Teaching artists can now apply for grant funding centered on programs for older Wyomingites.

The Creative Aging Project Grant, from the Wyoming Arts Council, is open to teaching artists and nonprofit arts organizations, often libraries and other community centers. The grant funds $2,500 per program and uses the creative aging arts education model, offering eight weeks of sequential skills-building classes culminating in a community event.

Josh Chrysler, folklorist and health and wellness specialist for the Wyoming Arts Council, said the focus on older adults comes from a pillar of the council's mission.

"These programs should be available throughout our life span," Chrysler contended. "Which is predicated on the understanding that participating in the arts is healthy for you."

Engaging in the arts plays a fundamental role in slowing cognitive decline and ensuring a high quality of life, according to a 2023 study. Applications for the Creative Aging grant are due July 10.

Denica Shell has been working with the program for three years now, which led to a full-time job at the Buffalo Arts Center. She is glad to be able to offer the programming to older adults for free and enjoys helping students reconnect to activities they have not done in a while.


"One thing that I've heard from several students is they really loved art as a kid or always wanted to learn certain things and are basically coming back 50, 60 years after and have this opportunity to explore something that they hadn't previously," Shell observed.

Shell utilizes various media in her classes, including drawing and watercolor, although the grant covers other forms of media, too.

Advocates in Wyoming trying to get music therapy licensure recognized in the state are hitting roadblocks.

Members of the Wyoming Music Therapy Task Force fielded questions last week from the state's Joint Labor, Health and Social Services Committee. Music therapy can help relieve anxiety, dementia and stroke symptoms, as well as aid people living with multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease, according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.

Hilary Camino, chair of the Wyoming Music Therapy Task Force, told the committee she wants music to to be a protected title to increase access and so that practitioner qualifications are clear.

"We often work with vulnerable populations, people who cannot advocate for themselves. So it is very important that we know what we're doing when working with those very vulnerable populations in a clinical setting, " she said.

Camino, who is a practitioner herself, said she is given up to three referrals per week to provide music therapy services in a hospital setting and that there aren't enough providers to fulfill the need.

The committee asked questions about what kind of training practitioners need, what kind of funding licensure would require and under what state statute licensure would fall, before moving forward a bill draft for title protection.

Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, R-Cheyenne, supported the idea of licensure and also noted the idea moves what he says is "against the tide" of the current Legislature.

"The sense that I get from our colleagues, especially with some of the new groups out there, are the work is to lessen licensing across the field. I think that is going to be kind of a strong issue in the 2025 session," he explained.

Seventeen other states have enacted music therapy legislation and similar bills have been brought to other legislatures.


get more stories like this via email

Wyoming is known for its wild landscapes, cowboy culture, and natural resources. Some are hoping to add the arts to that list.

When ranked by the value that arts and cultural production added to state economies in 2022, Wyoming comes in low - at 48th.

But the state ranked much higher in growth within that sector at 25th, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The arts contributed $1.3 billion to Wyoming's economy in 2022.

Jason Shogren, Stroock Chair of Natural Resource Conservation and Management at the University of Wyoming, said that growth is significant in a state known primarily for its natural resources.

"That's always been the hard part about living in a resource-rich state, is finding economic diversity," said Shogren. "But, you know, the more we invest in arts, the more folks who are going to come that can diversify this economy."

Creative economies across the country are showing improvement after pandemic-era setbacks.

In 2022, arts and cultural production were responsible for more than 4% of national gross domestic product and grew by nearly 5% since 2021, according to the National Assembly of State Art Agencies.

The Wyoming Arts Alliance and other advocates are educating artists on how to get more exposure, especially through tourism and other related industries.

Shogren said navigating a rural, western arts scene is unique from the traditional big-city markets in New York or Los Angeles.

"That's a big part of it because the creative energy is there, and you're just constantly amazed at how much talent goes out in the state," said Shogren, "but yet it's a very quiet talent."

Shogren said it can be difficult to quantify the value of arts because they're often hard to measure.

But he aims to get better data on Wyoming's creative economy to turn up the volume on its contributions, and capture the interests of the state legislature.




get more stories like this via email

By Kate Mothes for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Wisconsin News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

In a self-portrait titled “First Aid Kit” by DarRen Morris painted in 2019, the artist clutches a large, abstract object with fanned white bristles. At first difficult to recognize, the object in his arms is a giant paintbrush. Incarcerated within the Wisconsin Correctional System since the age of 17 and serving a life sentence, Morris clings to art as a survival tool, emphasizing that without it, he would not be able to endure the conditions of imprisonment. 

“Art Against the Odds: Wisconsin Prison Art defines art making as not only a creative pastime but a life-saving tool of self-definition for those who are removed from society,” opens the preface of the exhibition’s catalog. The wide-ranging group exhibition, most recently on view at the Neville Public Museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin, brings together work by artists incarcerated within the state’s correctional facilities as a way to counter assumptions about imprisoned individuals and the prison system itself.

Debra Brehmer, director of Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee, and curator of Art Against the Odds, traces the genesis of the exhibition to a very different project, yet one also focused on the impact of art-making where access to art is often scarce. The program, called On the Wing, met every Tuesday at the House of Peace, a local community center, to draw in sketchbooks.

“It was about gathering, drawing, experimenting, sharing stories, conversing, and building relationships across the divides of poverty and race,” Brehmer says. “Many conversations at the table touched on incarceration. My eyes were opened to the fact that if you are Black and poor in Milwaukee, you’ve had a friend, son, or relative in prison. It was shocking to me that this was such a normalized part of existence.”

Around this time, Brehmer began working with an incarcerated artist named M. Winston to exhibit his work in the gallery. Portrait Society works with artists who have been marginalized, ignored, dismissed, or discriminated against. “M. was a point of entry into the larger carceral world,” Brehmer says. “Exploring art made in Wisconsin prisons felt like a good COVID project, and so many inmates at that time were really suffering during lockdowns.”

Reconstructing a Sense of Being in the World

Winston, who grew up in Mississippi, is currently serving a 30-year sentence at Kettle Moraine Correctional Institution and has since become a friend and guide to Brehmer during her research. He makes vibrant acrylic paintings of landscapes, buildings, and abstract color fields, and his sculptures of miniature houses often evoke real places around Milwaukee, made with materials like paper, food boxes, and paint.

Numerous letters that the artist wrote from his cell, which are included in the exhibition catalog, elaborate on his love for walking, a grounding practice in Zen Buddhism, and observations of daily life separate from the outside world. In one letter, dated March 26, 2022 he writes: 

This jail is a slave ship without the water. Do you know I have nothing but my mind to keep me going. I have art that may and may not tell my story. I do try hard to tell it. I think that art is something of a person’s soul, our days and nights come and go. But I can do a painting and tell why I did it and what I think it is and that will last forever. If you view art I have done over these long 20 years, you can bet I wasn’t here in the mind. I must do art each day. On some days, because of the size of the painting/drawing, I will do up to six. There’s so much I want to talk about, and I will in time. Let’s see where this ship takes me tomorrow.

Letters play a core role in the show, with an entire wall dedicated to handwritten notes—a small selection of hundreds sent to the gallery during the process of organizing the show. The display is accompanied by a table and an invitation for visitors to write a letter back to an artist from the show. Audio clips of the letters being read aloud are streamed on a loop through the gallery, a poignant backdrop to artworks that delve into each individual’s personal stories, challenges, and reflections.

An Emotional Outpouring

In January 2023, the first iteration of Art Against the Odds opened in the galleries of the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. “I can only say that the impact of the MIAD show was shocking,” Brehmer says. “We did not expect the attendance: 7,000 people in seven weeks. We did not expect the emotional outpouring. The gallery became a safe space for public conversations that people could not have otherwise.”

Brehmer, who curated the show with Portrait Society Gallery Manager Paul Salsieder, attributes much of the success of the show to the fact that it revolves around accomplishment in addition to the deeply important—yet often dismissed—role that art plays within society. “Art heals and focuses the maker in a space of meditation,” she says. “These artists who turn to art in prison—with no formal training for the most part—find rather quickly that it not only soothes their anxiety but takes them on a journey of expression and self-knowledge, and it builds pride and esteem.”

The visibility afforded to the artists in Art Against the Odds is significant because while the carceral world is hidden, it affects an incredible amount of people in society, from victims to family members to prison staff to social justice system workers and more. The U.S. currently has one of the world’s top incarceration rates—in 2018, it was the world’s highest. Today, approximately 531 of every 100,000 people are in a prison or jail. “Most of these individuals will be released back into the community,” Brehmer says. “If they lack self-esteem and skills, this transition will not be successful.”

Art Against the Odds provides a new lens through which to view the prison system and those living within it. “This is not to deny the pain inflicted by crime, nor the lingering impact on victims, but to privilege redemption and the potential expansiveness of the human spirit,” the catalog introduction continues. “This provides space for hope. Without hope, there is no humanity.”


Kate Mothes wrote this story for Arts Midwest.


get more stories like this via email