FIREWORKS EXTRAVAGANZA AT UCROSS: The Ucross Foundation will host its 25th annual Independence Day Fireworks Extravaganza on Monday, July 3. Festivities will begin at 5 p.m. with an exhibition in the Art Gallery entitled Leaves and Light: Sunprints from the Ucross Ranch, which features photographs by Lindy Smith (see details below). The Jalan Crossland Band will perform from 7:30-9:30 p.m. The evening will culminate with a fireworks display just after dark, around 9:30 p.m. Parking is only $2 per car, with proceeds donated to the Clearmont Volunteer Fire Department. The Foundation is located at 30 Big Red Lane in Ucross, 30 miles southeast of Sheridan and 18 miles northeast of Buffalo, one-half mile east of the junction of Highways 14 and 16.

EXHIBITION FEATURES MCGUANE ESSAY: View the art of acclaimed photographer Lindy Smith and read the prose of award-wining writer Thomas McGuane from 5-7 p.m. on Monday, July 3, in Ucross’s Big Red Barn Art Gallery. Smith’s work has appeared in Orion, Big Sky Journal, Doubletake and other publications, as well in the book Straight West: Portraits and Scenes from American Ranch Life, published by Lyons Press in 2000. In the past two years, Smith worked at Ucross as an artist-in-residence, collecting plants from its 22,000-acre ranch and developing images in a process that dates to the 1840s, of printing under glass in sunlight. As she says, “I discovered that chemical interactions between the liquids in the plants and the metal salts on the papers yielded colors ranging from gold to brown to burgundy to black.” McGuane has contributed the exhibition essay. The Montana writer is the author of the novel, The Cadence of Grass, and the forthcoming story collection, Gallatin Canyon, among many other books.
- posted by Michael Shay @ 2:25 PM