Art at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival
Art Inspiring Environmental Activism
Each year Nevada County Arts Council partners with the Wild & Scenic Film Festival to produce a visual art exhibition at The Center for the Arts’ Granucci Gallery in the Grass Valley-Nevada City Cultural District (a state-designated California Cultural District). Together, we offer a fresh dimension for more than 8,000 festival attendees to enjoy the work of our artists, and meet with filmmakers, social activists, and environmental leaders.
In 2026, Nevada County Arts Council will host a special arm of the exhibition showing selected 2D artworks and festival archival materials under our Art in Public Spaces program in partnership with the County of Nevada.
Dates
The Rood Center: January 16 - May 1, 2026
Opening Reception: January 30, 2026 at 4:30
The Granucci Gallery: February 19 - March 15, 2026
Reception & Awards Ceremony: February 19, 2026 | 4:30 - 6:30 pm
FINAL DEADLINE TO SUBMIT ARTWORK - NOVEMBER 30, 2025
2026 Judges
SARA MORRIS
Sara Morris is the Ruth Rippon Curator of Ceramics at the Crocker Art Museum and a PhD candidate in the History of Art & Architecture Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara with a doctoral emphasis in feminist studies. Her research focuses on craft and material culture of the United States, with specific concentration on California's contributions to ceramics. At the Crocker, her duties include research into the collection, acquiring artworks, and organizing contemporary and historic ceramics exhibitions and publications. Morris brings a wealth of experience, having previously worked in museums and galleries across the country, including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.
AUSTIN PRATT
Austin Pratt is an artist, curator, and educator. He is currently the Curator and Manager of Sheppard Contemporary & University Galleries at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he also teaches courses Painting, Drawing, Gallery Practices, and in the low-residency MFA-Interdisciplinary Arts program. Recent curatorial practice includes the exhibitions, Wet Incantation: Poetics of Water & Language, and Toward a Tangled Turn: Knots, Nets, Threads, & Loops at Sheppard Contemporary. His work exists primarily through a studio painting practice and as the frontman for the collective psych/hardcore-punk outfit Spitting Image, which he cofounded in 2010. Not wholly dissimilar, his poetic writing and paintings reprocess fragmented image and pattern, with research interests in perception psychology and cultural geography. Pratt received an MFA in Painting+Drawing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His work has been featured in New American Paintings, and he has been a recipient of the Visual Arts Fellowship from the Nevada Arts Council.
CHARLIE BARBONI
Charlie Barboni has been involved in the fair, festival, and art show community for over 50 years, with extensive experience in curating, installation, and art show management. During his tenure as Marin County Fair Manager, he coordinated and supervised the Competitive Exhibit Department, where the Fine Art/Fine Craft Show yearly received over 2,000 submissions with approximately 1,400 selected for the museum-quality exhibition. Barboni has developed, curated, and/or served as a juror at 24 shows since his retirement in 2020, including the Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival, the Mendocino County Fair, and the Paint Sausalito Plein Air Event. Additionally, he has assisted in over 160 art and craft shows and provided art curation, exhibit design, and marketing for numerous Northern California institutions such as the Sausalito Center for the Arts and Toby’s Art Gallery.
The Invaluable Role of Visual Artists
Wild & Scenic Film Festival, produced by South Yuba River Citizens League, inspires environmental activism and a love for nature. It shares an urgent call to action, encouraging festival-goers to learn more about what they can do to save our threatened planet.
At Nevada County Arts Council, we support the role of local and regional visual artists as they, too, are recognized for the invaluable role that they perform in delivering a meaningful message about environmental activism and relationships between society and the natural world.
Chelo Montoya, Assistant Vice President of Education and Public Programs at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and Chair, California Arts Council.
Nashormeh Lindo, Former Chair, California Arts Council
“Never before has the mission of Wild & Scenic Film Festival been more critical. Globally we stand at a crossroads in terms of our relationship to nature and the future of our planet.
The festival engages us as active participants in a giant adventure through film and discourse, and it offers filmmakers, naturalists, scientists, artists and ordinary people the opportunity to lend our voice to this critical conversation.
Through the festival’s accompanying art exhibit each year we challenge visual artists to share personal perceptions of the wild, whether intimate habitats close to home or wild tracts of nature untouched...”