Do you prefer your favorite Wyoming mountain landscapes printed on vibrant metal or warm archival paper? Read what WyoFile contributor Michael Shay has to say about some of our work as part of “Worth A Thousand Words: Laramie Photographers Group Art Exhibition” in this issue of Studio Wyoming Review, a column curated and written by artists and thinkers from communities across Wyoming.

” … Allison Pluda prefers metal over paper printing. Her unframed prints feature some of the state’s most iconic scenes: sunset at Lake Marie in the Snowy Range, the Wind River Valley near Dubois, and a thunderstorm over the Laramie Valley. The Wind River Valley scene shows off the red rocks brilliantly, making it one of the most gorgeous views of that landscape that I’ve ever seen.

In “June 2015: Super-cell Thundercloud,” Pluda captures the cloudscape in living color. It appears menacing and beautiful at the same time. If you look at it long enough, you can imagine the bottom part of the cloud that juts out into the prairie as the prow of or a warship or a super-tanker. We’ve all heard summer clouds compared to sailing ships. But this photo just reinforces the industrial-strength power of a super-cell as it navigates the sky. Both human-made structures and natural landscapes can remind us of the transience of existence.

Pluda’s work — “The Milky Way from Wyoming,” for instance — infers that transience may take millennia.

… The advantages of both metal printing processes are clear. No need for expensive matting and framing. The images are crisp. You can hang them in locations with more moisture, such as kitchens and bathrooms. The downside? The stars pop in “The Milky Way from Wyoming” print. But the landscape of “Lake Marie Falls” is too cold for my tastes. Some landscapes call out for framed, warm-paper prints.”

About the Exhibiton

“Worth A Thousand Words: Laramie Photographers,” is a fine art exhibition featuring a limited collection of fine art photography from eight Laramie, Wyoming based photographers that is on display and for sale through the end of March 2018 at Clay Paper Scissors Gallery located at 1513 Carey Ave, Cheyenne, Wyoming. The exhibition features local original contemporary fine art photography and nature & landscape western art prints from Allison Pluda of Seneca Creek Studios, Susan Moldenhauer, Susan Davis, Dan Hayward, RoseMarie London, Doc Thissen, Ken Driese, and Ed Sherline.

About the Reviewer

Michael Shay’s book of short stories, The Weight of a Body, was published by Ghost Road Press in 2006. His fiction and essays have appeared in Flash Fiction Review, Silver Birch Press, Northern Lights, High Plains Literary Review, Colorado Review, Owen Wister Review, and in multiple anthologies including Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking out the Jams; Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers (forthcoming); and In Short, a Norton anthology of brief creative nonfiction. Previously he served as the managing editor for the WY Arts Council Artscapes magazine among other duties. Michael lives in Cheyenne and blogs about books, culture and politics at Hummingbirdminds.

About WyoFile

WyoFile’s Mission is to inform and engage Wyoming through in-depth reporting in the public interest. WyoFile began in early 2008 as the brainchild of founder Christopher Findlater, who got together with a small group of veteran Wyoming journalists to plan how to give Wyoming better in-depth news coverage through an on-line platform. Findlater was Wyofile’s primary financial backer for its first two years. WyoFile became a 501(c)3 non-profit in 2009. Rone Tempest was WyoFile’s first long-time editor. He had retired to Wyoming, where he had spent part of his childhood, after serving as the Los Angeles Times bureau chief in New Delhi, Beijing, and Paris. In 2011, WyoFile was able to hire Dustin Bleizeffer, long-time energy reporter for the Casper Star-Tribune, as editor-in-chief. Rone Tempest has continued as a free-lancer for WyoFile. WyoFile’s financial base has expanded over the years to include support in grants and donations from the John S. and James Knight Foundation, The George B. Storer Foundation, and Christopher Findlater, among others.

WyoFile has partnered with the Wyoming Community Foundation in conjunction with a 2012 Knight Foundation Community Information Challenge grant. WyoFile also received grants from the Ethics & Excellence in Journalism Foundation yearly since 2011. These recent partnerships resulted in a project to expand WyoFile’s reporting capabilities, for increased coverage of government & policy, and of the Wind River Indian Reservation and Native American issues. For the Knight Foundation Community Information Challenge grant awarded in 2010, WyoFile was sponsored by the Lander Community Foundation.

WyoFile is also a member of the Investigative News Network, an associate member of the Wyoming Press Association, and works in collaboration with Wyoming’s legacy media, and other news organizations. WyoFile is also supported by reader donations, and we need more of your help. If you support our in-depth reporting on Wyoming’s people, places and policy, please donate what you can. If you can’t make a financial donation, please campaign to get your friends and co-workers to sign up for WyoFile’s free email subscription. The larger our subscription list, the easier it is for us to raise money.

 

Read the Full Studio Wyoming Review

 

Contact us if you’re interested in purchasing a print