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By Kris Vagner

Some artists think Nevada is a great place to make their work. Some think it's a great place to grow up and leave. The Nevada Museum of Art is preparing to screen "Made in Nevada," a series of films by Nevadans and Nevada expats who see it from both points of view.

• Rockin' at the Red Dog
In the 1960s, a Virginia City saloon played a part in the ascent of West Coast counterculture. With the gold-mining boom long over, the small hillside town, along with nearby Sutro, had become something of an outlaw enclave. As the psychedelic rock scene thrived in San Francisco, the Red Dog Saloon attracted bands, such as the Charlatans and the Grateful Dead, and the small mountain town became a popular outpost. Rockin' at the Red Dog: The Dawn of Psychedelic Rock chronicles the saloon's story, as told by the now-gray-haireds who were part of it, in a straightforward, talk-to-the-camera manner.

Carson City filmmaker Mary Works, a professional sound editor (she worked on Titanic) wove the reminiscences together with finesse, letting her subjects tell their stories but avoiding those disengaging "you-had-to-be-there" moments.

"I got them all together in one place to interview them," she says. "That was really key. I hoped the magic that was between these people would happen again. There was just this zing in the air. It was a magical time in their lives, and they wanted to express that. It wasn't just nostalgia for the past."

• Road to Colossus
Erik Burke, presently from Reno but inherently nomadic, is an artist who treads the boundary between public space and private property with his multi-media murals and "gallery" exhibits that take place anywhere but in a gallery.

Last summer, he and fellow artist Derek Yost went to Gurdon, Ark., with the hope of either finding or not finding legendary graffiti artist Colossus of Roads. The two traveled by bicycle, carried video cameras and slept wherever they could afford to (RN&R, "The roads less taken," 6/9/05). Their aim was to collect documentary footage, and Burke said he was prepared to switch gears if necessary. He seemed content with the possibility of a film about a fruitless search for an elusive mythical figure. But he found Colossus, also known as BuZ Blurr. The artists all hit it off immediately. Burke and Yost stayed for days, checking out Blurr's artwork and collecting stories from bemused residents of the small Arkansas town.

This year, Burke completed Road to Colossus, a 60-minute film about his trip that mixes the seductive myths of the American road-trip movie with poetic imagery and self-effacing honesty about the doubts and triumphs of being an artist.

• Silver State Cinema Makers
JT Gurzi is a Los Angeles-based cinematographer who grew up in Reno. He's shot episodes of HBO's Six Feet Under and was on a break from a TV shoot when he spoke with RN&R over cell phone.

"I love Reno," he said. "I wish I could do what I'm doing there, but the industry just doesn't exist there." Gurzi has organized fellow Nevada-expat filmmakers to contribute to a series of short films called Silver State Cinema Makers.

Some are students; some are University of Nevada, Las Vegas film school graduates; some have day jobs, movie-industry jobs or no jobs. The Silver State roster includes films whose frames have been painted on by hand, stop-motion animation using everyday objects and a few Sundance award-winners.

Train graffiti artist exposed in Reno-made film

MERRIE LEININGER
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
10/20/2006

Erik Burke had always been fascinated by trains and graffiti art. The two together were irresistible to him, and his favorite train artist was a man known only as "Colossus of Roads."
Even if you have no interest in art, graffiti or trains, Burke's film about his bicycle trip with a friend from Reno to Arkansas to track down BuZ Blurr, the artist and railway man who for 30 years created the drawing known as "Colossus," carries you along on Burke's enthusiasm and Blurr's intelligence and talent.
The film "The Road to Colossus" is one of the local movies being shown during the "Made in Nevada Film Series" at the Nevada Museum of Art. "Road to Colossus" shows Nov. 2. Burke was a recent graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno's art school when he decided to take on his first documentary; about the man behind the drawing of a cowboy with shifting captions that appeared on trains everywhere.
"I came from graffiti art, which is repetitive," Burke said. "You have a sort of logo that never changes, but his was similar because of the same drawing, but they each had a different little caption. And I had just come from the art school, where I was getting too conditioned about the idea of everything being so sacred where you spend so much time on something and then touch it with only your pinkies and dance around it. But train art is gone as soon as you paint it. It's about the performance of art instead of the final act."
Through the Internet, Burke tracked down a man who seemed to know too much about the drawings to be anyone but the artist himself. Blurr, who drove from Arkansas last week to attend the first North American showing of the film in San Francisco, said he graduated from art school but took a job with the railroad to support his young family.
"I always wanted to be an artist," Blurr said.
"And I am an artist who wants to work in the railroad," Burke cut in.
"He doesn't want to work on the railroad, I can tell you that," Blurr finished.
"(The movie) is kind of how our lives are on similar but different planes," Burke said. "When I got to his house, I felt like it was a big Mobius loop."
Once there, Blurr takes Burke on a tour of the old train yards. Blurr explains the Colossus drawing was a creative outlet for him, and the captions underneath are like a diary.
He has documentation of the captions for years at a time. Many are about art and artists, but some are just about day-to-day matters. For instance: June 22, 1976, under about 30 drawings, he wrote "Travis Bickle" because he had recently watched "Taxi Driver" and felt a connection to the Robert De Niro character.
"It's a prompt or recall for my life at that time," he says now.
The film, which also shows some of Blurr's other art, including the "mail art" and stamps he creates, is also the story of two friends who came together because of a mystery and the myth of the "Colossus of Roads," but became friends because of the power of a shared love of transitory art and their hulking canvases.

Urban boxcar

New layup across the street from the Museum.

One Hand Clapping Tour 2006

My week with buZ blurr. If anything this week was amazing and somehow I fought off the overwhelming feeling to slip into a southern accent. But not escape the lexicon of gumption traps and becoming general specific. Lots of writers made it out for the first night and bought up just about all of my dvds. The second night was a dud. However, I got to meet the amazing John Held Jr. and Mike G. said he saw him shed a tear during the movie. It must have been the music. Digi-bike not quite up and running but I survived one riding in the glass case storefront without crashing out the window. Also survived many long nights with minimal sleep and an empty stomach. Highlight include streaking the Desert yard in Oakland with buZ under the supervision of that yards Roadmaster. Like getting the golden ticket to the chocolate factory. Ringing my bell to scare off hordes of pigeons as I biked through Chinatown was also up on the list along with drinking with the Gold Fronts in the mish, having latenight tofu phili cheesesteaks, and randomly running into Barry Magee and getting to go see his house. Next stop Olympia.

SF Show

October 13, 14 2006 @
Live Worms Gallery
1345 Grant Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94133
map
Time to cut loose to the city. SF premiere of Road to Collossus. buZ blurr's is hopefully going to make the long drive out for this screenig and rattle off rail jargon with the Minister of Inert Gas.
Word is also out that D Rone is flying in from Olympia to make the SF debut. Presently, I'm working on a mini-book for the show to go along with the documentary, mostly composed of conversations with buZ while filming in Arkansas.
Jeff johnson has gone 'n' done it! Most likely the first neon box car graffiti. A reproduction of the iconic Colossus of Roads moniker fastened, loaded, and ready to roll. To see more come to our show in S.F!