Update from the Nevada County Arts Council

Earlier this year, after several years of resisting, Jeannie Wood finally accepted our invitation to join Nevada County Arts Council’s Board of Directors.

Jeannie brings such wisdom. On the eve of the pandemic, when we were in the midst of programming for our three-year initiative, “Belonging”, artist Ruth Chase and I had approached Jeannie about an intimate conversation with younger members of The Joy Luck Club’s cast about how CATS was able to provide a safe place to explore their identity and find themselves “at home”.

Then came COVID and we worked together on an Art in Storefronts project which would see CATS, led by artist Sovahn LeBlanc, create two gorgeous installations. One, Remember the Past—Embrace the Future, was inspired by Amy Tan’s book, while the other, drew upon the Japanese Internment, and the reality of incarceration in every generation.

Early last year Nevada County Arts Council provided a small grant to CATS to help it – finally – get The Joy Luck Club show up and running. Then, in April this year, its opening at Nevada Theatre coincided with our 2022 Sierra Poetry Festival, in which we featured two of the most exciting young Chinese-American poets on the West Coast, Shangyang Fang and Jenny Qi. It felt unthinkable not to include the Asian-American experience with the cloud of COVID still hanging so low. The following day I attended The Joy Luck Club’s matinee with Amy Tan in attendance and a rapturous audience.

We have watched Jeannie lead CATS quietly and with grace throughout the pandemic, and it felt so appropriate that she join us in early October to meet with two of the most important legislators for the arts in California at the launch of their statewide tour of California Cultural Districts.

Senator Ben Allen and Assembly Member Tasha Boerner Horvath, Chair and Vice Chair of Joint Committee on the Arts, met with us alongside City Managers and Chamber representatives, and members of our arts community and the Nisenan, to share important work achieved during the pandemic as we visited some of our most treasured spots.

Of significance has been how we have drawn attention to the enormous contributions of our Asian-American community over the course of over 170 years, in welcoming Jeannie as both representatives of CATS and Nevada County Arts Council to the table. I look forward to deepening our connections to CATS and to our Asian-American community, and to keeping this at the forefront of our planning efforts as we look to the next five years of our Grass Valley-Nevada City Cultural District journey. Thank you, Jeannie!