DISTILL LIFE
Not everyone’s cut out for art museums, galleries, and festivals. It’s easy to feel out of place, hushed, or pressured at such venues. I know I’ve walked the booths of many an art show, sometimes afraid to linger too long or the artist would start in on his or her sales pitch. What if art could be more democratic, more public, and less about money? What if Tahoe City’s public art included more than just the fish sculpture at the wye and the Big Tree commemorative carving?
So thought Jane Jenny, a Carnelian Bay/Malibu resident and artist who sits on the North Tahoe Arts board. I first heard about Jenny and her art project through the Tahoe City Downtown Association, which is working hard to bring new and exciting events to town. Called ‘Detours: Tahoe City,’ the site-specific art installation includes the work of 14 California artists. Essentially a self-guided walking tour, the exhibit will span the length of downtown, allowing visitors to stumble upon the installations and/or complete the whole tour at their own leisure.
‘It creates another level of interaction with town besides shopping, and beer,’ said Jenny, who recently hosted three Detours artists — Karen Atkinson, Nancy Ganucheau, and Bernard Brunon, all from Los Angeles — and me on her lakefront’s sunny deck. ‘It’s educational.’
And diverse. When the exhibit opens on Aug. 5, we’ll be able to fly custom-created kites off Commons Beach, to leaf through the local newspapers and find artistic inserts on handmade paper, to take an ‘unreliable historic tour,’ and to look at the town’s vistas and landmarks in new ways. The artists, who in addition to Jenny include locals Niobe Burden and Sally Osborn of Tahoe City and Carole Sesko and Eve Werner of Truckee, each selected a site that resonated with them, and then specifically created art for that place. Ganucheau, an architect by profession, felt a connection with the meandering path leading from Heritage Plaza to Commons Beach. She’s creating four fabric scrims with cutouts to frame iconic lake views.
‘I’m creating a conversation with the viewer,’ Ganucheau said. ‘There are so many distractions in town; this puts focus back on nature . . . It creates depth of experience in a place.’
With all the Detours artwork existing in such a vibrant, living space, surroundings are forefront, not eliminated like in a traditional gallery. ‘It’s outside of the white cube, and therefore context becomes important and influences the content of the works,’ said Atkinson, who designed the first Detours exhibit in Santa Monica in 1994. Tahoe City marks the fifth Detours event.
I just love the concept. It fully fosters creativity and the fun in art. And Jenny and her crew are jumping outside the box in virtually every step of the project, including fundraising and promoting. The exhibit received its funding from a 30-day Kickstarter campaign, which through online crowdsourcing raised just over $13,000. Advertising will come from Atkinson’s installation, a series of printed placemats, which will be on tables at area restaurants spreading the word and sparking dialogue on the exhibit. Nothing is for sale, and there’s no exhibit fee. Detours exists purely for our enjoyment for two whole months. So get out there and enjoy it!
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