Art

Not many American impressionists depicted the West. Most painted the East coast and Europe. But Karen McWhorter, the curator of the Whitney Western Art Museum, said one American impressionist, John Henry Twachtman, painted a series of Yellowstone National Park. 

The Brinton Museum sits on the historic Circle A Ranch at the base of the Bighorn Mountains. Named after the ranch owner, Bradford Brinton, the museum prides itself on an extensive collection of Western and American Indian art. Recently, the magazine True West announced it as the top western art museum of 2020. Ken Schuster, the Brinton's director and chief curator, spoke with Catherine Wheeler about what the honor means for the museum. 

A new documentary revealing one Marine's experience of the Vietnam War is screening in Cheyenne at the Terry Bison Ranch Drive-In on Sunday, July 19 at 9 p.m.

Last year was the launch of the Wyoming Art Drop, a curated box of six unique pieces from local artists that can be shipped nationwide. Wyoming Public Radio's Megan Feighery spoke to creator Lori Hunter about tourism, upcycling and the unique pressures facing Wyoming artists. She says the first obstacle is location.

Sally James Farnham was a sculptor from a prominent family in upstate New York. Farnham didn’t start sculpting until she was 32.

Being gay in Wyoming can be challenging, but LGBTQ activist, and performing artist, Andrew Munz has decided to stay and try to make things better. Wyoming Public Radio's Megan Feighery spoke to Munz about art, activism, and growing up in the cowboy state.

Charles Carey Rumsey was an American sculptor who is most well known for depicting polo players and equestrian subjects. He was a pretty well known polo player himself. But occasionally, Rumsey went down the Western theme, depicting bison and horses. 

Last month, musician John Sidle set up a video camera in his home to perform live on YouTube at the Jackson Hole Hootenanny. The Hootenanny, or The Hoot, is an acoustic musical showcase performed every Monday night at Dornan's, a local bar and restaurant just outside the entrance to Grand Teton National Park. And except for extreme weather it's never been canceled. Then the pandemic happened.

The auditorium at the Sheridan VA Health Care System is a space for veterans to come, shoot pool, play board games, or just hang out.

But on Tuesday, March 3, it was serving as an art gallery. The VA is hosting its annual Creative Arts Festival that allows veterans from across the state to submit a wide range of artistic creations.

A Pinedale artist has a new show on display that was inspired by…roadkill. Cristy Anspach has spent the last two and a half years making ceramic jars to honor each animal killed on her route between Boulder and Pinedale. Over the course of eight months she made 110 jars. The show, titled "Unintended Consequences" will be on display at the Mystery Print Gallery until March 1.

Anspach talked to Wyoming Public Radio's Megan Feighery about finding beauty in death and how every creature deserves respect.

Governor Mark Gordon honored five Wyoming artists with the 2019 Governor's Arts Award, including visual artist and graphic designer Robert Martinez. Martinez is Northern Arapaho and Chicano, and grew up in a family of talented painters and beadworkers on the Wind River Reservation. He draws and paints portraits using bright, contrasting tones in a style intended to challenge the viewer's assumptions of what Native people and Native art should look like.

"You see many depictions of Natives as black and white or sepia toned, and that connotes to a dead culture," Martinez said. "So, one of the things I was doing with this bright paint was I wanted to show that we're not dead, we're alive and strong."

Wyoming Public Radio's Savannah Maher visited Martinez at his studio outside of Riverton and talked with him about his work and what it means to be one of only a few people of color ever awarded the state's top artistic honor.

The Plains Indian Museum doesn't only collect art from the past. Rebecca West, the curator of the museum, said their job is also to collect contemporary art like those of John Isaiah Pepion, of the Blackfeet nation in northern Montana.

It isn't easy keeping America's folk arts alive, but the Wyoming Arts Council has been doing their best to preserve Wyoming's. Each year, they give out grants to folk artists who pass on their knowledge to the next generation.

Jack Mease braids rawhide to create beautiful horse tack like reins and hackamores, and now has taught numerous students, including Soliana Abernathy. Mease and Abernathy were among last year's recipients of the Wyoming Arts Council's Folk and Traditional Art Mentoring grant. You can see Mease's work at the State Museum in Cheyenne.

Wyoming Public Radio's Melodie Edwards visited Mease's workshop in Lander.

Wyoming has been working towards economic diversification and one way to do that is to make Wyoming's culture, arts and humanities programs a bigger part of the effort. Recently the former CEO of the Wyoming Business Council, Shawn Reese, joined Wyoming Humanities to further this effort. The Director of Wyoming Humanities is Shannon Smith and she and Reese explain the idea to Wyoming Public Radio's Bob Beck.

The Charles Russell painting titled “When Law Dulls The Edge of Chance” depicts two North-West Mounted Police or Monty's disarming two horse thieves. Karen McWhorter, the curator of the Whitney Western Art Museum, said the painting has had many different names and one of those included the phrase “horse thieves”

Beads were one of the main products traded between Native Americans and Europeans. For museum curators and historians, the presence of beads on objects helps place an approximate time frame of when it was created.