'Maya's Mind' 20-foot art sculpture installed Saturday in the downtown Carson City area
Submitted by Kelsey Penrose on Sun, 05/09/2021 - 11:05am
On Saturday afternoon, a new art installation was brought to downtown Carson City thanks to a small group of art lovers who wanted to help bring more culture for all of the public to enjoy.
“Maya’s Mind” created by artist Mischell Riley was installed at 377 S. Nevada Street in the yard of what is currently Fairway Independent Mortgage Company.
The owners of the building, Andie Wilson and Brad Bonkowski of NAI Alliance Carson City, couldn’t be happier to lend a piece of their property to a large public art installation.
Mischell Riley is also the artist behind “The Mind of DaVinci,” the large public art sculpture currently on display in front of the Carson City Community Center.
Maya’s Mind was first displayed at Burning Man in 2017 before it was brought to the Smithsonian American Art Museum for display as a part of their “No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man” art show.
Maya’s Mind is made up of a 20-foot high bust of Maya Angelou set on a stack of books.
The idea behind Maya’s Mind, according to Riley, was to build monuments of inspirational women in order to increase representation of women of all races and religions. The series will continue in the future with Jane Goodall and Amelia Earhart.
According to Wilson, she is thrilled to be able to display the art on one of her properties, although she is not the owner; Maya’s Mind is still up for sale.
“I would have been thrilled to see this piece anywhere, in front of the legislative building, in front of city hall, but it’s much more complicated to make it happen (on public property),” said Wilson. “Whereas Brad and I own this property, Jennell is a tenant and is totally open to it, so we thought, ‘cool, what do we need for a base? How can we make this happen?’ It was still a hundred steps, but a hundred as opposed to a thousand.”
Jennell Peck is the Branch Sales Manager at Fairway where the piece is being installed. She is also very happy to be able to look out her window and see the sculpture of an inspiring woman like Angelou, who then inspires her as a woman to be her best.
"It's a great message," said Peck. "No matter what, she still rises. That's amazing. To have a monument of a woman in front of an office full of women, it's very inspiring. When I'm having a difficult day now I can look out at my monument and think, 'I can handle this.'"
Wilson also said that the installation comes at an important time following the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shut down, but now that people are starting to reemerge within the community, this adds as something else for them to experience.
“There’s a lot of activity down here and we knew that we were going to come out of COVID; the world is going to come back to life. This is a good thing for the community,” said Wilson. “It’s such a gift that we’ve had (Riley) here and so if Maya ends up being here for three years, great, 10 years, 20 years; if she ends up selling the piece then she’ll move on, but we’re just happy to help.”
Riley is planning on an upcoming move to Canada, and shipping Maya’s Mind would have been time consuming as well as costly, so having a place for the piece to be until it is sold worked out well both for Riley as well as the Carson City community as a whole.
You can see the piece in the downtown area, about two blocks behind Comma Coffee, located at 377 S. Nevada Street.
To learn more about Riley, visit https://bronzesbymischell.com/ and to learn more about Maya’s Mind, click here.
