Near Wild Heaven

Kit Ortega & Autumn Loewen
June 14, 2025
SERVA POOL FLUX

In the second edition of HPG Serva Pool Flux, Near Wild Heaven is a multi media exhibition of regional artists considering the histories, dreamscapes, and analyses of Queer Utopias in Northern Nevada and The Bay Area. In the early 1970’s, fresh from the memory of Stonewall, the Alpine Liberation Front out of San Francisco sought to build a community for queer people in Alpine County. Later, during the height of the AIDS crisis, Reno locals pursued the same dream in trying to establish Stonewall Park. While both projects ultimately failed, we’re left with the knowledge that yearning for freedom and queer liberation in the west was shared across generations, and continues to be. These yearnings also highlight the fault of seeking a utopia on stolen land, and the tensions that arise in the intersectionalities of liberation. The American West and its dreams and miscalculations have often been depicted through traditional landscape painting. In Near Wild Heaven, a literal interpretation of landscape art was forgoed for work that relates to the cultural and queer landscape of Northern Nevada. Through this, the curators seek to find what artists in this region dream of, as an ode to the wayward spirit of Queer Utopia, and with its faults in mind.