The City of Reno Arts & Culture Commission created the City Artist position in 2019 as a way to recognize outstanding visual artists in our community. The mission of this program is to promote visual artists living in Reno, to highlight visual artists in the community, and to engage with the public through visual art. The City Artist is a one-year appointment that includes a solo exhibition in the City Hall Metro Gallery, public talks, and the curation of an exhibition.

Joanna Drakos – Reno City Artist 2026

Joanna Drakos

Photo: 2026 Reno City Artist Joanna Drakos; Courtesy of Joanna Drakos 

The City of Reno is pleased to announce Joanna Drakos as Reno City Artist for 2026. Drakos was appointed by the Arts and Culture Advisory Board and will serve from January to December 2026. 

“A big congratulations to Joanna for being selected as our City Artist for this year,” said Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve. “Art plays an important role in our community, and I look forward to seeing Joanna’s creativity shine throughout the year as she shares her amazing talent with all of us.”  

During her tenure as city artist, Drakos will present a City Artist solo show from June 29 to Aug. 21, 2026, at the Metro Gallery on the first floor of Reno City Hall. The exhibition will feature her iconic nonrepresentational abstract work. 

Nonrepresentational abstract work is art that doesn’t show recognizable objects, persons, places or things. This art focuses on elements like color, line, shape, and texture to showcase feelings or ideas.     

Drakos will also curate a group exhibition featuring various artists from Aug. 31 to Oct. 23, 2026, at the Metro Gallery. The exhibit will showcase abstract works by artists selected by Drakos, highlighting a range of styles, color palettes, artistic expressions and interpretations of nonrepresentational abstract art. 

“Being selected as the 2026 Reno City Artist is the highlight of my artistic career, and I’m deeply grateful to live in a city that values and celebrates the arts,” said Drakos. “I look forward to building on Reno’s artistic legacy by bringing engaging abstract art exhibitions to the Metro Gallery and demonstrating how powerful art can be in expressing what words and representational imagery cannot.” 

Joanna Drakos is an abstract artist living and working in Reno, Nevada, who has conducted a full-time professional art practice since 2020. She holds a bachelor’s degree in fine art from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and previously worked in nonprofit arts organizations and magazine publishing. Joanna is a three-time recipient of Nevada Arts Council and National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Grants and a founding member of Downtown Modernists, a northern Nevada collective promoting abstract art.

Past City of Reno Artists 

Jordyn Rae Owens was appointed by the Reno Arts & Culture Commission and will serve as the City Artist from January to December 2025. A solo exhibition of her work will be showcased in the Metro Gallery exhibition, Love Governs Form, from May 19 to July 11, 2025 with an artist reception on June 18th from 5-7 pm.

“Words can’t describe the gratitude I feel for being the 2025 Reno City Artist. I’ve come a long way, not just as an artist, but as an individual since I began pursuing art. It hasn’t been easy, and I wouldn’t be here without the people who’ve supported me along the way. My intention as Reno City Artist is to showcase what it means to never give up on what you believe in. Through my work, I hope to remind others to believe in yourself, believe in your dreams, and believe in your future—our future. I’m excited to share my purpose with the world and hope it inspires others to do the same.”

Jordyn Rae Owens is an artist born and raised in Reno, Nevada. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Nevada, Reno, in 2023. Her art practice is a contemplative process in which she utilizes photographic mediums to explore the past, present, and future self. By exploring her inner world, her artwork demonstrates the powerful effects of self-reflection and the impact it has on the evolution of identity.

Chris Lanier was appointed by the Reno Arts & Culture Commission and served as the City Artist from January to December 2024. A solo exhibition of his work was showcased in the Metro Gallery from March 28 to May 17, 2024.

Lanier is an artist with a background in both traditional and digital media, and a demonstrated interest in hybrid forms, having worked in multimedia performance, digital animation, web production, and comics. He is a professor of Digital Art at the University of Nevada, Reno. 

His animation has screened at Sundance and won awards at several international festivals, including the Grand Prize for Internet Animation at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. His work has been screened, exhibited, and/or performed in San Francisco, Tokyo, Vancouver, Mexico, Britain, and Serbia. A constant in Lanier’s work has been a focus with visual communication, the way visual information constitutes a language of its own, one that can both clarify and distort reality. 
 
He is also an essayist and critic whose art criticism has appeared in a variety of online and print publications, including Double Scoop, The Believer, HiLobrow, Furtherfield, Rhizome, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Comics Journal. He regularly writes exhibition essays for the Capital City Arts Initiative.

Rossitza Todorova was appointed as the third Reno City Artist by the Reno Arts & Culture Commission and served as the City Artist from September 2022 to December 2023. 

Rossitza Todorova is a Professor of Art at Truckee Meadows Community College and a professional artist residing in Reno, Nevada. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Nevada, Reno, in 2005 and her Master of Fine Arts degree from Arizona State University in 2013.

Her artwork has been recognized through exhibitions nationally and internationally. Todorova's art is part of the permanent collections of the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, Nevada, the John and Geraldine Lilley Museum of Art in Reno, Nevada, the Arizona State University Art Museum in Tempe, Arizona, the Tucson Museum of Art in Tucson, Arizona, the University of Arizona Art Museum in Tucson, Arizona, the Painting and Sculpture Museum in Istanbul, Turkey, and numerous private collections. She currently creates artwork from her studio, located at Artemisia Studios in Reno. 

Ruby Barrientos was appointed as the second Reno City Artist by the Reno Arts & Culture Commission and served as the City Artist from July 2021 to June 2022.

“I am grateful and honored to be this year's City of Reno's City Artist. I am excited and hopeful that my work will ignite creativity, unite communities through art, and encourage dialogue amongst diverse groups,” says Barrientos. “As City Artist I'm thrilled for the opportunity to share my latest body of work at the Metro Gallery, which will bring cultural diversity to the forefront of the gallery.”

Ruby Barrientos is a first-generation Salvadoran American artist born and raised in Reno, NV. She is an artivist and incorporates her unique artistic voice that she coined as Nuwave Mayan, a style that fuses her Salvadoran Mayan ancestry and heritage in the creation of socially relevant visual art. Her artwork was on display at the Metro Gallery in City Hall from September 13 - November 26, 2021.

During her tenure as City Artist, Barrientos curated an exhibition featuring work by visual storyteller Iyana Esters, and she also engaged with constituents via public talks about her process and artwork.

Tom Drakulich, the inaugural City Artist, was appointed by the Reno Arts & Culture Commission and served as the City Artist from July 2019 through June 2020.

“I am incredibly honored, excited and proud to be selected as the City of Reno’s first City Artist,” Drakulich said. “I hope that my work as City Artist will inspire community engagement and propel future creative action to the same effect that the Reno arts and culture community has shaped me as an artist.”
 
Drakulich, a Reno native, graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno with his Master of Fine Arts degree in 2017. He is an interdisciplinary artist using traditional and alternative processes. His practice uses figurative abstraction to navigate the play between the familiar and the unique to consider how we deal with the unknown and explore relationships on many levels.
 
During his tenure as City Artist, Drakulich will also curate an exhibition featuring iconic Reno artists Fred Reid and Richard Jackson in early 2020, as well as have the opportunity to engage with constituents via public talks about his process and artwork.
 
“It means the world to me to have the opportunity to represent our amazing art community by sharing my most recent body of work and later curating Only Two Ways to Fire, an exhibition of ceramics by Fred and Richard, two incredibly important Reno artists,” Drakulich added.