Lander Art Center « Connie Norman

Posts Tagged ‘Lander Art Center’

Lander Art Center –Potters of the Wind Rivers (POWR) Workshop!!

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

I had a wonderful time in Lander giving the Potter’s of the Wind River (POWR) a workshop. It was a two day workshop last weekend. Lander is about four hours from Cheyenne. And it is the home of NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School). When you arrive in Lander you notice something is a little different there, for a Wyoming town of almost 7,000 people. It’s not your average conservative Wyoming town. Because of NOLS Lander looks like and acts like it is a small Boulder, Colorado. The people either are super athletic outdoorsy type or ranchers. It is a very interesting mix.

I really love Lander, especially after this last visit. All 15 spots filled in the workshop, and most of the people were experienced potters. The pressure was on I had show them something new. Thank Goodness I had a few tricks that no one had seen, such as my love of decorating with office supplies.

I started off showing everyone my glazing techniques, and my love of office supplies. We spent the day glazing and did a quick fire that night, so everyone could see the results the next morning. I did everything backwards for this workshop. We glazed the first day and then made things the second day, I figured I do everything backwards this just made sense to me.

Here I’m showing everyone my deep dark secret. Garage sale dots and a paper punch.

Here are pictures of everyone working away.

Some of the stuff that came out of the kiln.

The second day of the workshop building stuff with slabs, and getting your aggressions out.

Thanks to Deborah Britt and all her hard work getting me to Lander, I got to have a great time meeting new people, hang out and talk a ton about ceramics.

I have a few interviews that are waiting to be published. Because of our recent computer problems I wasn’t able to get them out. I even lost one when my hard drive crashed. (Sorry Paul!) But I think everything is resolved now!! I hope. Look for interviews from Paul Barchilon, Shelia Hrasky, Melody Ellis, Bebe Alexander, and Lisa Pedolsky.

Tags: Ceramics, ceramics with text, Lander Art Center, Potters of the Powder River
Posted in Ceramics, teaching | No Comments »

I was asked to give a workshop at Lander Art Center!

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

I’m very excited to teach a workshop at the Lander Art Center. I was in a show there three years ago, in 2007. It will be very fun to go back and see some friends and meet new people. My friend Deborah Britt another Wyoming potter, wrote the grant and organized everything to get me to Lander. She and I got to pal around in Philadelphia at NCECA this year. I hope we have many more trips ahead.

Lander is the home of Sinks Canyon where a geologic phenomenon in which the Popo Agie River vanishes into a large cavern (the Sinks) but reappears in a trout- filled pool, the Rise, about half a mile down the canyon. I was thinking Todd and Vander could feed the trout during the workshop, but unfortunately the Popo Agie is flooding the area and has been declared a disaster area by Gov. Freudenthal. I was told that the flooding is dreadful, no electricity, bridges are out, water mains are broken, and people are being evacuated. And they are in great peril of losing their home. Yikes!! I hope the river receeds fast.

Here is the press release for the workshop…

Connie Norman is a professionally trained instructor and ceramic artist who has taught numerous workshops throughout the West. She has been featured in Ceramics Monthly and Great Lakes magazines, and was recently commissioned to create art for the Denver International Airport. Her work will also be featured in the upcoming Lark publication, 500 Vases.

Ms. Norman will be conducting a two-day, hands-on workshop featuring hand-building and glazing techniques.

When: Saturday, June 19 (10 am-4 pm) and Sunday, June 20 (10 am-2 pm)

Where: Lander Art Center, 224 Main Street, Lander, WY

Cost: $60 per person (includes materials, some experience encouraged)

A welcoming reception for the artist will be held Saturday evening. Please call Deborah Britt (307-332-9771) or Lander Art Center (307-332-5772) for details.

This project is partially funded by the Wyoming Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts and Lander Art Center.

(Here is a little about the Sinks I lifted from a Wyoming tourism site.) At Sinks Canyon State Park outside Lander, a major river just disappears. The Middle Fork of the Popo Agie (pronounced Po-Po-zsha, meaning Tall Grass River in the Crow language) rushes out of Wyoming’s largest mountain range, the Wind River Mountains, and into Sinks Canyon. It flows merrily along for quite some time until it suddenly turns into a large cave and, as the name of the park and canyon suggest, sinks underground. It isn’t until ¼ of a mile later that the river reemerges at a large, calm pool called “the Rise.”

For a long time, no one was even sure the water at the Rise was the same water that disappeared into the Sink, but then scientists did dye tests and proved the two were one and the same. Tests also revealed more water emerges at the Rise than goes in at the Sink. No one knows where the water goes for the two hours it takes to get from the Sink to the Rise though … but that’s just fine: curiosities and oddities are even more curious and odd when they can’t be fully explained.