Opening Reception to Feature Pow Wow Dance

Heywood Big Day (center) discusses dance regalia

during a pow wow at the Art Museum in 2006.

Photo courtesy of the UW Art Museum.

Seven exhibitions will open Friday evening at the University of Wyoming Art Museum. To celebrate Adornment: Native American Regalia, Selections from the Peter W. Doss Crow Indian Artifact Collection, Crow elder Heywood Big Day and his family will present a short pow wow in full regalia. The event will begin shortly after 6 pm on the Art Museum Terrace.

Curated guest curator Barbara Stone, Adornment: Native American Regalia will feature men’s and women’s outfits complimented by examples of adornment objects. Northern Plains Indian clothing was made of tanned animal hide decorated with colorful geometric and floral designs in quill or beadwork. Adornments for men included feather war bonnets, headdresses with buffalo horns, feather fans, hair bone breastplates, and bear claw necklaces. Bags and pouches were decorative and functional. Beaded vests were additional clothing enhancements. The women wore jewelry, belts, bags, leggings and used hair decorations to embellish their dresses. Moccasins were worn by men, women, and children. Everyday wear was plain while ceremonial moccasins were beautifully adorned with vibrant, multi-colored designs.

Additional exhibitions opening on Friday evening:

Thomas Moran in Wyoming

Thomas Moran: Pastoral Views and Seashores

Lia Cook: The Embedded Portrait

Tracy Linder: Tractor Hides

Ralston Crawford: Lithographs and Photographs

Artists from France: Selections from the University Museum Collection

For information on any of these exhibitions, visit the University of Wyoming Art Museum webpage.

Final Touches on Lia Cook Exhibition

Lia Cook: The Embedded Portrait in preparation
for public opening on Sat., May 23
Photo courtesy of the UW Art Museum

For nearly a decade, Lia Cook has created weavings that explorethe complex relationship between visual image, sensory stimulation, and emotional identification. Her portraits depicting larger-than-life children illustrate Cook’s exploration of the visual and physical realm where photographic likeness and textured textile meet. Her artistic investigations have followed diverse approaches that are expressed in her series, including Big Baby, Un/Mask, Traces, Binary Traces and Face Maze, all created from 2000 to the present.

Cook weds the early 19th century Jacquard weaving technique with contemporary digitial technology. Beginning with slides, photographs or video stills, she develops her imagery, couples it with digital technology, and creates specifically designed weaves that allow her to build the image thread by thread.

Cook will attend the public opening of her exhibition on May 29 and will present two public programs during her visit:

Gallery Walk Through, Friday, May 29, 10:30 am

Art Talk, Saturday, May 30, 10:30 am

These events and the opening reception on Friday, May 29, from 6 - 8 pm are free and open to the public.

Cook’s work has exhibited her work nationally and internationally in solo as well as group exhibitions, including the National Design Triennial: Design Life Now at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, and From Lausanne to Beijing, the 5th International Fiber Art Biennale Exhibition in Beijing, China. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Cook is represented in museum collections around the world, including the Galerie Nationale de la Tapisserie et d'Art Textile, Beauvais, France; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. A native Californian, Cook is a Professor of Art at the California College of the Arts in Oakland. She lives in California.

Tracy Linder installs Tractor Hides

Tracy Linder stands at the entrance of her exhibition,
Tractor Hides, at the UW Art Museum.
Photo courtesy of the UW Art Museum

Tracy Linder grew up on her family’s sugar beet farm near Billings, MT. The agricultural lifestyle of her youth has rooted her creative work, which explores iconic forms and photographic images that reference the farm life that she understands intimately.

In her installation, Tractor Hides, fourteen individual “hides” stand on end and are lit from within, creating pod-like forms. Using animal collagen as the primary material, photographic images of the land, plants, farm machinery, humans, and animals are imbedded into the collagen and formed over the treads of splayed tractor tires. They embody Linder’s interest in life, death, and decay.

Linder will be an artist in residence for the Art Museum's Paint Pony Express program from July 14 - 18. Two public programs are scheduled that week:

Gallery Walk Through, Friday, July 17, 10:30 am

Art Talk, Saturday, July 18, 10:30 am

These events are free and open to the public.

Sign up now for 20:20

Armed with a new logo (above) and new emailing lists, official invitations are going out today for 20:20. A relatively new program at the Art Museum, 20:20 is an event that allows artists, arts organizations and educators to share information about what they've been doing in a fast-paced presentation. Presenters are given 20 images, shown for 20 seconds each, equaling a 6 minute and 40 second presentation. It's a great way to keep the Wyoming arts community informed and updated.

This first 20:20 in a series of three is specially open to Southeast Wyoming. It will be held on Monday, June 1, from 6-8 pm at the UW Art Museum. It will be the last Monday Night at the Museumof the season. Afterward, come downtown to Altitude Chophouse and Brewery for drinks and a chance to catch up with colleagues. Anyone is welcome to attend, but presenting is reserved for those in Torrington, Cheyenne, Laramie, Wheatland, Saratoga, Hanna and Rawlins (and those of you in between). Sign up is on a first come, first served basis. Images must be submitted by Monday, May 25 and must be in a PowerPoint format.

To sign up, ask questions or to receive more information, contact interim assistant curator Rachel Miller at 766-6621 or rmiller@uwyo.edu. Look for an e-vite in your inbox today!

Summer Exhibitions at the Art Museum

Montana artist Tracy Linder's Tractor Hides, will be on view at the UW Art Museum through the summer. The works are on loan from Banner, WY artist Neltje, and Tracy Linder. They are photo emulsion on animal collagen and lit from within to create pod-like structures.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

The installation of six summer exhibitions will begin this week at the Art Museum, after the closing of The Disappeared this past Saturday. Sculpture: A Wyoming Invitational will continue to be on view throughout the city, at the Art Museum rotunda and terrace, and on the UW campus.

From the Museum's permanent collection come the exhibitions Thomas Moran in Wyoming and Thomas Moran: The Eastern Landscape. Each of these showcases Moran's watercolors, sketches and prints from his excursions West, as well as his work on the East coast of the United States. Moran played an important role in visually documenting the west, in particular Wyoming, and his work helped establish Yellowstone National Park as the nation's first National Park in 1872.

Also from the permanent collection is Ralston Crawford: Lithographs and Photographs, which will exhibit 5 recently acquired lithographs and 10 recently acquired photographs. I n addition to these works from the collection, lithos and photos from the Crawford estate will supplement the exhibition. Although primarily recognized as a Precisionist painter, Crawford was also an accomplished print maker and photographer.

Artists from France: Paintings and Prints from the Art Museum Collection features late 19th and early 20th century work from numerous French artists, including Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse and Paul Gauguin. France was the center of the art world at the turn of the century, and many important art movements emerged during this time - most notably Cubism, Impressionism, and Art Nouveau.

Montana artist Tracy Linder's series of Tractor Hides (pictured above) will also be on exhibit. Raised on a sugar beet farm, her work references the importance and history of family farming and ranching. Linder will be artist in residence at the Shelton Studio July 14-18 for Paint Pony Express.

Lia Cook: The Embedded Portrait features 20 works by American textile artist Lia Cook. Using old family photographs, slides and video stills, Cook merges the visual with the physical in monumental sized weavings. The pieces in this exhibition are part of five different series, each of which demonstrates a different weaving technique.

A full list of events and programs can be found on the Art Museum website: www.uwyo.edu/artmuseum or for more information, please call 307-766-6622. Up to date announcements will be posted here throughout the summer!

Last Week to See the Exhibition "The Disappeared/Los Desaparecidos"

Sara Maneiro's photographs of teeth, titled Berenice's Grimace / Mueca de Berenice is on view at the University of Wyoming Art Museum. The exhibition The Disappeared / Los Desaparecidos will close on Saturday, May 9th.

This is the final week to view the exhibition, The Disappeared / Los Desaparecidos at the University of Wyoming Art Museum. The exhibition will close on Saturday, May 9th. The museum will be open this week, 10 am - 5 pm, through Saturday. The Disappeared / Los Desaparecidos features the work of 26 Latin American artists who through their artwork, explore themes of memory, remembering, and metaphor. Utilizing various different techniques, each of these artists is responding to the military dictatorships, violence and murder that occurred in numerous Latin American countries in the mid-to-late 20th century.

Information about the exhibition is available in English and Spanish, and a bi-lingual cell phone audio tour is also available, free of charge.