Laramie Mural Project

Meghan Meier, Grainery Grove

Photo courtesy of the UW Art Museum

Grainery Grove is almost done and truly does transform the alley way beside the Whole Earth Grainery!  Our thanks to Meghan for a great addition to our downtown environment and to Vince Arbor for working with the Laramie Mural Project.

Vince has been a long-time enthusiast for murals and street art.  A mural from 1976 remains adjacent to Meghan's new work and a truck behind Whole Earth Grainery became the canvas for two other local street artists a few years ago with Vince's blessing.  

In the coming weeks, we expect to see Talal Cockar complete his mural, Tierra y Libertad, just a few doors down at the Big Hollow Food Co-op and to see the third mural of the Laramie Mural Project get underway.

The Laramie Mural Project is a partnership between Laramie Mains Street Associates and the University of Wyoming Art Museum.  It has been funded in part by the Guthrie Family Foundation, the Wyoming Art Council, the Laramie Beautification Committee, and the City of Laramie.

With the new academic year upon us, you will see some changes in the Art Museum.  Our long-time store manager, Rosie Chapp, is retiring at the end of August.  Her smiling face, helpful assistance, and buying skills will be missed and we wish her all the best in retirement. 

This fall we will be transitioning the Museum Store into a smaller, more manageable operation.  It will feature items produced by the museum such as exhibition catalogs and posters, logo items such as lapel pins and collar shirts, and the occasional monograph or other items important to the museum's exhibition and collection programs.  An inventory display will be created in the Art Museum Lobby after the September 9 opening (6 – 8 pm).  In the coming month, an online Museum Store will convey the full breadth of available inventory.

The space currently allocated to the store will become a new Resource Room.  This multi-use space will have information on artists and exhibitions, art magazines, and art-related monographs and exhibition catalogs.  Many of these are hard to find, offering valuable information for research, reference, and study.  Eventually, the Resource Room will have tables and chairs to accommodate class use with the curator of collections, Nicole Crawford.  With prior planning, art objects from the collection may be transported to this room for class discussion..  We also intend to add several desks for museum interns and graduate assistants as well as several computer stations for student and public use that will significantly advance our outreach across and beyond campus.

While we are disappointed by the need to reduce the scope of our Museum Store, we are excited to advance the Art Museum's mission by adding a publicly accessible meeting and resource venue to our program. 

Grainery Grove Nears Completion

Meghan Meier's Grainery Grove

Photo courtesy of the UW Art Museum

Laramie artist Meghan Meier is nearly complete with her mural at Whole Earth Grainery on Ivinson!  Not only has she created an intriguing work for the site, she been able to respect an existing work (to the left of her mural) from 1973!  

Meier's work is part of the Laramie Mural Project which is an extension of Sculpture: A Wyoming Invitational, a temporary exhibition of large scale public art that originated in 2008 by the University of Wyoming Art Museum.  The Laramie Mural Project is a partnership between the museum and Laramie Main Street Associates.

The Art Museum and Main Street are hard at work trying to finalize at least three more murals this year.  The project pairs an artist with a building owner to enable enlivening our historic downtown through art.  Funds have been provided by the Guthrie Family Foundation, the Wyoming Arts Council, the Laramie Beautification Committee, and the City of Laramie.

Final Week to See Two Exhibitions

Serena Perrone (American, b. 1979), March 15, 2009 9:13 am, 2010, intaglio, monotype, silkscreen, letterpress, 11 x 15 inches, courtesy of the artist and Cade Tompkins Projects

Saturday, Aug. 27 will be the last day to see the exhibitions, The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States and, Serena Perrone: A Volcano Pilgrim in Exchange for Fire at the University of Wyoming Art Museum.

The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States features works collected by a retired postal clerk and his wife, a former librarian, who spent 45 years collecting contemporary American art and amassed a collection of over 2,000 pieces. Recognizing their collection would be too unwieldy for one institution, they developed a program through the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. called “Fifty Works for Fifty States” that distributed 50 works of art to public collections in each of the 50 states. The UW Art Museum was chosen as the Wyoming participant in the program. The works are representative of the Vogels’ interest in Minimalist, Conceptualist and post-1960s art.

Serena Perrone: A Volcano Pilgrim in Exchange for Fire chronicles the tragic loss of UW professor and poet Craig Arnold in April of 2009 through a series of printsthat layer color, line and text. The 20 prints on view represent Arnold’s twenty days of travel in Japan where he was studying volcanoes for a new book. Laid over the images of sky, earth or volcano is text taken from Arnold’s travel blog.

For more information about exhibitions at the Art Museum, call 307.766.6622 or visit our website. The Art Museum is open 10 am - 5 pm on Saturdays and admission is free.

Grainery Grove Mural Progresses

Grainery Grove by Meghan Meier

Photo courtesy of the UW Art Museum

Artist Meghan Meier continues to work on her mural at Whole Earth Grainery.  Grainery Grove will be completed in the coming weeks and will be the second of as many as five murals to be created in downtown Laramie this fall.  The Laramie Mural Project is a partnership between Laramie Main Street Associates and the UW Art Museum.

 

Laramie Mural Project Featured in the Boomerang

Check out today's edition of the Laramie Boomerang for an article about the Laramie Mural Project. The Boomerang spoke with Trey Sherwood, Executive Director of Laramie Main Street and Susan Moldenhauer, Director and Chief Curator of the the Art Museum.

As one mural by Talal Cockar nears completion, a second by Meghan Meier has begun! Keep checking the blog and our Facebook page for updates!

Laramie Mural Project Advances

Meghan Meier's mural is the second in the Laramie Mural Project

Photo courtesy of the UW Art Museum

 

Talal Cockar's mural nears completion

Photo courtesy of the UW Art Museum

Two murals are now underway for the Laramie Mural Project, an extension of the UW Art Museum's public art exhibition, Sculpture: A Wyoming Invitational.  Last night Meghan Meier started to work on her mural at Whole Earth Grainery.  Titled Grainery Grove, she says of her design concept: One of my favorite things about living in Laramie is how easy it is to get to the mountains.  And there has always been something special about finding yourself suddenly in an aspen grove.  So I thought I could contribute something along those line to downtown, people could stumble int an aspen grove . . . and appreciate how lucky we are in where we live and the resources we have."

Our sincere thanks to Vince Arbour and Whole Earth Grainery for his enthusiasm in contributing the wallspace for Grainery Grove!

Meanwhile Talal Cockar nears completion on his large mural at Big Hollow Food Co-op.  

The Laramie Mural Project is a partnership with Laramie Main Street Associates and funded in part by the Wyoming Arts Council, Guthrie Family Foundation, Laramie Beautification Committee, and the City of Laramie.

New Exhibition of Photographs by Eliot Porter Opens on Saturday

Eliot Porter (American, 1901-1990), Aztec Creek, Glen Canyon, Utah – Blue/Gold Colors Reflected, 1962, dye transfer print, 9-9/16 x 8-3/16 inches, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Melvin Wolf, University of Wyoming Art Museum Collection, 1984.195.19

A new exhibition featuring the landscape photographs of Eliot Porter will open this Saturday, August 20 in the Rotunda Gallery of the UW Art Museum. The West of Eliot Porter: Images of Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah features images created using a dye transfer printing technique. Porter created a new way of viewing the world by introducing color to landscape photography, which today has become commonplace. He began working in color in 1939, long before his fellow photographers accepted the medium.

Trained as a chemical engineer and a medical doctor, Porter began his career in photography in the early 1930s by making black and white prints in his spare time while working as a bacteriologist and teaching at Harvard University. An exhibition in 1938 at Alfred Stieglitz's gallery prompted Porter to leave Harvard and pursue photography full-time. Porter's work energized environmentalists, drew accolades from museums, and created the foundations for today's color nature photography.

The Art Museum is open 10 am - 5 pm on Saturday and admission is free. For more information about this or any other exhibitions, please visit the Art Museum's webpage, or call 307.766.6622.

Big Hollow Food Co-op Mural Update

Talal Cockar mural at the end of this week

Photo courtesy of the UW Art Museum

By the end of this week, street artist Talal Cockar has made good progress in sketching out and filling in background color for his mural at the Big Hollow Food Co-op. 

Laramie Mural Project Update

Talal Cockar mural at noon today

Photo courtesy of the UW Art Museum

Talal Cockar is making progress on his downtown mural. Yesterday, he had the help of Cathedral Home students to begin painting in the background color for the work. 

Meghan Meier sketch for Whole Earth Grainery

Photo courtesy of the artist

Today we also received the sketches for the mural planned for Whole Earth Grainery.  The artist is Meghan Meier of Laramie and she plans to begin working on site in the coming days.  

 

We are most grateful to Vince Arbor and Whole Earth Grainery for his interest in being part of this important project to improve downtown Laramie.

Art Museum and Laramie Main Street Alliance Announce Laramie Mural Project

 Work begins on mural at Big Hollow Food Co-op

Photo courtesy of the UW Art Museum

A partnership between the Laramie Main Street Alliance and the Art Museum will result in as many as five murals by local artists in downtown Laramie.  The Laramie Mural Project is an extension of the Art Museum's Sculpture: A Wyoming Invitational exhibition of public art that opened in 2008.  

 Sketch of Mural Design by Talal Cockar

Photo courtesy of the artist

The first mural is being created by Talal Cockar for the Big Hollow Food Co-op at 119 S First St.  Conversations with the Co-op led to a design that recognizes natural foods and agriculture.  Cockar's title for the work is Tierra y Libertad and is a tribute to the land and to the people that work it.  

The Laramie Mural Project is made possible by the Patricia R. Guthrie Family Foundation, Laramie Beautification Committee, and the City of Laramie in partnership with the Art Museum and Laramie Main Street Alliance.  We are most grateful to Big Hollow Food Co-op for their interest in the Laramie Mural Project and in Talal Cockar's mural design.

Laramie: A Gem City Atlas on View at Coe Library

The exhibition, Laramie: A Gem City Atlas is now on view at Coe Library. The original exhibition was shown at the Art Museum in the spring and is the result of a collaboration with the MFA in Creative Writing Program, eminent writer in residence Rebecca Solnit, and various students, artists, and community members.

The pieces in the exhibition are maps that re-think Laramie and the surrounding area, focusing not solely on geography but also on goods, services, and people. Artwork that was made in response to the topics of the maps are also included.

Coe Library has a special exhibitions space (pictured above) on the 3rd floor that allows them to exhibit and showcase art. Laramie: A Gem City Atlas will be on view through September. The cell phone audio tour is also available and features the mapmakers talking about their work.

For more information about Coe Library, their exhibitions, or their special exhibitions space, please visit their website.

Final Week to See Two Great Exhibitions

This is the view looking up into the center of the spiral in Etsuko Ichikawa's installation at the UW Art Museum.

This is the final week to view two exhibitions at the UW Art Museum. Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865): Japanese Kabuki Portraits from the Art Museum Collection and Etsuko Ichikawa: NACHI - between the eternal and the ephemeral - will be open through Saturday.

Featured in the Rotunda Gallery, Kunisada's color woodblock prints of Japanese Kabuki theater actors are an important visual record of these individuals who might otherwise only be known by name today. While some of Kunisada's contemporaries such as Hokusai and Hiroshige might better known today, in 19th century Japan, Kunisada was regarded as one of the most prolific, profitably, and successful artists of the time.

Etsuko Ichikawa's installation, NACHI has been popular with visitors who enjoy the different atmosphere she has created in the gallery with the spiral of scorched cotton threads, audio components, video of dancers, and the 14 foot long pyrographs (drawings made from the mark of molten glass on paper). Ichikawa was inspired by the Nachi waterfall in Japan, which has been regarded as a shrine for generations.

Come visit the Art Museum before these two exhibitions close! We're open 10 am - 5 pm today through Saturday and admission is always free!