The Arts

Waddie Mitchell

Waddie Mitchell has become an icon of Nevada, of buckaroo culture (cowboys of the Great Basin), and of cowboy poetry. Born in 1950 on a ranch in Elko County, he grew up to be a working cowboy. After the popularity of the first Cowboy Poetry Gathering in 1985—of which he was one of the founders—he realized the impact he had on audiences. He also saw that making day wages as a cowboy, he would never buy the ranch he dreamed of owning. So Mitchell became a professional cowboy poet and entertainer with worldwide tours, logging over 200 days on the road in 2006.

Walter Sully Long

Walter Sully Long (1842-1907) arrived in Eureka, Nevada in October of 1878, and found employment as a civil engineer in the mining districts of central Nevada. In addition to work as a surveyor, and, in his spare time, Long filled several postcard-sized sketchbooks with watercolors that featured not only mining activities, but also street scenes around Eureka and other camps.

Walter Van Tilburg Clark

Walter Van Tilburg Clark is considered one of the most distinguished Nevada writers of the twentieth century. An author, poet, lecturer, and teacher, Clark's interpretations of the American West are his greatest legacy.

Washoe Basket Weavers

The people of the Washoe tribe of Nevada and California have long practiced the art of weaving. Both men and women created the tools and products necessary to make a living in a land that required seasonal movements. Heavy pottery or bulky wooden items were not suited to this environment nor to the mobile lifestyle of the indigenous people.

Washoe County Courthouse

Established in 1861, Washoe County's original seat of government was in Washoe City, the location of its first courthouse. In 1871, the county government transferred to Reno where the commissioners built a simple brick Italianate courthouse. Shortly after the move, a contractor demolished the Washoe City courthouse for the brick.

Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival

The Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival brings the Bard's words and ideas to life against the backdrop of Lake Tahoe's shores. Drawing more than 30,000 people to Sand Harbor each July and August, the festival presents classic Shakespeare works as well as contemporary works and musical performances.

Kirk Robertson

Kirk Robertson is a poet, essayist, publisher, editor, and artist. Robertson was born in 1946 in Los Angeles and moved around the West before settling in Fallon in 1975, where he has resided ever since. Before leaving California, he studied with the well-known California poet Gerald Locklin at California State University, Long Beach. His poetry has roots in both the "plainspoken" tradition of Locklin and his close friend Charles Bukowski, as well as in the more formal and minimal style of Robert Creeley.

John Ross Browne

During two brief Nevada sojourns, John Ross Browne, traveler, author, and artist, created an invaluable portrait of the territory's early development. He was born near Dublin, Ireland, in 1821, where his father edited a nationalist paper, inspiring British authorities to imprison him. They exiled the elder Browne and his family to America in 1833.

John Battenberg

John Battenberg designed Creatures of Nevada, a complex, multi-part set of sculptures and fountain heads for the first block of the Truckee River Walk, at the southwest corner of Virginia Street and the Truckee River in Reno. Retired in 1985 as a professor of art from San Jose State University, San Jose, California, Battenberg moved his studio to Scottsdale, Arizona, in the early twenty-first century.

Joanne de Longchamps, Artist

Joanne de Longchamps (1923-1983) was a vital force in both the literary and visual arts of Reno, Nevada from 1941 until her death in 1983. De Longchamps' complex collages represented a desire to explore—visually—subjects that had informed her poetry, notably warm-and cold-blooded creatures and motifs from classical Greek history.

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