ART EXPRESS TO VISIT RAWLINS
University of Wyoming Art Museum’s Touring Exhibition On View
August 20, 2007 – The University of Wyoming Art Museum exhibition The Red Desert, Photographs by Martin Stupich will be on view in Rawlins, WY from September 3 to October 26, 2007 at Carbon County Museum.
Since 2000, Martin Stupich has photographed extensively in Wyoming’s Red Desert with an urgency to record it in the midst of its changing landscape. Through his images, we see an expansive landscape, diverse geology, evidence of the earliest human occupation, boom and bust towns, and present day industry. Collectively, an image of this place emerges, revealing the human history of our connection to the landscape – this landscape. It is a complicated and fragmented portrait, one that tugs at the perception that this is a barren place of little value and one that encourages us to look again at the Red Desert in all its wonder and wildness.
“For the past half a dozen millennia, the Red Desert has been merely on of thousands of million-acre wild tracts unfurling across the continent,” writes Stupich. “In its eons, it has been occupied, hunted, mined, grazed. Over millennia, the Desert has seen cycles of drought and generous rainfall, abundance of food and its scarcity, even basic shifts in climate. All these elements are part of the story of the Red Desert as we experience it today. The Desert has adapted to all that nature has demanded. And the adaptation has been at a pace set by natural cycles. . . But this is an uncommon time the life of the wild Red Desert country. The pace of the transformation from wilderness to commodity is unprecedented, and the pace accelerates.”
The Touring Exhibition Service is celebrating 25 years of service throughout Wyoming. It is made possible by the FMC Corporation and the National Advisory Board of the UW Art Museum. To view the traveling exhibit Red Desert, Photographs by Martin Stupich at Carbon County Museum September 3 to October 26, 2007, the hours are 10am to 6pm Tuesday thru Friday and 1pm to 5pm on Saturday, admission is free. They are located at 904 West Walnut in Rawlins, Wyoming, for more information contact 307-238-2740 or email carbonc@wyoming.com.
A symposium is planned in Laramie, Wyoming on September 28 and 29 in conjunction with this exhibit. Red Desert: Among Dead Volcanoes and Living Dunes will begin with an Art Talk by Martin Stupich. Additional presentations will follow with representatives from the arts, humanities, sciences, industry, environmental policy, and conservation. Seating is limited, Call 307-766-3477 for reservations.
Bringing the world of art to Wyoming, the Art Museum is located in the Centennial Complex at 22nd & Willett Drive in Laramie. The Museum and Museum Store are open through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, please call the Art Museum at 307-766-6622 or visit http://www.uwyo.edu/artmuseum.
