Stay anywhere on Ucross’ 20,000-acre ranch and you’ll realize we’re concerned about time and space. We all serve as temporary philosophers, gazing out over the vast landscape or gazing up at the starry sky. We see hills and mountains carved and sculpted by centuries, millennia, and geologic time, and we can’t help but wonder about our own impermanence. As Virginia Woolf wrote in her novel To the Lighthouse, it’s humbling to think that “A stone kicked with a boot is better than Shakespeare.”
Giving artists the time and space to create new work is our mission and mantra. Artists and visitors often say that time slows down at Ucross, or at least it moves at a different pace. When we talk or write about time in this context, it’s often code for the sense of freedom we hope the Ucross experience provides to our artists in residence, as well as the benefit of taking time out to focus on their creative practice. But what exactly is “time”? There is perhaps no more fertile ground for artists, writers, and philosophers to work in than the concept of eternal time. It is fitting, then, that the first exhibition at the new Ucross Art Gallery centers on how artists express, explore, translate, decode or grapple with the complexities of time.
“Time, Mark, Memory: 40 Years” opens on November 4. About 200 people packed into the gallery space to see what we’ve been up to over the past 14 months. It was fascinating to see the long rows of headlights that filled the Big Red Road that evening, and it was a joy to witness the wide-eyed visitors as they entered the gallery doors.
That same week, The Brinton 101 opened at the Brinton Museum in Big Horn and Wyoming Waters opened at SAGE in downtown Sheridan. Our district’s support for the visual arts is on full display, and we are proud to be a part of a community that deeply appreciates the arts. And the emerging community. Thank you.
As proud as we are of the beautiful new Ucross Art Gallery, we’re also proud of its inaugural exhibition. Curated by Leah Allman, feature writer and essayist for the Los Angeles Times and Art Magazine in America, and Ucross alumna, Time, Mark, Memory is the first exhibition in a three-year series to showcase this extraordinary work. fine arts graduates. In our first four decades, we served more than 2,600 artists, including 920 illustrators. Allman curated a thoughtful, unique show that illuminates and expands our relationship with time and showcases our alumni.
At the same time, he developed a show that embraces the flexibility of Ucross’ new space. It includes sculpture, photography, painting, video, audio, textiles and mixed media, and it takes full advantage of the newly renovated outdoor space. If you haven’t been yet, we invite you to come down and take a look. Ucross Art Gallery is free and open to the public Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. More information, including an exhibition catalog, can be found at ucross.org.
Finally, this exhibition, the renovation of the Big Red Palace and the reopening of the Ucross Art Gallery are all part of a larger project – the campaign for the 40th anniversary of Ucross. The complex improvements at Ucross Art Gallery have been made possible by the support of our Board of Trustees, donors and friends, but our work is far from over. Our 40th anniversary begins in 2023, so we hope you will join us at future openings, performances, readings and fundraising events. Most importantly, we hope you will continue to support a vibrant arts scene in our community.
