Rural Nevada comes alive in teens’ exhibit

Monday, Dec. 31, 2001 | 1:43 a.m.

For a second year, the Western Folklife Center in Elko gave teenagers an opportunity to document the people in their communities by handing them 35-millimeter cameras, tape recorders and guidance from experts.

During a 10-month period the teens met with families, friends and neighbors in their homes, gold mines, area skate parks, community theaters and ranches to hear their stories.

The resulting work, "Voices of Youth 2000: A Portrait of Elko County," is running through Jan. 27 at the Lied Discovery Children's Museum on Las Vegas Boulevard North.

Featured in audio recordings and photographs are community members, who in a time of computer dominance and hectic schedules, speak of the mountains and solitude in the open air.

Some of the ranchers work from sunup to sundown. The nearest grocery store, school or hospital could be miles away in another town. They know there is little money to be made. But the lifestyle, they say, is worth it.

The project was funded by the Nathan Cummings Foundation, a national grant-making organization that supports programs focused on community and diversity, and the Bretzlaff Foundation of Reno that provides grants to arts, health and educational programs.

Representatives from the Folklife Center had felt strongly about wanting to work with young people, especially teenagers, to show them what folklorists do, Meg Glaser, artistic director of the Center, said.

It was a chance, she said, for the youth to see how their communities were shaped over the years, and how the communities shaped them as individuals.

"(The photographs) are incredible," she said. "They've just blown me away. These kids did these amazing interviews, then worked with Jack (Loeffler, an oral historian) on the computer, editing them to make them into ... vignettes."

"A lot of high school kids, we just don't really hear from them -- especially youth who are in the throes of thinking about leaving their community," said Bruce Hucko, a Moab, Utah, photographer who led the group of teens through the technical and creative aspects of photography.

"(This project) strengthens that bond with their community and that sense of place."

Since the project, some of the youth have been hired by the Western Folklife Center. One participant, 17-year-old Julie Morrison from Ruby Valley, will be working at the Cowboy Poetry gathering as an apprentice to Hucko.

Born in Elko, Morrison grew up in Ruby Valley, where her family has a ranch. She attends school in Spring Creek, 10 miles south of Elko. Because it's an hour's drive from the ranch, she, her sister and mother live in Spring Creek during the week, commuting back to the family's ranch on the weekends.

"I wanted to just represent the different generations in Ruby Valley," said Morrison, whose photographs and interviews focused mainly on ranchers, who shared their personal histories of life in rural Elko County where many began working as children. Some of Morrison's subjects shared their first impressions of moving to the area.

"I know everybody out here, but you don't really find out that kind of stuff from them," Morrison said. "It was just a great learning experience."

In addition to printing and matting their own photos, the teens curated the exhibit when it opened last year at the Western Folklife Center.

"You could tell it meant a lot to them," Glaser said about the exhibit. "It moved people not only in the community but outside the community ... There are a lot of people who haven't experienced that part of the country, the rural West."

Emily Newberry, lifelong Las Vegan and spokeswoman for the Lied Discovery Children's Museum, said she has a fascination with rural Nevada.

"That's really more of the story of our state than Las Vegas and Reno," she said. "We have wonderful roots and history in those areas."

Whether it is new development that is erasing the elemental character of the town, or the lack of opportunities from mining industries closing down, rural towns in Nevada are slowly disappearing.

"This is a precarious lifestyle that is teetering," Newberry said. "In a way, it makes it all the more important to go and see and record because it really is a different world out there.

"You really cannot get a sense of what Nevada is all about unless you're aware of the mining and ranching. It's wonderful lore about our state."