ART & CULTURE

From California’s Gold Country in the west to the High Sierra in the east, Nevada County is also home to the Nisenan Tribe, one of the most endangered in the state, as well as the ancestral homelands of the Washoe. These histories, and the stories of the many cultures that continue to contribute to this place we call home, are a vital part of our daily life.

Today, Nevada County is a haven for art buyers in the Sierra Nevada foothills and Truckee-Tahoe region, and home to some of the best talent in California. The historic twin cities of Grass Valley and Nevada City merge in the Sierra Foothills amidst pristine rivers and picturesque forests, boasting outstanding year-round programming in music, theatre, and dance; a density of artists and makers; a festival culture to die for, and over a hundred arts-related organizations producing upwards of a thousand events a year, including street fairs, art walks and studio tours.

Meanwhile, amidst state and national forests at 7,000 feet, Truckee Cultural District is a stone’s throw from Lake Tahoe and the beautiful Donner Lake. Steeped in emigrant history it is a gateway site of the ill-fated Donner Party, and dotted with stunning interpretive trails, museums, and monuments. Following the Truckee River as it meets America’s first transcontinental railroad, Truckee is home to its famous Railyard Project and Truckee Artist Lofts, themselves symbolic of a quintessentially modern mountain town. Here, adventure and the outdoor life meet public art, galleries, live music venues, and artisan places to eat, drink and stay.

Western Nevada County Arts Events

JANUARY

Visibility Through Art Exhibition ~ Perspectives on Erasure ~

‘UBA SEO Gallery, 225 Broad Street, Nevada City

January 19th - March 5th

Frank Francis & Terence D. Baxter Art Exhibition

Markings along the Pathways of the Yuba Watershed

The Center for the Arts, January 20th - March 4th

FEBRUARY

Second Saturday Spotlight

Art Works Gallery, February 11th

Wild & Scenic Film Festival

Nevada City, February 16th -20th

Multiple Locations

Mardi Gras Parade & Street Faire

Nevada City, February 19th

MARCH

Second Saturday Spotlight

Art Works Gallery, March 11th

Visions in Monochrome – Members of the Nevada County Camera Club, March 10th - April 15th

APRIL

Second Saturday Spotlight

Art Works Gallery, April 8

The Union Home, Garden & Lifestyle Show

Nevada County Fairgrounds, April 22nd-23rd

New Songs Fest

The Center For the Arts, April 27th-30th

MAY

Second Saturday Spotlight

Art Works Gallery, May 13th

Grass Valley Armed Forces Day

Downtown Grass Valley, May 20th

Strawberry Music Festival

Nevada County Fairgrounds, May 25th-28th

JUNE

First Friday Art Walk

Nevada City, June 2nd

Second Saturday Spotlight

Art Works Gallery, June 10th

Grass Valley Thursday Night Market

Downtown Grass Valley

Thursdays, June 8th, 15th & 22nd

Father’s Day Bluegrass Festival

Nevada County Fairgrounds, June 16th-19th

SummerFest

The Center For the Arts, June 18th - July 9th

Movies Under the Pines

Pioneer Park, Nevada City, June 23rd

Nevada City Film Festival

June 23rd-25th

JULY

First Friday Art Walk

Nevada City, July 7th

4th of July Parade and Independence Day Celebration

Grass Valley, July 4th

Truckee Art Events

First Fridays

Every First Friday of the Month

Downtown Truckee

Truckee Thursdays

Dates TBD

7th Annual Maker Show

June 11th

Truckee Roundhouse, 12116 Chandelle Way, Truckee

The Great Truckee Artisans Fair

June 1st & 2nd

Truckee River Regional Park, Truckee, CA

Fall Into Art Festival

Art & Soul Artwalk

October

Downtown Truckee Wine, Walk & Shop

Nevada City Summer Nights

Downtown Nevada City, July 12th, 19th & 26th

Second Saturday Spotlight

Art Works Gallery, July 8th

California Worldfest

Nevada County Fairgrounds, July 13th-16th

Deer Creek Music Festival

Pioneer Park, Nevada City, Date TBD

Movies Under the Pines

Pioneer Park, Nevada City, July 7th & 21st

Local for Locals

Downtown Grass Valley, July 29th

AUGUST

First Friday Art Walk

Nevada City, August 4th

Second Saturday Spotlight

Art Works Gallery, August 12th

Jerry Bash at Pioneer Park

Nevada City, August TBD

Nevada County Fair

Nevada County Fairgrounds, August 9th-13th

SEPTEMBER

First Friday Art Walk

Nevada City, September 1st

Second Saturday Spotlight

Art Works Gallery, September 9th

Constitution Day Parade and Celebration

Nevada City, September 16th & 17th

Gem and Mineral Show

Nevada County Fairgrounds, September 7th & 8th

KVMR Celtic Festival

Nevada County Fairgrounds, September 30th

OCTOBER

KVMR Celtic Festival

Nevada County Fairgrounds, October 1st

Open Studios Tour

Multiple Locations, October TBD

Hangtown Music Festival

Nevada County Fairgrounds, October 19th-22nd

NOVEMBER

Cornish Christmas

Downtown Grass Valley, November 24th

Country Christmas Faire

Nevada County Fairgrounds, November 24th-26th

DECEMBER

Cornish Christmas

Downtown Grass Valley, December 1st, 8th, 15th & 22nd

Victorian Christmas

Downtown Nevada City

December 3rd, 6th, 10th, 13th & 17th

2023

Nevada County

Calendar of Events

The Chambers Project + Chambers Obscura A New Dimension in the Nevada County Art Scene

By Valerie Costa

Get ready for a new, mind-blowing immersive art experience right here in Grass Valley. Brian Chambers and his business partner Travis Threlkel, both internationally known legends in the psychedelic art and events scene, are working together on a cutting edge, next level multimedia art gallery in the Sierra foothills.

Combining Brian’s curation of psychedelic art from some of the best-known artists of the genre in the world, along with Travis’s innovative digital projection abilities, the gallery has the potential to draw visitors from around the world to a one-of-a-kind immersive art experience. Firstly with the mind-bending exhibitions of psychedelic art that are offered in The Chambers Project traditional art gallery side of the building, and on the other side of the gallery walls, a digital immersive art space where Travis is building a projection lab to feature a multimedia element for their new joint venture, Chambers Obscura. They will be hosting events that will blend the audio, visual, and immersive arts into a holistic experience that aims to take the participant to a new level of understanding of art, the world, and themselves.

Brian cut his teeth in the art world by commissioning notable psychedelic artists to collaborate on large paintings, often occurring at live events. Many gallery owners/curators in the field advised him not to do this, but it paid off in creating unusual collaborations that stimulate the deeper parts of the viewer’s subconscious understanding of what art is, and can be. Chambers Obscura is taking this approach of collaboration and merging it with modern technology, moving into the digital space which allows the art to do things beyond what artists could do within traditional mediums.

Here There Be Dragons

Adjacent to the “traditional” side of the gallery, which features a rotating selection of psychedelic art exhibitions from both well established and emerging artists, there will be the Chambers Obscura Projection Lab, an expansive area that will serve as a laboratory where Travis will develop and test the shows before touring them through cities around the world.

Brian and Travis have been developing their first experiential show titled “Dragon’s Dream - The Roger Dean Experience.” Roger Dean is most well known for creating the art for over 120 album covers, including many for the bands Yes and Asia, as well as the logos for Virgin records, and the Tetris video game. He is also the inventor of the bean bag, and is one of the pioneers and source artists for the utopian futurist movement. The Chambers Obscura team has been working on adapting some of Dean’s paintings into 360-degree living worlds. The original paintings are well-known and have influenced pop culture; James Cameron took a lot of his designs for Avatar from Dean’s work, including the flying islands, dragons, and other elements. This installation is enormous, and will travel for several years, going from city to city for three month runs starting in San Francisco, then to Los Angeles, Mexico City, Miami, New York, Chicago, Paris, Berlin, London, and possibly beyond. a lucrative business venture that has been an inspiring and successful project for all involved.

He feels fortunate to have met many artists that he has looked up to, and was thrilled to host one of his favorite artists, Mars1, at The Chambers Project when the gallery first launched. “The first time I saw a Mars-1 piece, that’s what really pulled me in. It blew me away. This is where my inspiration started. I met Mars in 2008, and his was the first psychedelic painting that I bought. He introduced me to a lot of other artists, which led to the formation of the Furtherrr Collective, which I commissioned many collaborative paintings from,” Brian elaborated.

Over the years while Brian had been working with painters on many collaborative projects and installations, he had always admired the work of Travis’s company Obscura Digital, and had been interested in working together. When they both ended up living in Grass Valley during the lockdowns, he finally had the opportunity to meet him. The two instantly connected over art and shared experiences, and the Chambers Obscura project was born.

About Travis

“The underlying mission is that the art immersion that we are creating is what Roger Dean wants; to create a utopian future that shows what worlds look like if we take care of them through sustainable living,” Travis explained. “He believes it’s all of our jobs to make the world more beautiful. There’s a blissful beauty to his work, and taking you to his worlds is part of the mission. We want people to walk out saying, “I want to live there, I want that to be our world.” There is an environmental, positive, hopeful energy to it. We want people to leave feeling elated and hopeful. There’s a big international art community, and we’re sending out our vision to it from here in Grass Valley.”

About Brian

Brian has been a collector of psychedelic art since his youth. It started in 1995 as a sophomore in high school, when his science teacher had an Alex Grey poster on the wall, and she told him that the artist was inspired by LSD. Brian had just read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the poster struck a chord in him. Throughout the years his collecting escalated from baseball cards and comic books, to posters and paintings. He then went on to commission and produce bronze sculptures and paintings from his favorite artists. By paying attention to all of the artists whose aesthetic resonates with him, Brian’s ability to curate unique talent has allowed him to turn his hobby into

Years ago, Travis had a revelation that all media is a series of rectangles; books, magazines, movie and TV screens, paintings…everything was in a box. He sought to expand that vision beyond rectangles to be an immersive experience by first creating light shows for his band in San Francisco, then collecting projectors (he has over 100 of them) and making them work together to create a new, engaging digital art medium, and created his business, Obscura Digital, doing just that. “I was creating immersive environments for myself with a bunch of rectangles. But I thought, that’s not right, we don’t live in rectangles, we live in worlds,” Travis explained.

Travis’s unique approach to art gained quite the audience; he projected a 60 minute presentation at the Vatican for the Pope, has projected shows on the Empire State Building several times, as well as the Sydney Opera House and other notable landmarks around the world. In 2017, Travis sold Obscura Digital to The Madison Square Garden Company, which is focusing on building state-of-the-art music and entertainment venues known as “MSG Spheres.” These venues will enable the creation of immersive, multi-sensory environments that transport audiences and reinvent how a performer, speaker, show or event engages and connects with an audience.

Beyond The Frame

The dynamic art duo of Brian and Travis don’t only want to entertain and provoke art lovers, they plan to use their venue as a way for students of any level to learn about art in a new, holistic way that brings artists and their visions to life. They plan to host programs for the community that will include deep art exploration immersion through notable artists. From artists of antiquity to new artists, they will bring people in for a facilitation of a shared art encounter and lesson. They will showcase the life and the work of an artist, and really “hang out with” art pieces and artists that are famous in a new way. For example, they could highlight an iconic piece of art, like the Mona Lisa, and show different scales of the piece.

They would like to open this opportunity up to students, the community, and art lovers from surrounding areas in a way that showcases the lives and processes of an artist in a way that becomes a thorough journey presented in chapters. These will be immersive, interactive art classes with an intensely focused curriculum. “It’s not a show, it’s an inspiration” Travis explained of the concept. “There’s a lot of art out there that isn’t known that we will cover, but also artists you already know and love. We will invite you to hang out with those art pieces to connect in a deeper way. This is another way for this gallery to bring even more to the community and ourselves.”

Looking To The Future

Currently, The Chambers Project is featuring a show by Australian artist Leans, which kicked off on September 24, and the plan is to launch a new show every two to three months. Each launch event is an incredible mix of art, music, food, drink, and revelry that many have come to know as one of the most unique and inspiring events in Grass Valley.

The first five years of Chambers Obscura shows are already planned; they are going to move from Roger Dean into Ralph Steadman, Rick Griffin, Mars-1, and more. One thing that really sets Chambers Obscura apart is the sense of fairness, respect, and collaboration with each artist featured, ensuring that they get as much out of the partnership as the company does.

“We’re going to do things on a higher level. Technically and experientially…but also the spirit behind it,” Travis explained. “Most of our competition are corporate funded and venture capitalist driven; the artists’ relatives have nothing to do with it. We partner with artists and they are a part of our company. We’re about being a living, breathing, actual art group. We’re not a corporate funded cash grab; we’re in it for the art, inspiring and expanding peoples’ imagination and consciousness.”

To learn more about Chambers Obscura and The Chambers Project, or to set up an appointment to view the current exhibit, visit thechambersproject.com

It is my great honor to welcome you to the City of Grass Valley personally and on behalf of the City Council. We are blessed to live and work here and believe Grass Valley is one of the most unique cities in the state.

Nestled in the hills of Nevada County, Grass Valley is a perfect destination for those looking to escape the hustle and bustle of modern life. While growth in a town like ours is inevitable, it is particularly important to me and many of our neighbors that we keep the rural, closeknit, character of our town. Our Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Association as well as numerous other non-profits/clubs work tirelessly to ensure that the City maintains its historical integrity.

By Jan Arbuckle, Mayor of Grass Valley

Grass Valley was incorporated in 1860 at the height of the gold rush and has an incredibly rich history. We are home to the renowned Empire and North Star mines, two of the most successful mines in California’s history. Our city is full of opportunities for entertainment for visitors, whether they want to explore the outdoors, enjoy shopping and wine tasting downtown, see a show at the Center for the Arts, visit a local craft brewery, experience a piece of history at the newly renovated Holbrooke Hotel, or spend time at one of our numerous parks and playgrounds, there is something here for everyone.

In addition to our rich mining history and beautiful downtown, the City has been completing numerous projects renovating our parks, streets, and public spaces. Memorial Park, one of our most historic, was recently updated with new pickleball courts, a basketball court, a turf baseball field, and two completely new public pools. We are currently working on extensive renovations to historic Mill Street, converting the prize shopping strip of Grass Valley into an inviting pedestrian plaza.

Grass Valley has strived to carve out its own identity, separate from the other communities around it. We want to be a unique place that exists first and foremost, to meet the needs of its residents whether that’s top-notch schools, fantastic dining options, unique shopping experiences, or opportunities for recreation. We are striving to foster a family-friendly environment, providing accessible trails along creeks, modern sports fields, newly renovated playgrounds and parks, and many engaging community events that cater to all ages.

I am incredibly proud to serve as mayor of Grass Valley and warmly invite everyone to put Grass Valley on your list of unique destinations, and whether it be your first or your hundredth visit, you will always find something new and exciting waiting in our hospitable City.

Sincerely,

Jan Arbuckle

Mayor of Grass Valley