 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(February 2024) |
| Nickname | Ucross |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1981 |
| Type | Nonprofit |
| Purpose | Artist residencies in the High Plains, art gallery, land stewardship of historic 20,000-acre ranch [1] |
| Location |
|
| Website | https://www.ucrossfoundation.org |
The Ucross Foundation, located in Ucross, Wyoming, is a nonprofit organization that operates a retreat for visual artists, writers, composers, and choreographers working in all creative disciplines.
Founded in 1981 by Raymond Plank, [2] Ucross is located on a 20,000-acre working cattle ranch in northeastern Wyoming. The Big Red Ranch Complex, which includes the Foundation’s main offices and a renovated barn that houses a public art gallery, was built in 1882 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. [3] The name Ucross comes from the original brand of the Pratt and Ferris Cattle Company in the 1880s, which operated a large ranching concern with Big Red as its headquarters. Along with James Pratt and Cornelius Ferris, one of the early partners in the ranch was Marshall Field. [4] The cattle brand for Pratt and Ferris Cattle Company had a U with a cross beneath. [5]
The Foundation provides living accommodations, studio space, uninterrupted time in the High Plains landscape to competitively selected individuals, for two to six weeks. Up to ten individuals are in residence at any one time. [6] The Foundation has four writing studios, four visual arts studios, and two composing studios and the Lauren Anderson Dance Studio, named for the first Black principal dancer for a major ballet company, in the Koehler Performing Arts Center. Approximately 115 individuals are supported annually. [7]
Artists in residence live in their studios, the historic Ucross School House or the Clearmont Train Depot, which have been renovated to include four bedrooms each, with a dining area, living area, and main kitchen in the School House. Ucross has hosted over 2,600 artists-in-residence from across the United States and the world. [ citation needed ]
The Foundation participates in a number of long-term collaborations with other arts organizations, including the Sundance Institute Theatre Program, [8] the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (administered by CalArts and supported by the Herb Alpert Foundation), and the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction. Ucross also collaborates with the Alley Theatre, the Pew Fellowships in the Arts, The Ford Family Foundation Fellowship for Oregon Artists, the Whiting Foundation, the Ford Family Foundation, UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, Yale University, the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, Cave Canem, and the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice.
The renovated Ucross Art Gallery, located in the historic Big Red Barn, operates year-round at no cost to the public and typically features exhibitions by Ucross Fellows. The Foundation was named a recipient of the Wyoming Governor’s Arts Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2005.
Notable Ucross Fellows include Annie Proulx, Terry Tempest Williams, Elizabeth Gilbert, Theaster Gates, Anthony Hernandez, and Tayari Jones. National Book Award winners Susan Choi, Sigrid Nunez, and Sarah M. Broom have been residents, as have Academy Award and Tony winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, Emmy Award winner Billy Porter, recent Pulitzer Prize winners Michael R. Jackson and Colson Whitehead, and three-term United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. Others include Ron Carlson, Lan Samantha Chang Du Yun, Joshua Ferris, Robert L. Freedman, Steve Giovinco, [9] Perry Glasser, Francisco Goldman, Ricky Ian Gordon, Adam Guettel, Jessica Hagedorn, Porochista Khakpour, Michael Harrison, Emily Jacir, Stephen Jimenez, Ha Jin, Jeffe Kennedy, Byron Kim, Verlyn Klinkenborg, Tania Leon, Jason Moran, Bill Morrison, Ann Patchett, Sarah Ruhl, Mark So, Andrew Solomon, Manil Suri, Jean Valentine, Paula Vogel, Doug Wright, Charles Wuorinen, and Liz Young. [10]
Ucross has also supported numerous conservation initiatives, including the planting of thousands of trees on the ranch and the placement of a conservation easement on over 12,000 acres of the ranch with the Wyoming Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. In 2010, the Ucross Ranch, currently leased by the Apache Foundation, was named a finalist for the Leopold Conservation Award, given by the Sand County Foundation. The newest land initiative at Ucross involves the creation of a community park, The Park at Ucross. [ citation needed ]
The Park at Ucross hosts a small interdenominational chapel and The Raymond Plank Center, a modern structure that hosts art exhibitions, artists in residence, and regional and national conferences.
Sheridan is a city in the U.S. state of Wyoming and the county seat of Sheridan County. The city is located halfway between Yellowstone Park and Mount Rushmore by U.S. Route 14 and 16. It is the principal town of the Sheridan, Wyoming, Micropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Sheridan County. The 2020 census put the city's population at 18,737, making it the 6th most populous city in Wyoming.
Michael Bradley Enzi was an American politician who served in the United States Senate from Wyoming as a member of the Republican Party from 1997 to 2021. Prior to his tenure in the United States Senate he served as mayor of Gillette, Wyoming, in the Wyoming House of Representatives from Campbell County, and the Wyoming Senate from the 24th district. He was the longest-serving senator from Wyoming since Francis E. Warren.
The Montalvo Arts Center is a non-profit center for the arts in Saratoga, California, United States. Open to the public, Montalvo comprises a cultural and arts center, a park, hiking trails and the historic Villa Montalvo, an Italian Mediterranean Revival mansion nestled in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The mansion and estate were constructed from 1912 to 1914 by California statesman and businessman James Duval Phelan. After Phelan's death, the entire estate was donated to California as a park and then a cultural and arts center as it exists today. The arts center maintains the estate in partnership with Santa Clara County. The mansion is a historic landmark, and in 1978 it was awarded inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.
John Benjamin Kendrick was an American politician and cattleman who served as a United States senator from Wyoming and as the ninth Governor of Wyoming as a member of the Democratic Party.
Edgar Jacob Herschler was an American politician and attorney who served as the 28th governor of Wyoming from 1975 to 1987. A member of the Democratic Party, he is the longest-serving governor of Wyoming, with three full terms; since a two-term limit for governors was approved by a ballot initiative in 1992, he has remained as such.
Jack Robert Gage was an American author, educator, and politician who served as the 25th Governor of Wyoming as a member of the Democratic Party.
Allen L. Cook Spring Creek Preserve is a 4,700-acre (19 km2) nature reserve considered to be one of the richest cache of undisturbed dinosaur fossils in North America. It is located near the village of Rock River, Wyoming some 40 miles (64 km) northwest of Laramie. The Preserve contains the outcrops of the Morrison, Sundance, and Cloverly formations.
Frank Lee Houx was an American politician from the Democratic Party who served as the 10th Governor of Wyoming from 1917 to 1919 and the 5th Secretary of State of Wyoming from 1911 to 1919.
No Fog West Theater is a non-profit theater company run by students from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. It was founded in December 2006.
Jean Shin is an American artist living in Brooklyn, NY. She is known for creating elaborate sculptures and site-specific installations using accumulated cast-off materials.
William Henry Harrison III was an American politician who served in the United States House of Representatives and in the state legislatures of Indiana and Wyoming.
Neltje, also known as Neltje Doubleday Kings, was an American artist, businesswoman and philanthropist. In 2005 Neltje received the Wyoming Governor's Art Award for her artwork; she was an abstract painter.
Mary Elisabeth Hansen Mead was an American rancher, businesswoman, and a Republican politician in the U.S. state of Wyoming. She was the daughter of Governor and U.S. Senator Clifford Hansen and the mother of former Governor Matt Mead.
Ucross is an unincorporated community along the Piney Creek on the southern edge of Sheridan County, Wyoming, United States. Ucross is located at the junction of U.S. Route 14 and U.S. Route 16, 9.6 miles (15.4 km) west-southwest of Clearmont.
Kristina Stykos is an American record producer, audio engineer, songwriter and performer based in Vermont. Her recording studio, Pepperbox Studio, is solar, wind and generator powered and fully off-the-grid.
The Big Red Ranch Complex is an historic ranch located off U.S. Routes 14 and 16 in Ucross, Wyoming. The ranch was built circa 1882 by the Pratt & Ferris Cattle Company and was one of three large ranches operated by the company in the region. The ranch acquired its name because all of its main buildings were painted red; at the time, most ranches lacked permanent buildings entirely, much less painted ones. Pratt & Ferris became one of the most successful cattle ranching companies in the area by the end of the decade, as they bought out most other local ranches and even established a post office at the Big Red Ranch. In the 1890s, the ranch largely converted to raising sheep. In 1906, company owner Joseph Leiter turned the ranch into an irrigated farm; in the following years, the ranch briefly reverted to cattle ranching before Leiter leased it to sugar beet farmers. Leiter ultimately sold the ranch in 1949.
Raymond Plank was the founder and chairman of Apache Corporation. Under Plank’s leadership, Apache expanded its oil and gas operations internationally from a $250,000 capitalization to a market capitalization of over $30 billion. Plank invented the Master Limited Partnership and exposed corruption at Enron and within the energy merchant trading sector.
Deborah Springstead Ford is an American photographer noted for her fine art black and white combination printed photographs exploring ambiguous perceptual realities. She has photographed her family, western landscapes and cultural artifacts, with much of her photographic work drawing on the relationships between science and art, the natural world and cultural geography. Most recently her photographs of oil and gas exploration in the Powder River Basin and the high desert west have received attention and been published in Arid. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibits in museums and galleries around the continent, and is included in many private and public collections such as the Center for Creative Photography, California Museum of Photography, and Northlight Gallery. She has been an arts advocate, educator and program administrator in addition to being a professional visual artist for over 30 years. Ford attended Minneapolis College of Art & Design, Arizona State University and Goddard College. She has a BFA in Photography, a Master's in Art Education/Photographic Studies and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts. She was a professor of Photographic Studies at Prescott College. She taught photography full-time from 1982 to 2013, the last 18 years at Prescott College in northern Arizona. As an arts advocate, Ford was instrumental in the creation of the Prescott College Art Gallery. The gallery and Ford have both been nominated for Arizona Governor's Art Awards. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including four Arizona Commission on the Arts Grants and participated in many Artist-in-Residence programs around the country including the Biosphere 2, Ucross Foundation, Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Arts, Sitka Center for Art & Ecology, Joshua Tree National Park, Isle Royale National Park, and Aspen Guard Station. Ford's photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Recent publications include a profile in Black and White Magazine, Issue #82. and photographs in Orion magazine. Ford was the executive director of Playa, in Summer Lake Oregon, a residency program for visual artists, scientists, writers and others engaged with creative inquiry from 2013 to 2017.
Harry Andrew Jackson, born Harry Aaron Shapiro Jr., was an American artist. He began his career as a Marine combat artist, then later worked in the abstract expressionist, realist, and American western styles.
Brenda Mallory is a Native American visual/sculpture/mixed media/installation artist and a member of the Cherokee Nation. Her artwork ranges from small decorations to large sculptures and utilizes a variety of materials such as handmade papers, cloth, wax, and recycled objects.