Silver City Post Office Hosts Display on Resident Artist Program

Silver City, Nevada - The Silver City Post Office, established in 1860, has a display case with changing collections that highlight local history as well as current programs.

Display of Work by Visiting Artists: For those who missed a December 2016 show featuring the artwork, essays, poems, assemblages, and photographs created by visiting artists at the Resident Artist Program in Silver City, some of the pieces are on display at the Silver City Post Office through March.

Items include poetry about Silver City by former Utah Poet Laureate David Lee; photographs by Brian Schorn, Marielle Toll and Ava Covington; essays by author/ artist Scott MacLeod and internationally acclaimed photographer Frances Melhop; plus drawings and paintings by London-based artists Stewart Easton and Claire Scully, Oakland-based artist Scott MacLeod and New Zealand-based artist Sophie Scott.

Where and When: The display can be viewed at the Silver City Post Office at 270 Main Street, Silver City, Nevada 89428, Mon-Sun through April 1st, 2017.

Past displays have included a Silver City Volunteer Library designed display of publications by or about past and present Silver City residents. Publications featured covered a broad range of topics by authors such as Erich Obermayr, Peter Laufer, Jim McCormick, Karen Wright, David Toll, Henry Park, Shelia Swan, Robert Elston, and others.

The Comstock Cemetery Foundation designed a display showing the historic cemeteries of the Comstock, including Silver City's carefully preserved burial grounds.

Long time Silver City resident Chris Brown designed a display showing examples of historic ironwork found on the Comstock.

The Silver City Arts group displayed a collection of album and CD covers to celebrate the music of present and past Silver City residents such as Lynne Hughes, Darius Javaher, Will and Sheree Rose, Betty Kaplowitz, Jake Wise, and many others.

For Historic Preservation Month last year, the display case was filled with examples of artifacts discovered during the archaeological dig at the historic Silver City School House.

Other displays have included photos from the past 10 years of the town’s annual science and arts summer program for children, aerial maps of Silver City, and favorite antique toys from the collections of local residents.

About Silver City: By 1861, Silver City had at least a dozen stores, 4 hotels, 3 blacksmith shops, 2 butcher shops, and a post office, serving a population of more than 1,000 people. An 1864 mercantile guide for the Comstock region described Silver City as a place where "citizens display a refined taste...by the numerous gardens and other external and substantial improvements that they are constantly making...Silver City is fully represented by societies, organizations and social institutions; which for numbers and unity, would be creditable to the reputation of larger cities."

Today, the town of about 200 residents is part of the region's National Historic Landmark and is recognized as an "Arts and Cultural Resources Production Center." The community includes a surprising number of Nevada's highly productive artists, musicians, photographers, writers, artisans, and academics, and its historic buildings and sites and crystal clear views of the Sierras attract visiting plein air painters and photographers from near and far. With an unusually strong volunteerism ethos, the town boasts a volunteer-run library, an organic community garden, frequent public events at the community center, a busy arts group, a historic preservation group, a resident artist program, a volunteer fire department, and an arts and science summer program that is free to youngsters in the entire northwestern Nevada region.