Where Nature and Culture Collide
Welcome to the Grass Valley-Nevada City Cultural District!
Experience the Cultural District
Our web-based tours highlight the history and culture of Nevada City, Grass Valley, and our surrounding communities.
Mural Tour of Nevada County
28 STOPS| SELF-GUIDED | CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE
Featuring a robust (and ever-expanding) collection of public murals throughout Nevada County, this self-guided tour will lead you to unexpected places.
Nevada City Walking Tour
13 STOPS | GUIDED | WALKING | 1H 30M | 1 MI
Relive key moments of Nevada City’s history, from pre-Gold Rush settlement up to the 1970s. Featuring notable buildings and beautiful vistas.
Haunted Nevada City Ghost Tour
21 STOPS | GUIDED | WALKING | 1H 30M | 1.5 MI
Illuminated by the flickering flames of gas streetlights, Nevada City is the perfect setting for tales of the numerous ghosts who haunt our historic buildings.
STORIES FROM THE GVNC CULTURAL DISTRICT
MUSE: A Guide to Local Art & Culture
An annual publication of the Nevada County Arts Council, MUSE Magazine highlights the creative people and places that make the Grass Valley-Nevada City and Truckee Cultural Districts unique.
Upcoming Events
There’s always something happening in the GVNC Cultural District
Artist Spotlights
Meet the artists and culture bearers of the GVNC Cultural District
My medium is culture-making—the choreography of materials, meaning, and participation until a temporary community forms and a place feels more alive, more itself.
My medium is photography, specifically editorial portraiture. I focus on capturing real people in beautiful light, often working with small businesses, nonprofits, and local leaders to tell authentic visual stories.
We took a moment with local videographer and drone pilot, Ellie McCutcheon. In this Spotlight she shares about her path to creativity, working with local musicians, and combining her love of nature with her passion for cinematography.
Artist Gabriel Romo - known artistically as 2hermano paints with acrylics and aerosol on murals but focus on acrylics in the studio. He also make masks out of palm fronds.
This year Bear Yuba Land Trust recieved a grant from Parks California to expand on programming as part of their annual Celebration of Trails. In partnership with Neighborhood Center for the Arts, creating the fabulous stars for the Star Hike Challenge.
I am a versatile visual artist specializing in photography and videography. I always felt drawn to the arts, and my passion for visual expression became clear when I traveled to China at 19 and discovered a talent for capturing moments with my first camera.
Last week Sierra Jazz Society Board Members visited the Nevada County Arts Council’s office. We took a moment to to learn more about their history, mission and vision.
For almost three years, Michaelyn Logue has served as Social Media and Communications Manager for the Nevada County Arts Council.
We took a moment with teaching artist and resident at Artists Studio in the Foothills (ASiF) Lani Zila as she prepares for her spring course offerings at the local artists collective.
We took a moment with two-time Nevada County Poetry Out Loud Champion and student at Sierra Academy of Expeditionary Learning, Dino Parks. Out of over 77,000 students from across the state that competed at the county level this year, he was one of 49 students selected to represent their communities.
Nevada City artist Jennifer Rugge’s desire to protect the environment led her on a journey to move away from the use of manufactured oil and acrylic paints, which contain toxins. She calls herself an earth artist.
Nevada County Arts Council announces the selection of Nevada County’s new Poet Laureate, Karen Terrey! From Truckee, Terrey has been an active member of our literary scene on both sides of the county.
We took a moment with Kara Nova, Circus and Performing Artist, contortionist and producer of Super Nova Circus.
We took a moment with muralist, mixed media and visual artist Frida Ticehurst as she shares about her return to Nevada City, redefining her creative flow after motherhood and the inspiration she finds in the GVNC.
In celebration of the opening of the Artists@Work! exhibition, we took a moment with local composer, musician and Upstate California Creative Corps grantee Alexis Alrich to talk about her background in the arts and her process for creating the Wolf Creek Album.
we took a moment with local juggler, storyteller, author and self-proclaimed Fool Izzi Tooinsky.
Witkofsky has made comics since he was a kid. A collaboration with his friends while in high school resulted in the comic Sperble Elite, his longest running and largest project to date. “We would trade off drawing panels and I came up with this whole narrative. It ended up being my first self-published comic book. I love to write and draw, so comics were a perfect fit.”
Riegel is most well known as the content creator of Unlikely Gems, short-form Instagram content that requires Riegel to be an actor, director, writer, producer, editor and video maker. What makes it all work, though, is his favorite thing: “to collaborate with vibey people and make music or have conversations that lead to comedy skit ideas.”
For the last year Farbiarz has been collaborating with other artists, and being consulted by California Heritage: Indigenous Research Project, to create a multimedia project that follows the life cycle of the “Salmon—Mai,” in Nisenan language, that used be plentiful in the Yuba River and still play an important role in our rivers’ ecology.
Originally incorporated in August of 1985 as “Women’s Craft Guild of Nevada County” the group later changed its name to “Craft Guild of Nevada County,” recognizing that anyone can be a craftsperson. According to the articles of incorporation, the mission of the Craft Guild “is to help and educate individuals involved in a home business of crafts through workshops, networking, marketing, and cooperative wholesale purchasing.”
Collaborators and fellow artists Azriel LaMarca and Trina Spiller, met 7 years ago, shortly after Spiller moved to Nevada City, at a dance class led by LaMarca. Through this connection and mutual inspiration the collaboration leading to the one and only dance based festival in Nevada County—Dance Because was born.
Formed in 2016, Park Street Riot continues to push their own sonic edge, and have established themselves as a dynamic, powerful, and energetic force in the greater-Sacramento area music scene.
Curator, designer, and principal artist behind our Art in Public Spaces exhibition Breathe in Sky - Project Wild Edges, Hale is an artist of many talents. Working in multiple mediums, she combines materials and collaborates with others to achieve her vision.
Having spent her life surrounded by the world of art, local poet Maxima Kahn finds that music, dance, writing, visual art, and theater have remained her preferred mediums of art since childhood.
Figurative sculpture and mixed media artist Juliette Morris Williams received a 2024 Fellowship from the First Peoples Fund to create a new body of work. Williams works mainly with handmade paint and pigment, naturally dyed cloth, and clay.
Carlisle creates a vast array of work, collages consisting of her own printed photographs and found images, along with exploring a variety of other mediums.
An all around creative, Maskal works in relationship with the materials of her environment, her inspiration comes from “investigating aliveness, creating belonging and studying love and pleasure. That’s how relationships have come into focus. I am because you are.”
Davis explores alternative photographic processes and print making techniques “My favorite alternative process is cyanotype for its beautiful Prussian Blue tones and versatility. I work with paper, fabric, wood, or whatever materials or tools help me to create my work.”
With a background and formal training in theatre along with some published poetry, Hinojosa is versed in a number of different mediums. He has worked in wood, sculptural ceramics and acrylic painting, to name a few.