August 2, 2022
This week at Truckee Thursdays, our Truckee Big Life Artist is Truckee-Donner Recreation & Park District (TDRPD). The booth highlights and celebrates our creative community of Truckee Cultural District. The booth is right in front of the Train Depot – stop by to meet some of the TDRPD team that supports and produces art in Truckee. Truckee-Donner Recreation & Park District has long been a partner in the arts culture in the region. Between sculptures, murals, exhibits and events, TDRPD continues to understand the importance of supporting a thriving arts culture in Truckee.
TDRPD has been a partner with Truckee Public Arts Committee (TPAC) for years, to support, organize and plan projects in the area. TDRPD’s rotating art exhibit in the Community Recreation Center is one of many sucesses from this partnership. The current displayed exhibit FOREST⇌FIRE, is an inter-disciplinary, multi-sensory installation connecting art, the humanities and science. It is a must-see, on display at Truckee Community Recreation Center through September, 2022. The exhibit flows thematically through past, present and future, utilizing painting, textiles, beadwork, sculpture, and more, to tell the story of the forest ecology and its relationship with fire. Visit https://www.forestandfire.org/ for more info. Other past art exhibits have included local artists, photographers, and group projects with specific themes sometimes with direction for each season.
TDRPD has great locations for many projects that have been installed in their parks around town. When you walk into the gate at West End Beach, you see a beautiful dragon sculpture that doubles as a bike rack. Park next to their playground at Truckee River Regional Park and find a mini train track that provides trips through the park on summer Saturdays. A newly added feature to the train tracks is a historic- looking train depot from material donated from Bay Bridge steel and constructed by Mountain Forge. This structure is a great gathering area for families and gives a great feeling of being at a train station while the families are about to board for a tour through Truckee River Regional Park.
The Truckee Community Pool was built in 2016, and was truly a community-funded project that helped give us a state-of-the-art aquatic facility in the area. The need to acknowledge the donors of the new pool facility was realized in the final stages of building the pool. TDRPD reached out to local artists and commissioned TPAC member Sara Smith, who designed and built a beautiful mural consisting of paintings, wood, and steel that gave the scope of how many amazing community members came together to make the aquatics facility possible.
Diving into TDRPD’s programs and events, they offer a variety of experiences for the community. Whether you are a beginning artist or a seasoned painter, they have programs that include photography, painting, ceramics, and more. Their programs also include dance and theater with partnerships with Sierra Nevada Dance and Truckee Community Theater. You can sign up for Fall/Winter programs that start in September at www.tdrpd.org.
Summer has come to life at Truckee River Regional Park for the past 30 years with their Music in the Park series on Wednesdays from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm in the amphitheater. The outdoor amphitheater also holds theater productions, concerts, and movie premiers. CATT and TDRPD have partnered with building a new Downtown Truckee Park that includes a small amphitheater that will be a great location for small to one-person bands. The Downtown Truckee Park project is scheduled to be completed by September of this year.
The list goes on and on as a bright future of arts and culture at TDRPD continues to foster partnerships in the art community to provide for the successful Cultural District that Truckee has become. TDRPD has a strong history of working with members and groups in the community to develop solutions and improvements to our great town.
For more information about Truckee-Donner Recreation & Park District, and the many offerings that they have for our creative, active and healthy mountain community, visit www.tdrpd.org.
