participating artists are geo, James Gayles, and Nicolas Blauth.
AUGUST – SEPTEMBER 2024 ARTISTS + WORKS
Location #1: 2nd Street at Keystone Avenue
Artist: geo
Artwork: Autorretrato (Saturno Devorando un Burrito), digital photograph, 2020
Website | Instagram
Bio: geo (he/they) is a Chicano/e artist living in Las Vegas who works with design, muralism, installation, performance, and Culture. He currently attends UNLV for a BFA in sculpture and drawing/painting/printmaking. In 2023, geo co-curated a traveling show with Cesar Piedra at the Holland Project in Reno and Nuwu Art Gallery in Vegas titled Hija/e/o/x(s) de Su—. He has participated in multiple group exhibitions, most notably FUTURE RELICS: Artifacts for a New World and the 2021 Bullfrog Biennial. geo also illustrated The ABCs of Latinidad Coloring Book for Latinos Who Lunch, designed and painted Tres Fases and Nuestras Máscaras murals.
Statement: Autorretrato (Saturno Devorando un Burrito) is my reinterpretation of Francisco Goya’s Saturno devorando a su hijo and part of a larger ongoing series of self-portraits that act as explorations of myself. This picture was taken fully in the nude and was a challenge to my vulnerability. Goya’s original work depicts emotions of rage, lust, craze, and insatiability; a lot of the same emotions I feel when I eat giant burritos. The depicted burrito was bought from one of my favorite places in Las Vegas, Las Famosas de Jose.
Location #2: Oddie Boulevard & Silverada Boulevard
Artist: James Gayles
Artwork: The Young Jazz Guitarist, 2017, watercolor painting on paper
Website | Instagram
Bio: James Gayles is an Emmy Award-winning graphic designer and artist who specializes in watercolor portraits. James attended Pratt Institute in New York, where he studied under renowned painters Jacob Lawrence and super realist Audrey Flack. He’s won public art commissions from cities across the US and Asia. He is committed to cultivating artists and sharing his work.
As a commercial artist early in his career, he established himself in New York as a Graphic Designer and illustrator, becoming Assistant Director of Graphics at NewsCenter 4, NBC-TV. At NBC, he won a television Emmy Award for design and illustration. James is also a two-time winner of Art Direction Magazine’s Creativity Award, one for the NewsCenter 4 logo redesign, and the other for an editorial illustration for the New York Times. James has illustrated for McGraw-Hill, Random House, Essence Magazine, Black Enterprise Magazine, as well as several advertising agencies on both the East and West coasts.
Location #3: Virginia Street & Taylor Street
Artist: Nicolas Blauth
Artwork: Reflections of a Broken Mirror, mixed media collage, 2023
Instagram
Bio: Nicolas Blauth is a skateboarder, musician, and mixed media artist born in Reno, Nevada, currently studying printmaking at UNR. With an interest in art and skateboarding since a young age, his work reflects upon and attempts to capture the outsider nature and emotion of Reno’s fringe communities and rapidly changing infrastructure.
Statement: Reflections of a Broken Mirror was created with collages of found discarded imagery, and ink transfers of photographs taken in Reno. The overlooked nature of these materials creates a dynamic documentation of Reno’s growth, a way to capture a single moment in the city’s ever-changing environment. Between the use of discarded materials and everyday subject manner for the transfers, I want to capture and explore this emotion in the moment as I experience it. Hopefully, this allow the viewer to see and understand their own experiences in their respective environments with a mindfulness of their own individuality and self-awareness.
