ART AND FIREWORKS FOR THE FOURTH: The Ucross Foundation always invites the Wyoming Arts Council staff to attend its annual fireworks extravaganza. I’ve never made it, since I’m usually involved in Fourth of July family events such as picnics, lawn mowing, camping, baseball, or just hanging out. This year I’m a resident at the Jentel Artist Residency Program, just a few miles and a road-kill porcupine away from Ucross. So we writers and artists piled in a van and joined the 3,000-plus people from Sheridan and Johnson counties arriving at Ucross on Fourth of July Eve for food, music, and fireworks. The FFA folks make a fine steak sandwich, and Jalan Crossland and Band provided some fine folk and alt-country tunes out on the lawn, still wet from an evening sun shower. Our first stop was the exhibit at the Big Red Barn Gallery. It featured Lindy Smith’s “sunprints” or “kallitypes” made by exposing native plants to the sun on special photo papers. Some of the prints seem otherworldly (the “Wyoming Grass” series) but you see some of these weeds and grasses every day on the prairie. As Tom McGuane writes in his catalog essay: “Their shapes seem to belong to dreams while for all their unexpectedness they are no more accidental than dreams. What we see emerges from the lives they’ve lived in deep time; their importance hangs over them as an aura.” The evening at Ucross ended with the promised fireworks. But you can view Smith’s sunprints at Big Red though Sept. 15. Call 307-737-2291 for hours. And McGuane’s new book of stories, Gallatin Canyon, should be out any day from Knopf.
- posted by Michael Shay @ 9:16 AM