Ucross Founders Day Celebration Well Attended

Approximately 225 people attended the Ucross Second Annual Founder’s Day celebration held on Saturday, June 3.

Caitlin Addlesperger, Director of External Relations at Ucross, said in an email. “We are thrilled with the turnout. It was a lovely way to celebrate our national artists with our local community on our beautiful ranch, while honoring the past 40 years of our artist residency program.” The day was also a celebration of the founder, Raymond Plank.

Attendees were given the chance to tour the art gallery and dance studio, and talk to artists who were fellows at Ucross. One of the artists was multidisciplinary creator and performance artist Annie Saunders of Los Angeles, California. She said that what she is working on at Ucross is a through a reciprocal residency between Ucross and The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA

She had a display of her photographs and materials she used to create the interesting photos.

She talked about the art she is doing at Ucross.

She said that Ucross was ‘amazingly unique’ as the residencies were not product oriented, but gave the artists space and time to decide what they wanted the project to be,

Andrew Schneider was another artist who opened his studio for the tour. Schneider, a multi-disciplinary artist, from Brooklyn, NY, has been to Ucross three times,

Sally Wen Moa, a poet from New York, who has been at Ucross for the past month, talked about her poetry books and what she worked on while at Ucross. She added that she was sad to be leaving.

Other artists included Catina Bacote, non-fiction writer; Gerald Clarke, visual artist; Michael Kolster photographer; and Scott Manning Stevens, non-fiction writer.

Music was provided by the Wyoming Symphony Horn Quartet, Katherine Smith, Zarah Mattox, Colleen Shaffer and Christen Adler, who performed music at the Rock Studios Courtyard and Mobius Strings that performed at Mike’s Pavilion.

Ucross President William Belcher talked about this year’s celebration.

The day was fair, with a slight breeze and moderate temperatures. Food and beverage trucks provided lunch and drinks for the attendees.