The Holland Project’s Billboard Gallery showcases the work of exceptional emerging and established regional artists on billboards throughout Reno’s surface streets. Three new artists are installed every four weeks starting in January 2022. The January artists that kicked off the series included Jesse Lopez, Kristin Hough, and Samantha Buchanan.
JANUARY 2022 ARTISTS + WORKS
#1 Location: Mill St. & Redwood Pl.
Artist: Jesse Lopez
Artwork: Stargaze, 35mm, 2018
Portfolio / Instagram
Bio: I am a 20-year-old artist from Reno, Nevada. I focus on both photography and drawing/painting. Photographic genres include journalism, concert, street, and fine art; and are done in both film and digital mediums. Drawings and paintings are done in a wide variety of mediums from pencil to oil paint and would be categorized as abstract and expressionist through colors, shapes, symbolism, and even text. I have been mostly self-taught in photography for the past 6 years and have been drawing for as long as I can remember. My goal in art is to find the things that represent the human experience, in a way that is parallel to everyone no matter the beliefs, origin, or class.
#2 Location: Wells Ave. & Pueblo St.
Artist: Kristin Hough
Artwork: HOT! l o o s e $tinkin’ WICKED wild P O W E R, acrylic and gouache on paper, 2021
Website / Instagram
Bio: Kristin Hough is an artist, educator, and curator based in Reno, Nevada. Rooted in painting, her work explores the mining of base human emotions in search of profit. Like: reality television, self-help gospel, nature tourism, and slot machines.
She graduated with a BA from Wesleyan University and an MFA from the University of California, Davis. In 2018 she co-founded an artist-run project space, Outback Arthouse, and has curated exhibitions throughout the western United States. She’s exhibited and published nationally and is currently teaching drawing and design at the University of Nevada, Reno, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
#3 Location: Keystone Ave. & 2nd St.
Artist: Samantha Buchanan
Artwork: Modular Visions, acrylic on hand-cut perforated materials, 2021
Website / Instagram
Bio: Samantha Buchanan is an artist and educator currently enjoying the higher altitudes of Reno, Nevada. Her work, composed of layers of mesh and other semi-transparent perforated materials, addresses the inherent subjectivity of perception with an emphasis on the experiential elements of color, light, and space.
Statement: My work is born from a strong interest in sensory systems, more specifically, the perceptual qualities of light and color. As a means of exploring these two visual elements, I often incorporate materials that are highly sensitive to ambient situations, such as screens, mesh, and other perforated textiles. This is in part due to a screen’s unique ability to be either an opaque or transparent medium depending on variations in the environmental context. For example, shifts in a person’s angle of view, changes in light from the time of day, or movement caused by airflow, all render the viewing experience differently. The addition of color increases this effect, and so by combining layers of colored screens, I encourage light, color, and space to transform and mutate. In this sense, there is an endless possibility of potential interactions with the work. Such a multifaceted viewing experience highlights not only the inherent subjectivity of perception, and all the uncertainty that this entails, but also the pleasure that can be derived from tenuous and ephemeral relations with light and color.