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LARAMIE — Wyoming high school students with a strong interest in the visual arts will converge on the University of Wyoming campus Friday and Saturday, Sept. 29-30.

Students and their art teachers will participate in the High School Art Intensive, an immersive experience that consists of educational sessions and focused, hands-on workshops.  

The UW Department of Art and Art History hosts the annual event, and UW Fine Arts Outreach supports it.

“Through this event, high school students take part in creative processes and activities that they are either not able to do in their high school classrooms or that they do not have extended time to do in a typical curriculum,” says Doug Russell, a UW associate professor of art and coordinator of the art intensive. “There is no substitute for hands-on work in a professional and well-equipped art studio.”

This year, 112 high school students will engage in hands-on studio workshops in the areas of ceramics, drawing, graphic design, metalsmithing, painting, printmaking and sculpture. UW Department of Art and Art History students, supervised by art department faculty members, will lead the workshops within the Visual Arts Building.

“Our UW students act as mentors and role models for the visiting students,” Russell says. “Additionally, all of our art and art history faculty are present and available to talk with the students. Many of us open up our personal studios. This allows the students to see their potential future professors’ work and creative processes in person and up close.”

Additionally, the participants will attend an art history lecture and a presentation about the foundations area (2-D design, 3-D design and color theory). Following Friday’s studio work, the students can attend supervised sessions in the UW Art Museum. The sessions are designed to facilitate a deeper viewing and understanding of the museum’s current exhibitions and collections, says Katie Christensen, curator of education and statewide engagement at the UW Art Museum.

The art intensive also provides opportunities for the high school art teachers and the UW art department faculty members to interact together and discuss the teaching of art in the state.

The art intensive will conclude Saturday at noon.

“The intensive provides a new context, excitement, understanding and new goals for young creative people in Wyoming,” Russell says. “It provides them with a possible and tangible vision if they want to continue the study of art and/or art history in their lives.”

Participants include:

Worland High School — Vickie Balmaceda, Lili Bush, Gabe Cardenas, Jamon Dower, Jenna Grzybowski, Joelle Hill, Ravyn Noecker and Morgan Pennington.