Beautiful sceneries and picturesque landscapes are all around Laramie, a sight to behold for any artist.
Sara Gadd’s presentation, “Look Who’s Hanging Out at the Laramie Plains Museum: Art by Laramie Artists,” was both interesting and informative, a must see for anyone interested in art in the Laramie area.
The Laramie Lyceum is a series of lectures scheduled over the course of a month, and occurs twice yearly. The April 2014 series hosted two lectures on each of this month’s Tuesdays, all of which focused on Art in Laramie.
Gadd’s lecture on April 22nd focused on a group of Laramie artists throughout the town’s history. An organizer of the event, Roberta Stalder, said the Lyceum “barely touches art in Laramie.” She explained there is much more art in Laramie to be seen, but the concept of the Lyceum “worked its way here from Greece, before making it to Laramie in 1984.”
As a way to start raising Laramie’s awareness of local art, the work displayed in Gadd’s presentation has been collected by the Laramie Plains Museum, through donation, over the course of the museum’s existence. The collection includes not only work by Laramie artists, but also paintings of the landscape surrounding Laramie from before the 1920s till current projects.
Artists represented in the presentation included Robert Russin, a former University of Wyoming professor, who sculpted “The Family” in Prexy’s Pasture and the bust of Abe Lincoln on I-80 between Laramie and Cheyenne. Other featured artists were Vina Cames, who studied art at UW, and Tim Collins, an art teacher at the local high school for over 30 years, along with many others. Evelyn Corthel Hill “became my favorite artist in the collection,” Gadd said. Tony Guzzo also had “very nice pieces of the area and local art,” Gadd added.
The Laramie Plains Museum has a long history in Laramie. In Gadd’s presentation, she explained the museum is housed in the historic Ivinson Mansion.
The Ivinson family originally purchased Ivinson Mansion for $400.00. In 1921, the family to the Episcopal Church donated it, and it became a girls’ boarding school before it was abandoned.
The mansion was almost torn down before efforts to save it were put in place by Alice Hardie Stevens. It was purchased in 1971 and converted into the Laramie Plains Museum.
Pictures and paintings of the Ivinson Mansion at the event depict the change the historical building endured over time. The opening slide showed the mansion standing alone, with small saplings around it; saplings that are now the massive trees growing down Ivinson Street.
The photo also showed a blank background behind the mansion, where the University of Wyoming is now, a testament to how long the building has stood and why it is a historical landmark in Laramie.
The museum is open for tours Tuesday through Saturday from 1-5 p.m. for anyone interested in seeing the collections of art and history.
