New public art project to be dedicated at fairgrounds on Aug. 16

Wyomingarts visited sculptor David Alan Clark's studio in Lander in June to view his work-in-progress, "The Champion." He was almost finished with it and was preparing to ship it to the Eagle Bronze Foundry for the bronze to be poured. The project is funded by the state's 1 Percent for Art/Art in Public Buildings program administered by the Wyoming Arts Council.

Here's a press release about the installation of the statue:

Join staff members of the Wyoming State Fair at 10 a.m. on Monday, August 16, as they celebrate the installation of a new sculpture at the State Fair Grounds just behind the horse barns.

"The Champion" is an over-life-sized bronze of a rancher carrying his daughter up on his shoulder in triumph. The daughter holds a Grand Champion rosette up high and wears a big grin. The rancher wears a smile of his own as he enjoys the fact that his daughter is following in his footsteps at the fair (note his own champion belt buckle).

"The sculpture celebrates the excitement of families competing at the state fair," said the artist, Green River native David Alan Clark.

Clark has installed monumental bronzes in Green River, Cheyenne and Ft. Bridger as well as across the country. You can see samples of his work on his website, www.davidalanclark.com.

Models for the sculpture were Wyoming residents Rhett Abernathy (currently playing arena football for the Casper Cavalry) and Kylee McConnell, the daughter of Mike and Angie McConnell of Lander.

The sculpture was cast at Eagle Bronze Foundry in Lander, making this an all-Wyoming project. Funding for the sculpture is from the state's 1% for Art/Art in Public Buildings program that dedicates a percentage of new construction budgets for art in or near state-funded buildings. The program is administered by the Wyoming Arts Council.

The State Fair opens on Saturday, Aug. 14, and continues through Saturday, Aug. 21. For schedule, go to http://www.wystatefair.com/docs/2010/2010Schedule.pdf

For more information on the 1% for Art/Art in Public Buildings Program, or other Wyoming Arts Council programs, call 307-777-7742.

For information on “The Champion” sculpture, call the artist at 307-332-0176.

Ji Eun Kim transforms snow fences, grain elevators and cabins into 2-D artworks

Cheyenne artist (and 2009 Wyoming Arts Council intern) Ji Eun Kim is at the Jentel Artist Residency Program through June 13. She is at work on mural-size depictions of snow fences. She installed one of these during her spring residency in Nebraska City, Neb (shown in photo above). She is looking for a place to install a similar one in a Cheyenne storefront. The piece is 11 feet high and 24 feet long. If you know of a spot, contact Ji Eun through her blog at http://jieunkim25.blogspot.com/

Ji Eun will be one of the artists featured at "Jentel Presents" this evening (June 1), 5:30-7 p.m. at the Sheridan County Fulmer Public Library. Other presenters include Tom Sleigh (poet), Blas Falconer (poet), Ken Kelly (visual artist), Anne McCauley (visual artist) and Christine Gray (visual artist). The event is free and open to the public.


During her Nebraska residency at the Kimball Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, she was featured in the local paper. Here's the article:

By Grace Johnson
Nebraska City News Press

Some of Nebraska City’s most familiar structures provided inspiration for artist Ji Eun Kim as she completed her residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. Kim created giant renderings of both the Mayhew Cabin and the grain storage at DeBruce during her four-week stay which ended March 26.

“I love old structures,” Kim said. The Mayhew Cabin piece was created at the art center, while the mural depicting the grain storage appears on a storefront window across from the Courthouse to the north. Contact paper was applied to create the illustrations.

Kim, a painter and visual artist who was born in Seoul, South Korea, said she didn’t know anything about the Mayhew Cabin before she came to Nebraska City, but once she learned about its significance, she found parallels between the slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad in the 1850s and the North Korean refugees of today.

“When I see something, I automatically think of my own country and its history,” she said.
While at KHN, Kim created a large map of the route the slaves took, as well as a 3-dimensional map representing the travels of the North Korean refugees.

Kim met with Mayhew Cabin Director Bill Hayes as part of her research for the project.

“It is incredible to see how an artist can transform raw material into a piece of art, and that one of those things was inspired by a visit to the Mayhew Cabin,” Hayes said. “It is great to see an artist inspired by a simple log cabin. The very simple structure tells a very important story of how people escaped from slavery. People are still trying to escape injustice and oppression, like the refugees.”

As for the grain storage, Kim said she was initially fascinated by the structural aspect. “I just fell in love with the structure,” she said. “I was amazed by it.”

She said it’s also a “landmark” in Nebraska City that represents the local economy.

Kim has completed other residencies in small communities and enjoys making art from the structures that symbolize daily life in the area where she stays While in Vermont, for example, Kim created a piece based on a covered bridge.

“I want to take advantage of living in a rural place,” she said. “I’m inspired by the local area.”

Kim hopes the residents of Nebraska City will think more about the meaning behind the structures that have been fixtures in the town for many years.

“I want to get people here to see with fresh vision,” she said.

Copyright 2010 Nebraska City News-Press. Some rights reserved.

University of Wyoming Art Museum

Kwang-Young Chun: Aggregations, new work
Sept. 12 - Dec. 23, 2009
Kwang-Young Chun (Korean, b. 1944) makes intricate sculpture out of the recycled pages of old Korean books and medicine wrappers printed on mulberry paper. He wraps the handmade paper—inscribed with Korean characters— around thousands of Styrofoam tetrahedrons and other geometric forms that serve as the basic units of his compositions. The forms are then arranged in free-standing three-dimensional sculptures or mounted on the wall as two-dimensional low-reliefs.
Image: Kwang-Young Chun (Korean, b. 1944), Aggregation 08-AU022 (detail), 2008, mixed media, 14 ft x 8 ft diameter, photo courtesy of Aldrich Museum of Art

moss doesn't grow on rolling stones, a vision of nature by Brian Burkhardt
Sept. 12 - Nov. 14, 2009
Trained as an artist and an organic farmer, Burkhardt bridges art and ecology through works that explore adaptation and mutation (postulating that plant or animal species adapt or mutate to the needs of human beings and are influenced by technology in our contemporary environment), mimicry (species that adapt traits that offer greater chances for survival), symbiosis (neutral or parasitic relationships between species), and even symbiogenesis (radical evolutionary changes that create new species). In 2008, Burkhardt created a geodesic dome as artist studio installation for Art Basel Miami Beach. The dome, recent work, and examples of his flora and fauna series are planned for the exhibition. Burkhardt will also be creating a new work inspired by Wyoming's ecological environment.
Image: Brian Burkhardt (American, b. 1971), Dome, 2008, wood, galvanized aluminum, batten tape, greenhouse plastic, staples, MDF, screening, metal clips, 12 x 12 x 10 ft

Ichiro: A Life's Work of Netsuke, The Huey Shelton Collection
Sept. 5 - Dec. 23, 2009
Inada Ichiro (Japanese, 1891-1979) was an important 20th century netsuke artist. For centuries, the Japanese have used miniature sculptures hung by cords from the sash of their traditional garments such as the kimono to secure personal belongings in small pouches. Intricate and figurative, the netsuke reflect aspects of Japanese life.
Image: Inada Ichiro (Japanese, 1891-1977), Standing Farmer Sowing Seed, not dated, Ivory, 1-1/4 x 3/4 x 7/8 inches, Gift of Huey G. and Phyllis T. Shelton, University of Wyoming Art Museum Collection, 2009.5.108

www.uwyo.edu/artmuseum
www.uwartmuseum.blogspot.com

Museum and Museum Store Hours
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New Cultural Resources Intern

Miracle of Science, oil and ink jet print on canvas, 48"x48", 2008

My name is Ji Eun Kim, and I just started working at Wyoming Arts Council and The State Museum as a Cultural Resources intern. I was born in Korea and currently live in Cheyenne. I received a B.F.A and a M.F.A from Seoul National University, and recently received a M.F.A degree in painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. I completed a summer residency at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, and I've been awarded a full fellowship at Vermont Studio Center for a 4-week residency later this year.

The major interest of my work lies in capturing institutionalized aspects of ordinary life. My previous works focused on the ‘regulated landscape’ of Seoul, Korea. Upon moving to the US, I recognized how the different scale affected the land use pattern in contrast to Korea. While the repetitive cityscape of Seoul was a product of regulation, the homogenized landscape of suburbia is the result of safe investments made by developers, mimicking successes of previous projects.

The experience of living in the Metro Detroit area provides me the opportunity to rethink the meaning of development and to consider cities as whole organic systems in the post-industrial era. Downtown/suburb, shrinking city/growing city and urbanization/de-urbanization—these sound antonymous but are closely connected. This perception allows me to look into one place while thinking about any other place in that socio-economic context.

In my work, I’ve used collage to make a social comment on various levels. I employ collage as a compositional method in painting in general, and I experiment with paper-cut collage as a drawing. I recently started using object collage to show the details of developers’ material choices and the way our world is being constructed. Along with these collages, I juxtapose different painting styles, making reference to painting history. The way I construct paintings to using collage reflects my psychological position between two different cultures. Through these paintings, which are based on my fragmented and mixed cultural experience, I provide to my audience the experience of multi-spaces within the painting as well as multiple viewpoints about society.


Planned Obsolescence, oil, latex paint, shims, cardboard, boxes on canvas, 60"x70", 2009

Dream House, oil and grout on canvas, 60"x80", 2009

http://www.insaartspace.or.kr/exhibitionsEN.asp?idx=58

http://jieunkim25.blogspot.com/

Northwest College Korean Expo features arts & crafts, food and interactive games

The first Korean Expo will be held at Northwest College in Powell at the Dewitt Sudent Center on Thursday, Aug. 27, 6-9 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

It features an extensive Korean tasting menu, demonstrations of Korean arts and crafts, and interactive Korean game displays. The expo is jointly hosted by Glacier Bay Training of Ten Sleep and the Incheon 40, a group of visiting South Korean teachers who are studying English in Wyoming for a year.

FMI: Susan Watkins, 307.250.7073, Susan@eleutian.com