Pioneer Home hosts gala event to show off artwork

On October 29, the Wyoming Pioneer Home held a gala art show that culminated eight weeks of art classes for participants. The event featured a variety of painted clay pieces designed by residents of the Pioneer Home and also members of the community who signed up for the program.

The art show was well attended, with around 100 people visiting to view the artwork and join in the celebration. The event was also filmed by Cactus Productions, a documentary camera crew from Cody.

Leading the event and organizing the art classes for creating the pieces was Allison Wrye of the Pioneer Home. The following day, Wrye and some of the residents of the Pioneer Home discussed how they felt about their experience working the clay and painting their projects. Residents Tessa Brunette, Louise Odde, Kathryn Nutt, Conni Taylor and Pat Bears were interviewed.

"Last night was the culminating event, after an eight-week class, taught by a professional teaching artist. Participants 55 and older signed up to join the free creative aging class. Each week, they built upon a skill until they reached their final project, and then we held the culminating event in order to showcase the final," said Wrye.

This class was all about working with clay with a minor focus on the painting. A community survey previous done showed the top two choices were clay and painting for those who responded.

"We decided to take the two and combine them so they could make a clay piece and then paint it and learn about the different colors and how they interact with each other and techniques," explained Wrye.

The art class was taught by Korinne Ryan and had 15 participants. It was a grant funded program.

"The Creative Aging program's been around for a while. However, the grant that we got to do the program was through Lifetime Arts and the Wyoming State Library. Lifetime Arts reached out to librarians across the country. Right now, there's only two states that are participating, Wyoming and Missouri. It's to bring creative aging into the library networks," said Wrye.

She added, "I got involved because I'm an institutional librarian, and so I kind of snuck my foot in there. I was actually the first institutional librarian to get the grant."

According to Wrye, they will be doing another class in the spring. The subject matter of the class in the spring is yet to be determined. They plan to put out another community survey to decide.

Wyoming Pioneer Home residents were excited to talk about their experiences working with the clay and creating their artwork.

Tessa Brunette described the beginning of her art class saying, "I didn't know what to do, so I just had to feel the clay and it just happened. I created the galaxy. That's it. That's what I called it!"

Louise Odde said, "In the sixth grade, I created a couple of wall hangings for the kitchen, one was an apple and the other one was a pear. We used plaster of Paris. That kind of got me started. I hadn't been around it for a long time, and it was just fun to work with this clay as air dry clay. I like quaking aspen trees, so I grabbed a pot with clay and made a quaking aspen out of it." 

Kathryn Nutt said, "I enjoyed doing it with the clay. . I made musical instruments. Mine was called the Symphony of Life and I made a whole symphony. I made a trombone, a saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, harp, violins and a piano then I mounted them on an open hymnal. I had the whole symphony right there because I love music."

Conni Taylor said, "I made a whole bunch of things. I made a mobile with butterflies." Taylor also made a piece called The Sacrifice of Christ.

Pat Bears said, "I didn't even know what I was doing. I made a bowl and a snake."

Overall, the participants all agreed it was a positive experience taking the art class and that they want to do it again. They all felt camaraderie. 

"I think what's nice about it was that people could kind of come together and do things together. We have to do each thing as an individual, but we work together, like in a group. Then we also had people from the community that came in, which was kind of nice. It was nice to meet some of the people that are out in the community besides the people that I already know in here. I thought that was nice to have the community involved and that's what I like about it," said Kathryn Nutt.

Wrye summed up the art classes and the art gala and said, "Every day the class got better and better. I mean, the laughter, the fun. People go from table to table and meet each other and then last night we got to bring the community in. We had such a wonderful turnout from the community. I think it was a great success. We threw a great event and I'm just so proud of everybody. It was really a celebration of our participants."

Wrye also discussed their art teacher Korinne Ryan and said she met the requirements they were looking for for this project and she was great.

"She [Ryan] has past teaching experience. She was well organized and she was a good teacher. She was a wonderful teaching artist. I hope to work with her again in the future."

Regarding the documentary videos being made by Cactus Productions, Wrye said there will be a series of five to seven pieces to potentially be put on YouTube. She said, "The first one that's coming out is really going to focus on libraries and the importance of libraries in the communities, and how much libraries do for especially rural areas." The videos will be sent to Lifetime Arts, as they are the contractor.

Wrye concluded with the importance of classes like these by saying, "The purpose for creative aging is to combat that feeling of once you get older, you don't get to learn anymore. It's really to focus on lifelong learning and the fact that people that do creative arts, learning, continuously have better health and the social interactions that come with these programs, because that brings people together to learn together and so they're making connections and socializing. So many times you get isolated as you get older, it gives you a safe place to learn."