Hidden H1

James "Jim" McCormick (1936-2017) was a dedicated faculty member in the Art Department at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he taught printmaking, drawing, visual foundations, art history, and papermaking. Originally from Chicago, Jim spent much of his youth in New York City and Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1960, at the age of 24, he joined the University of Nevada, embarking on a 32-year academic career that established him as a beloved figure in the Nevada arts community. Deeply passionate about his adopted state, Jim actively sought funding from the Nevada Legislature to establish the Nevada Arts Council and served on the board of the Nevada Museum of Art. His artistic pursuits centered on printmaking, pen and ink sketches from his travels and intricate collages and assemblages.

Galen Brown (1959-2024) was born in Reno, Nevada and raised in both Reno and at King’s Beach, Lake Tahoe. He was a dedicated junior ski racer on the Reno Falcons ski team and later the Lake Tahoe Ski Club, a quiet loner in school until a ski accident rendered him immobile for six months. He began drawing from his bed while healing. Brown earned a BFA at San Francisco Art Institute in 1988 and a Master of Fine Arts in 1990. He continued studying in China and New York, and for the following 20 years Brown resisted selling his work to collectors, preferring to keep his bodies of work together. In 2019 the Nevada Museum of Art installed his solo exhibition Sine Cere, and purchased the title piece, for their permanent collection. Brown’s work was featured in Tilting the Basin, the Nevada Museum of Art survey exhibition of contemporary artists working in Nevada in 2016, His work is also in the permanent collection of the Nevada Arts Council, and the newly founded Clear Creek Collection at Lake Tahoe.

Anne M. Hoff is a professor of Fine Arts  at the College of Southern Nevada, Las Vegas, NV.  Her work is in university, museum, and corporate collections across the United States.  She exhibits her work in local portfolios as well as regional and solo shows.  New explorations in her work focuses on atmospheric landscapes of the mojave desert and high desert of Arizona.  Working with various wet and drawing media on drafting films, her large scale banner drawings work to capture the elusive quality of atmosphere over the variable regions of the deserts within Nevada and Arizona. Hoff’s work includes installations,murals, sculptural prints, hybrid prints, and drawings on translucent film and cloth. 

Bobbie Ann Howell is a visual artist from Nevada who has taught sculpture, foundry, drawing, life drawing, two- and three-dimensional design, and printmaking. Her artworks are in public and private collections and exhibited in regional and national exhibitions, and through public art projects. Howell received the 2023 and 2018 Nevada Arts Council’s Visual Art Fellowship Award.

Candace Nicol Garlock, an artist known for her diverse mediums, blends printmaking, painting, photography, and sculpture into multimedia pieces. Her work explores the interconnectedness of relationships—between humans, nature, and society—prompting viewers to consider social identities and issues surrounding the female gaze. With a national and international presence, her accolades include the Reno Tahoe Artist Best in Sculpture award and multiple recognitions in Fine Art and Mixed Media, NAC Artist Fellowship, and the Nevada Regent’s Creative Activities award. In her book, Daily Nodes, she is recording her healing process after a major Multiple Sclerosis (MS) attack left her with ongoing debilitating symptoms. The daily illustrations and writing is a part of the healing process, both physically and mentally.

Frances Melhop is a visual artist, curator, educator and gallery director, born in Christchurch, New Zealand, living and working at Lake Tahoe, Nevada. She works in tactile mediums such as drawing, photography, printmaking, hand embroidery, sculpture and oil paint, exploring the tensions between the virtual and physical ways we experience the world. Melhop has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions worldwide. Awards include, Nevada Arts Council Fellowship 2025, the University of Nevada, Reno, Outstanding Artist Award, 2019, NNDA Innovator of the Year 2014, Luerzers Archive World’s Best Photographers 2009/2010. In 2020 she opened Melhop Gallery °7077, at Lake Tahoe, Nevada, representing 12 national and international artists. She also curates themed group shows with invited exceptional artists. Melhop  holds a Bachelor of Arts in Photography and Art History, a Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Art from University of Nevada, Reno, and a post graduate CAS in Curatorial Practices from Zurich University of the Arts.

Lynn Schmidt is an eclectic artist who loves to explore new materials and styles.  Whether it is a watercolor landscape or a collage of fragmented prints her work always reveals the mark of her unique sensibility.  It has been said that her work is never just a picture of something, but is an embodiment of her whole personality.  For Lynn Schmidt, visual art is the most preferred mode of communication.

Nolan Preece received his MFA in photography and printmaking from Utah State University in 1980. A photographer for over forty years, Preece has devoted his work to understanding and mastering the challenging techniques of early photography and conceiving of new processes such as an experimental cliché-verre process he originated in the late nineteen-seventies and more recently a chemigram process he devised from acrylic floor finish.  His landscape camera portfolios of the United States and especially the West are now documents of a changing environment that is rapidly disappearing. Preece’s work has appeared in more than 200 exhibitions throughout the country, and he is in 51 permanent collections. He is represented by Stremmel Gallery in Reno, NV and by the Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York City. Preece is an emeritus photography professor at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, NV. 

Rachel Stiff is a painter and art educator based in Carson City, Nevada. She was born into a small ranching community in rural Montana, where she grew up. Stiff holds an MFA from the University of Arizona in Tucson (2012) and a BFA from the University of Montana in Missoula (2009). Her work has been shown throughout the West and acquired by the Emmy award winning studio, Traktor Films of Santa Monica, California. Stiff was a featured artist in the exhibition “Tilting the Basin,” shown by the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno and Las Vegas. In 2017, a series of Stiff's paintings were included in “The Nuclear Landscape” exhibition, in conjunction with the NV STEAM Conference at the Nevada Museum of Art. Stiff was also nominated for the Joan Mitchell fellowship in 2022. Identifying as a true Westerner, her work examines the construction of the modern landscape and desert-urban interface through abstraction.