This fall, Georgia and Dave Rowswell went on a 10-day road trip and set up shop at four state parks around Wyoming. The couple were part of an artists in residence program through the Arts in the Parks initiative, put on by the Wyoming Arts Council and the Wyoming State Parks Department.
Over the course of the trip, the two visited Curt Gowdy, Guernsey, Glendo and Seminoe State Parks, making art outside and sharing their work with other visitors.
Georgia’s a self-employed studio artist who specializes in fibers, and Dave’s a retired high school art teacher with a passion for crafting rawhide jewelry and colorful bolo ties. The couple also run a jewelry business called Rawhide Studio and just opened a new gallery in downtown Cheyenne called Blue Door Arts.
Georgia and Dave’s creations from their state parks residency will be on display at the Wyoming State Museum in Cheyenne from Nov. 7 through Dec. 19.
Wyoming Public Radio’s Hannah Habermann chatted with the couple about their travels, what they made during the residency and how they first got together.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Georgia Rowsell: I had graduated college, broken up with a boyfriend, and I was sort of footloose and fancy free. I had an aunt and uncle that lived in Africa, so I went to Africa for a year.
Then when I came back, I had a cousin named Donna and she said, ‘Oh, I met this guy named Dave. I don't know if you want to date him or anything, but he's an artist.’
That was kind of the beginning. We met in Canandaigua, New York. I was trying to date somebody else at the time, but Dave had so many fun ideas and he was —
Dave Rowswell: Persistent!
GR: Persistent!
DR: I'd give her a call and say, ‘Hey, do you want to go? There is an art show that's going on at one of the local colleges.’ And she’d go, ‘Well, no, I'm kind of busy.’ And I'd say, ‘Well, how about maybe tomorrow night?’ And she’d go, ‘Well, I think I’ve got something going on then, too.’ And I’d go, ‘Well, I don't know. I mean, I think it opens at like six in the morning. Are you doing anything at six in the morning tomorrow?’
GR: Oh, okay! I just gotta say yes to this guy.
Hannah Habermann: During this residency, you set up shop at four different parks around Wyoming. Describe some of the pieces you made.
GR: What I knew I was going to work on is a series I call “Riding the Range,” which puts together a part of a map of Wyoming with the corresponding image that I make with textiles using discarded clothing and other household textiles.
I work small because the way I work is time intensive. I went out and took a lot of photos, so I had a lot of subject matter to work with. On location, I did some colored pencils, thumbnail sketches.
Then I had to really think through how I was going to work! We ended up buying this 12’ by 12’ circular screened-in tent, which we dubbed the ‘art yurt.’ In there, I set up a table and all of my fabric and adhesives and things that I needed to get into the textile work.
In the end, I have two pieces from each of the four places that we visited.
DR: Before we left on our trip to Curt Gowdy, I went down to our local Harbor Freight and bought a bunch of sandpaper, 220 grit wet dry sandpaper. I got some chalk at Hobby Lobby and I got some charcoal and erasers. I was all set to go and I thought to myself, ‘I could also get some blackboard paint and paint that.’ So I got some of that and painted up some boards, and off we went!
I've always enjoyed the big hoodoos in Curt Gowdy, so that's what I worked on first. When we got to Guernsey, there were different types of rocks, but they were rock faces and stuff, so that inspired me. And when we got to Glendo, they also had some interesting rock formations, so that became my thing.
I enjoyed working with the material, but found that the sandpaper really didn't hold the chalk or the charcoal very tightly. Even when you applied a layer of a fixative to it, it still tended to shift and move. So I came home with a bunch of drawings that were kind of covered in a white dust, maybe gray dust, chalk cover.
That's the thing with being experimental with materials, is sometimes they surprise you, and sometimes they surprise you with negatives that you didn't anticipate!
HH: Did you have any standout interactions with people as you were making art?
DR: I was at a Civilian Conservation Corps building called “The Castle” in Guernsey and I was drawing. Somebody came up and she asked to see my work. We talked for a while and it ended up that she was from Webster, New York, probably about 45 minutes from where George and I lived most recently when we were in western New York.
It was just a real positive interaction with somebody that was exploring Wyoming. They were traveling through, while we had lived in Wyoming for 17 years. It was really fun just to be the expert on Wyoming.
GR: We got a shower in Guernsey, because the person that was in charge said, ‘Oh, we've got a shower! I'll turn the water on for you.’ I said, ‘Great!’ And they put our food in her refrigerator.
DR: We got to Seminoe and pulled into our camp spot, and I'm sitting in the driver's seat, getting ready to move to an area that might be a little flatter. Georgia gets out to guide me and she hears this hissing noise at the exact same moment that I noticed the check air pressure light going on in her car.
We had a severe flat and we were 45 minutes outside of Rawlins, the closest place where anybody could help us out with it. Georgia calls our son-in-law to see if maybe he can help bail us out, and then she's talking with the ranger who was there helping us, and he says, ‘Noam, does he own a food truck in Cheyenne?’
Georgia says, ‘That's our Noam!’ We arranged to have Noam bring some of his world-famous hummus and we had a big luncheon with the ranger and his wife and their kid, and our grandson and our son-in-law [Noam].
The rangers are really there to help make your experience the best it can be. I think they’re mostly there to make sure that you are going to enjoy your time and that you're going to go back to wherever you live and tell people what great parks we have here in Wyoming.
HH: Zooming out a little bit, is there a specific moment from the residency that really stands out to you?
GR: We both want people to look at our work and enjoy it. But also get a desire to go out there and experience the parks.
DR: Curiosity!
GR: Ah, we're big on curiosity. We opened a new gallery [Blue Door Arts] just last Saturday, and our three watch words are creativity, curiosity and community.
I'd love to see those three things happen on our opening night [of the artists in residency exhibit]. We're going to set up the art yurt and then set up the way we worked as a public demonstration. I think it's important for people to see how artists work and the time and experience that goes into creating work. It doesn't just happen overnight.
HH: In your opinion, what is the relationship between art and community?
GR: I believe that the arts are really important to a community, that they make it rich, fun and interesting. I think that art needs to be in our schools to really reach out to children, especially those who don't fit into other categories. I think it's super important to creating community and keeping people engaged and curious.
DR: It adds a dimension that just brings a richness to people's lives. I think that when you understand what other people are trying to do, in particular with the visual arts, I think that it adds this layer of understanding of what it is that you're seeing around you.
Artists can help them to see, to build understanding and to find a commonality in what it means to be a person.
GR: I think it starts conversations too. People talk about places they've been, if they've seen the work that we've done and they understand the space, or if it's new to them.
One thing that happened to me a long time ago when we lived in South Georgia, I had a show and a friend of ours came down to see it in Valdosta, Georgia.
After the show, she came up to me and said, ‘Georgia, I never thought we lived in a particularly pretty place, but now that I've seen your work, I'm going to go home and look at the landscape through your eyes.’
And I never forgot that. I thought, ‘Wow, that is powerful, that you can help somebody see the beauty around you where you live, even though they may not pay much attention to it on a day-to-day basis.
