Trails & Vistas Art Hikes Return to Tahoe Donner

By Cynthia Cendreda

Tahoe Donner is thrilled to host Trails & Vistas’ 2026 Art Hikes Aug. 22-23, with stunning performance art installations gracing the landscape along a 2.2-mile loop beginning at the Alder Creek Adventure Center (ACAC) and continuing along Whoop It Up trail.

Trails & Vistas Founder and Artistic Director Nancy Tieken Lopez recently sat
down with Tahoe Donner News + Life to share a little bit more about what one can experience on these celebrated art hikes.

Cynthia Cendreda: For starters, what is an Art Hike?

Nancy Tieken Lopez: Trails & Vistas’ Art Hikes are a fusion of art experiences and forest immersion. Led by an experienced guide, Art Hike attendees travel in small groups, pausing at seven to nine art performance installations.

CC: Can you describe for readers what an “art performance installation” involves?

NTL: An art performance installation is an immersive, site-specific performance that transforms spaces into experiences. An example might be hiking up to a ridge with a stunning view of Devil’s Peak to find ballet dancers dancing along the edge, or hiking into a forest glen to find a thousand, brilliant-orange clay poppies running down a hillside intermixed with lava rock, and then, being serenaded by an acoustic guitarist and a beatboxer (Royal Gorge Art Hikes, 2024). The Art Hike theme, the artists and the performances change every year to offer new experiences. Each Art Hike features environmental storytelling, land art and an invitation to connect with each other, to be curious, to embrace a variety of cultures and to celebrate the environment through the arts.

CC: That all sounds incredible. Can you share what the theme for the 2026 Art Hikes is yet?

NTL: Yes, this year’s theme is “borrowed landscape,” or shakkei (借景). In Japan, shakkei is the art of incorporating distant scenery, such as mountains, trees, or lakes, to make an intimate space feel larger and more integrated with its surroundings. This technique uses elements like a strategically placed opening or a framing device to “capture” the background view. This summer, I will be collaborating with over fifty artists to create a seamless blend of man-made elements and the natural world, allowing participants to connect to nature and culture, to people and place.

CC: What types of artists can TD members expect to see on this year’s Art Hikes?

NTL: We are excited to welcome back Capacitor Dance Company from San Francisco. Capacitor’s award-winning work has been praised by The New York Times as “ingenious.” Capacitor’s Artistic Director, Jodi Lomask, is choreographing a solo dance titled ‘The Perfect Flower’ as well as a duet, “Tangled Green.’’

We are also thrilled to have harpist Motoshi Kosako 古佐古基史 performing. Motoshi is a Japanese-born concert harpist, composer and improviser. Harp Column compared his introspective soloing to that of Keith Jarrett. In addition to producing seventeen albums, Motoshi regularly tours internationally.

Reno Taiko Tsurunokai, a Japanese drumming group based in Reno, Nevada, will perform Sunday. Taiko drums are so physically demanding to play that each group can only perform one day. Reiko Shimbo, founder of Reno Taiko Tsurunokai, says that the reason people instantly connect to Taiko drums is that “[y]ou don’t just hear it in the ears, but feel it in the body.”

Additional artists include dancer, Jill Salak; sculptor, Aiya Jordan Kawasaki; fiber artist, Lorna Denton; Truckee High School designer, Keira Ching; drumming and dancing group, Matachines Guerreros de Reno; Joffrey Ballet-trained, local dancer, Leigh Collins; and equestrian performer, Kansas Carradine, aka Circus Cowgirl, along with four site-specific installations of my artwork.

We’d be remiss not to mention that this year’s incredible artist lineup is partially made possible by a generous grant from the Martis Camp Foundation.

CC: The Art Hikes were last held in Tahoe Donner in 2009. How long have the Art Hikes been going on, and how did they get started?

NTL: I like to say, it all started with one rock! While I was in graduate school, I left river poems inscribed on 20 rocks in a streambed. I enjoyed seeing how people moved and interacted with the rocks until one day, when I came back to find all of the stones gone, except for one that read, “Is No More.” I thought that was so clever. That interaction inspired me to create my very first Art Hike in 1997 as my Master’s in Fine Arts thesis project.

CC: And what has been your favorite performance installation from your twenty-two-year history of the Art Hikes?

NTL: Honestly, each year has been a special memory, but the first Art Hikes were exciting because it was at a time in the 90s when young installation artists took risks and didn’t worry about insurance or permits. Dancers dangling down a cliff from fabric, making earth art on the hillside, riding on the back of a bulldozer with poetry boulders–you just did it!

However, I will say that the “Terra Caeli, Earth Sky” Art Hike in 2009 in Tahoe Donner is a favorite of mine. I worked closely with choreographer Elizabeth Archer to create a mix of dance performance and equestrian arts on Sundance Trail. We started with a Dancing With Horses Workshop that summer for local youth dancers of InnerRythms Dance Theater, which was taught by acclaimed choreographer Alain Gauthier, as well as Kansas Carradine at the Archer’s ranch in Sierraville. The equine workshop developed into three Art Hike performance installation sites! Ranging in age from 14 to 17, the dancers learned life lessons from working with these majestic animals alongside Alain, an equine healing facilitator, and Leslie Anne Webb.

With all of my performance installations, I want to fill each Art Hike participant with a sense of profound but equivocal mystery, discovering the art that lies hidden in the landscape and within our own imagination.

CC: Tell me about some of your other events.

NTL: Every fall, Trails & Vistas holds our Dreaming Tree Field trip for 450+ third-grade students in Truckee and North Tahoe. The field trips are mini-interactive Art Hikes. The students learn from Culture Bearers of the Washoe Tribe of California and Nevada, march with a bagpiper, sing with a guitarist, write poetry with a spoken word poet, listen to a storyteller and create their own art.

This year we will hold our third annual Awe Walks for veterans, senior citizens and individuals with sensory, physical and cognitive differences. The Awe Walks are a fusion of our Art Hikes and forest bathing. Held on an ADA-accessible trail in Donner Memorial State Park, participants are invited to slow down and connect with nature through the arts.

We also host free community art workshops every year, usually in the spring. This year, we are collaborating with the Sierra Teen Education and Parenting Program to provide free art classes to local teen parents, and this spring, we are working with local high school students on two poetry salons and an open mic.

Finally, we put on the Truckee Historical Haunted Tour every October. Participants are taken on a guided tour of historic Truckee buildings where volunteer actors perform historical vignettes.

PURCHASE TICKETS

Early Bird Pricing – $60 adults; $15 children

On Sale Dates
Tahoe Donner Residents*: April 17 at 12PM
General Public: April 22 on the Trails & Vistas Website

Private Pods
A private pod for groups of up to 20 family and friends can be purchased for $1,400 in advance through April 15 by contacting Veronica Derrick at veronica@trailsandvistas.org.