Think "local arts" on Small Business Saturday

On Nov. 24 (or any day) in Wyoming, shop small, shop locally, shop creatively. Check out the links on our sidebar for artists, performers and writers in your community. Buy a homegrown painting, a CD, a book! Buy your loved one a ticket to a local play or concert. See more ideas on the Small Business Saturday Facebook page. You can get free downloadable signage at www.shopsmall.com. 

And buy work by local artists and artisans

From http://www.facebook.com/NationalMainStreetCenter

Shop locally in downtown Laramie during Mistletoe Mosey

Night Heron Books is one of the Downtown Laramie businesses
 participating in the Mistletoe Mosey through  Dec. 23

From the Wyoming Lifestyle blog:

Have you purchased your Mistletoe Mosey button in Downtown Laramie yet? You can learn more about the program in our upcoming winter issue of Wyoming Lifestyle Magazine, but in the meantime, here’s some information about one of Downtown Laramie’s energetic and successful programs that links the business owners together, as well as with the community!

Primed for an enthusiastic repeat of 2010’s success, the Mistletoe Mosey was launched on Black Friday (Nov. 25) and will run until 6 p.m. on Dec. 23.  The program is simple, and a lot of fun:  purchase a button with your favorite number on it, and search through 50 participating businesses (buttons can be purchased for $5 at any participating business).  Match the number on your button to the number displayed at one of the stores for a chance to win a $50 prize!  You’ll also be entered into a drawing for $1,000 in downtown gift certificates. The Grand Prize Drawing will take place at the First Street Plaza in Downtown Laramie on December 24 at 11 a.m.  Businesses will also be offering extended hours on Tuesdays during December – shop until 7 p.m. on these days for extra time to search for that number! Participating is easy and fun – plus you can take care of your holiday shopping and support the local economy at the same time.

As a thank you for shopping local, bring your gifts to the Laramie Main Street Alliance office at 207 Grand Ave. for free gift wrapping Dec. 10-23, Monday through Saturday, 2-6 p.m. and Dec. 24, 10 a.m.-1 p.m.

Be sure to visit Downtown Laramie on Facebook and if you’re in Laramie, get your button today! Whether you’re in Laramie or not, remember to SHOP LOCALLY and give your friends & neighbors your business whenever you can this holiday season!

Open Window Literary magazine debuts Dec. 20 at Night Heron Books in downtown Laramie

Lori Howe sends this news:

We are excited to announce that the first issue of Open Window literary magazine will debut on Tuesday, Dec. 20. We invite everyone to help us celebrate with a gala opening and reading at Night Heron Books in downtown Laramie. Please join us for appetizers and drinks in the Night Heron Café from 6-7 p.m., and enjoy hearing our authors read their work in the salon upstairs from 7-8:30 p.m. This event is free and open to the public.

Here is the list of readers:

Bret Norwood
Hanz Olson
Thomas Glasco (Poet Laureate)
Aaron Holst
Bridget Hardy
Lindsay Sweley
Michael Basinger
Melissa Lamey
Caleb Bristol
Dylan Robinson
Oscar Lilley
Sunnie Gaylord
Samantha Pratt
Jason Deiss
Kade Hornbuckle


Visit Open Window on Facebook. 

Arts Incubator of the Rockies may help young Wyoming creatives find ways to stay in the state

Dance Theatre at University Center for the Arts at CSU

Editor's Note: This is the second post in a two-part series about the Arts Incubator of the Rockies (AIR) project.


Three Fort Collins, Colo., entities have banded together to create the Arts Incubator of the Rockies. State arts agency staffers (including the WAC’s Michael Shay and Rita Basom) joined them last week because we’re all trying to look ahead rather than behind. Our futures depend on it.

Traditional art forms are on the decline, and have been for at least a decade. Symphonies, opera, ballet, art museums, and all the rest see declining attendance. The audiences that remain are older. Expenses continue to climb. 

On the other hand, art schools continue to crank out record numbers of artists and writers and musicians. The supply side is thriving. The traditional demand side is shrinking. But a survey by Julliard shows that only 10 percent of music grads stay in the industry.

Beet Street in Fort Collins is trying to breathe some new life into both the creation and the presentation of the arts. They are joined in this regional endeavor by the CSU School of the Arts and the City of Fort Collins. They were partners in a successful National Endowment for the Arts' Our Town grant that brings $100,000 to the AIR effort. The Western States Arts Federation in Denver and nine state arts agencies gathered in F.C. last week to discuss our involvement.

In our previous post, we outlined some of the core and potential programs that will be addressed by AIR. The major physical effort will be the renovation of the old Carnegie Library into a regional arts center.

WAC staffers toured the building on Thursday. It's one of a cluster of historic buildings in City Park. Next door is the sprawling county library, which once was housed in the Carnegie Building, as was the case in hundreds of American towns and cities.

Exhibits, archives and storage for the Fort Collins Museum are now crammed into the Carnegie. All of it, along with the staff, will move to the new 47,000-square-foot Fort Collins Museum and Discovery Science Center by the summer. This new public-private partnership will feature interactive exhibits that blend history and science. It also has a new Digital Dome Theatre that is part planetarium and part IMAX

Meanwhile, back at the Carnegie, Beet Street's Beth Flowers tells us about the plans for the space. It will feature physical classrooms, a virtual learning center, an AIR resource center, Beet Street offices, black box theatre, gallery and other public spaces. The city owns the building so will maintain and manage it. CSU will conduct community-based continuing ed courses as well as classes that will feed into its new minor in Arts Business and Leadership and Master of Music in Arts Leadership and Administration.

Yet to be decided is how neighboring states fit into the equation. We spent two days last week discussing options in the newly renovated Lincoln Center. Wyoming trains scads of artists at its lone four-year public university and its many community colleges. How will AIR serve them? 

Architect's drawing of exterior of new
UW visual arts building

The University of Wyoming could have its own CSU-like "A" for "Agricultural" on a mountain if one were close enough to campus. And that "A" could stand for "Arts." UW is in the midst of a complete revamping of its arts infrastructure. The massive new visual arts building, located strategically next to the award-winning UW Art Museum, will open in January. The old fine arts building will get a complete renovation over the course of the new two years. The English Department's creative writing program (ranked No. 30 in the nation by Poets & Writers mag) continues to be housed in the oldest building on campus (go figure).

Beefed-up endowments bring amazing performers, artists and writers to campus. Internationally-renowned dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones wraps up his UW residency this month. Rebecca Solnit, Camille Dungy, Colson Whitehead and Salman Rushdie have taught young writers the past few years. Visual artists such as Jesus Moroles, Deborah Butterfield and Ursula von Rydingsvard have taught at UW and their sculptures have been featured on campus.

But the problem remains. UW does not have an arts administration degree program. And students still get a limited exposure to the business side of the arts. Some will get teacher certification and teach. Some will go on to master's and Ph.D. programs and teach. Many others will want to make a living as artists and will have to figure it out for themselves.

We in Wyoming have an option that other regional players don't have -- we're right down the road from the AIR project in Fort Collins. Those arts business courses will be nearby. Some will be offered online, too. But since you're already traveling down snow-clogged roads to go to the hookah bar, why not take a workshop while you're there?

At last week's meeting, we talked extensively about ways that state arts agencies such as the Wyoming Arts Council could help sponsor AIR courses. Wyoming students could attend physical classes in F.C. Or maybe some of those courses could be offered at UW in some sort of cooperative agreement with border rival CSU. We talked about a partnership among regional land-grant universities -- all of our states have one.

We have hundreds of talented artists in Wyoming. We also have a problem with our college grads moving out of state to start careers in Denver, Salt Lake City, L.A., and Portland. Wouldn't it be amazing if we could find ways for our homegrown creatives to stay in Casper and Pinedale and Evanston? They will need business acumen to do so. Luck helps, too. But what's that famous saying about luck? "The harder I work the luckier I get." Maybe that should be: "The smarter I work the luckier I get."

We all need to work smarter in tough times. AIR could be one of the ways to work smarter. Wouldn't it be great if Cheyenne could claim a new motto that said: "Cheyenne: Where Fort Collins buys art and attends arts events." Maybe even this: "Cheyenne: Where Cheyenne shops and buys art and attends arts events." 

Wyomingarts will keep you posted on AIR developments. 

Potential partners for the Arts Incubator of the Rockies (AIR) project meet in Fort Collins

The historic Carnegie Building, once home to the Fort Collins Public Library, will house the new Arts Incubator of the Rockies. 

Wyoming Arts Council staffers Michael Shay and Rita Basom attended a two-day meeting last week in Fort Collins, Colo., about the Arts Incubator of the Rockies. Arts types from nine states came to town to brainstorm ideas for the AIR. This multi state effort aims to turbo-charge the region's artists and arts organizations and is being spearheaded by a triumvirate of Ft Collins entities: Beet Street, the City of Fort Collins and Colorado State University School of the Arts.

It's a great thing when an arts organization, a city government and a major land-grant university get together to forge a plan for the future. A rare thing, too. Together they applied to the National Endowment for the Arts and received a $100,000 Our Town grant. They then invited their neighbors from WY, CO, NM, UT, ID, MT, NE, NV, SD and ND to town to talk about next steps. The only state not interested (for now anyway) was Nebraska.

Fort Collins can brag about its arts and culture scene. This city of 140,000 sprawls along the Poudre River Valley and butts up against the Front Range of the Rockies. There's a big "A" up on the mountain that gets a fresh coat of whitewash every year from CSU students. The "A" stands for the "Agricultural" in Colorado A&M, the school’s previous name.

These days the "A" up on the hill could stand for "Arts."

This mid-size city features an amazing array of arts facilities and arts orgs. During the course of our meetings, we discovered that it boasts some two-dozen performing arts groups, some you may have heard of (Open Stage Theatre, Bas Bleu Theatre, Fort Collins Symphony) and some that you haven’t (Fort Collins Youth Jazz Project, Tower Quartet, Andrew Vogt Gypsy Street Trio).

During our first day in Fort Collins, we toured a few of the arts facilities. One belongs to the U, the renovated Fort Collins High School that now houses the University Center for the Arts, or UCA. Our tour guide on Thursday was Jennifer Clary, a graduate of both the old FCHS and the new CSU arts school. She now works at the UCA.

We watched a faculty chamber group as they warmed up in the Organ Recital Theatre for an upcoming concert. We saw the student Symphonia rehearse for its performance of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. Great acoustics in the 550-seat Edna Rizley Griffin Concert Hall. Great facilities overall for music and dance and theatre. Also a fine visual arts museum.

During our meeting, CSU School of the Arts Co-Director Dr. Todd Queen quoted from a Julliard study that found that only 10 percent of music school students stay in the industry after graduation. It's tough out there for a musician -- we all know that. It's tough out there for a poet and a dancer and a painter.

But what if there were other ways to an artist to make a living as an artist? What if we could shift away from the paradigm of "starving artist?"

That is a major goal of AIR.

Arts students need help with the big "B" of "business." They need to find new ways to promote themselves as artists which then will free up time for them to do their art. This is nothing new. Vincent Van Gogh painted up a storm but couldn't make a living -- his brother Theo had to keep him in bread and cheese.

In the arts, it is all about you pursuing your passion. It also can be about forging a career in the arts world. Not just as a fall-back strategy but as something that a student does on purpose. It may include teaching but it very well may not.

This is what is appealing about AIR: It addresses both of these tracks through workshops, classes, networking, coaching, mentoring, outreach and internships. It seeks to enlist professionals to mentor those in their field. It will look at ways to provide shared professional services, investment capital and revolving loan funds. It may enlist celebrity actors and musicians and writers to promote AIR goals. It may sponsor local and regional conferences.

The discussion is only beginning. In our next post, wyomingarts will address some of the ways that AIR plans to incubate regional artists and arts orgs in the West. We’ll also look at the role that Fort Collins itself is playing in the Rocky Mountain West's arts and cultural renaissance. It's not all about "beers, bikes and (snow)boards" -- but all of those "B" words feed "A" energy (as in "Arts").

For another perspective on the AIR project, read Leanne Goebel's Nov. 10 post on Adobe Airstream.

Call for entries: High Plains Register

This comes from Karen Cotton, one of the editors of LCCC’s literary and arts magazine, High Plains Register:

The magazine is accepting submissions from:

Writers of poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, or drama

Arists

Photographers

Musicians

DEADLINE IS OCT. 28

Here are the submission guidelines:

All submissions, up to six per person, must include a cover letter with submitter's contact information.

Writing: Send typed hardcopy or e-mail attached Word document (10 pages maximum each; double space prose)

Artwork and music: Digital files preferred (CD or e-mail attachment)

ALL LCCC student submissions will be eligible for the High Plains Register Award for Best Poem, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Drama, Artwork or Music.

Submissions from the community also encouraged.

Send submissions to:

Liz Jackson

c/o LCCC Arts and Humanities

1400 E. College Drive

Cheyenne, WY 82001

or e-mail LJackson@lccc.wy.edu

Facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/people/HighPlains-Register/600142279

The 2012 High Plains Register release and public reading will be noon, Friday April 27, 2012 in the Student Lounge. Call 778-1330 or search for HPR at lccc.wy.edu.

Penny Zeller, Amanda Cabot and Audra Harders sign books June 4 in Cheyenne

Penny Zeller will be joined by Amanda Cabot (a Wyoming author with over 25 novels published) and Audra Harders on Saturday, June 4, at Cornerstone Christian Supply from 10 a.m.-noon  and at Barnes and Noble from 2-4 p.m., Cheyenne. All three authors write historical fiction and will be signing books in that genre. Penny will be signing one of her nonfiction books. Her books include McKenzie and Kaydie (books one and two in Penny's Montana Skies series) and 77 Ways Your Family Can Make a Difference. FMI: www.pennyzeller.com

LCCC reading features work by contributors to 2011 High Plains Register

Wyomingarts attended a reading and release party at Laramie County Community College for the 2011 High Plains Register. Congrats to Amanda Fry who won the HPR Prize for her story, "The Ring." She joined other contributors reading from their work: Bob Simkins, Jack Kirk, Nicole McGee, Jeff Eatmon, Eugene Shea, Danielle Sage, Tina O'Toole, Ruth Kannaris, Kristin Abraham, Alicia Padilla and Steve Harrington. Photographers Heidi Gurov and David Larsen showed some of their work and talked about it.

Copies of the issue will be available May 13 at the Wyoming Arts Council offices, the LCCC Bookstore and City News in downtown Cheyenne.

Sheridan Stationery hosts book signing for author of "The Lycanthrope Virus"

Sheridan Stationery, 206 N. Main St., Sheridan, will be hosting a book signing with local author Robert Lee Vine, author of "The Lycanthrope Virus", the conclusion to his "Warriors of the Earth" trilogy. Robert will be signing books from 10:00 a.m.-noon on Saturday, Feb. 26.

FMI: Sheridan Stationery Books & Gallery. (307)-674-8080. Fax-(307)-674-8456. bksmith@actaccess.net. http://www.sheridanstationery.net

Shop Locally!