Public Art Exchange Talk: Building a Living Monument to Labor
Monday, October 28 at 4:00 PM MT
FREE to attend, virtual: Register here


Artists Aubrey Edwards and Conor Mullen, along with Laura Zorch McDermit, director of Laramie Public Art, will talk about their ambitious project to build a new monument to rail labor in Wyoming. High Iron is one of ten projects in the Monument Lab Re:Generation 2024 cohort. 

We are opening High Iron! More info at www.highiron.org. Download press release here.

High Iron, a multidisciplinary artwork and interactive rail labor experience, opens to the public on Friday, September 27, 2024. An opening celebration will be held at the corner of 4th and Canby in Laramie, Wyoming between 5:30 and 7 PM. Free to attend, the event includes music, food, and an opportunity to explore the repurposed boxcar turned artwork. The High Iron team includes artists Aubrey Edwards and Conor Mullen along with Laramie Public Art executive director Laura McDermit.

High Iron is a project of Monument Lab’s Re:Generation 2024 with funding through the Mellon Foundation. The opening event has been made possible through a grant from Wyoming Humanities. Partnership support from the City of Laramie and Laramie Public Art Coalition.

“High Iron is a living monument to rail labor,” says McDermit. “Through the lens of art and personal histories, we reframe the narrative of Wyoming. The rich diversity of people who labored on the railroad has been hidden. High Iron uplifts their stories.”

“There is not a single monument in our state honoring the immigrant labor that built the transcontinental railroad, built our economy, and in turn built our communities. High Iron seeks to rectify this,” says Edwards.

I’ve had the joy of curating an evening of conversation between exhibiting artist NYC Kelwin Coleman (Prayers on Fire) and Laramie artist Ismael Dominguez September 7th, 5-7p at the Gorgon Gallery.

Prayers on Fire is a solo exhibition juxtaposing sports based masculine imagery against queer based religious ideology. Through intaglio, cyanotype, relief and drawing based printed 2d works on paper, wrestlers are collaged; they are distorted into submissive poses that harken towards the spiritual. The work is meant to create a direct connection between the aggressive nature of sports and solitude of masculinity by introducing queerness and religious contemplation.

The Wyoming Innovation Partnership (WIP)-funded Creative Economy Start Up Challenge is financially supporting the enterprise of 10 creatives in the state. I have been long brainstorming an organization that can support folks as they disrupt the master narratives of Wyoming, and shine light on an incredibly diverse state that—unfortunately—has many buried stories and histories. I am excited to have received that funding, and to continue to pay artists, creatives, and community members in Wyoming to share their stories of place. This funding will seed Alces Community Works. Based in Laramie, Alces Community Works will be a collaborative ethnography 501(c)(3) organization that produces books, exhibits, events, workshops, public art, mentorship opportunities and curriculum that share the complex stories of Wyoming across the state and beyond.

I just accepted an offer to join the inaugural Phd in Public Humanities cohort in the University of Wyoming’s English department. I’ll be a Mellon Research Assistant for the department’s Re:storying the West project, which is right up my alley in disrupting the mythological and racist master origin narratives of our state! I’m a lifelong learner, baby!

I have the joy of curating lovely event in Laramie. Visiting New Orleans artist Madeleine Kelly will be having a solo show and accompanying public watercolor workshop at the Berry Biodiversity Center. Her reception will center a roundtable conversation with four local female artists who also pull inspiration from the natural world—while living in extractive economies. The conversation will be facilitated by the wonderful environmental organizer Kaycee Prevedel.

I had the pleasure of taking three young leaders from Laramie to the Rural and Tribal Youth Assembly the week of June 10th, centering youth voice in national policy agendas and organizing. Young leaders gathered on Alex Haley’s farm outside of Knoxville, TN- representing homelands of Hawaii, Alaska, Wyoming, Kentucky, and Mississippi. Thank you to our young leaders, Native Americans in Philanthropy, Partner for Rural Impact, Mobility Alliance, and Clear Creek Creative for supporting such a powerful space.

It is an incredible honor to partner with Monument Lab! Learn more about our project here.

Monument Lab Re:Generation supports a 2024 cohort of ten teams working to create new or to expand existing public art, public history, or public humanities projects.As a central part of Monument Lab’s commitment to expanding the American commemorative landscape, Re:Generation emphasizes the selection of projects with creative representation and interpretation of erased, suppressed, or threatened stories and histories, particularly in states which have passed legislation limiting the teaching of accurate and diverse American history. Major support for Re:Generation is provided by the Mellon Foundation.

I am thrilled to be teaching an American Studies Visual Culture course with Pathways from Prison. The project is a trans-disciplinary and trans-professional statewide collaborative that supports currently and formerly incarcerated people in navigating the waters of higher education and earning their bachelor’s degree.

What a gift to be in a winter residency with Jentel. I’m incredibly grateful for the time and space in the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains. I’ll be creating work centering Greek labor during westward expansion, to be shown at the Nicolaysen Museum for the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship biennial in 2024.

I will be presenting on Youth Voice/Youth Action at this year’s Shepard Symposium. I will be passing my mic—literally—to three of the young leaders I have been working with this year, giving them the platform as I support. Read more about the symposium below.

This year's symposium theme, Social Justice Literacy, intends to give communities the skills to shape the environments they live in through narrative. How can we collectively impact the world by empowering silenced voices? We aim to discuss historic forms of resistance, explore illiteracy as a form of oppression, and offer awareness around social justice.

The Youth Justice Institute co-creates spaces with young folks where they can discuss issues that affect them in their communities, explore these issues with adult community leaders, and envision their futures through artmaking.

YJI parterend with the Laramie Public Art Coalition and the Laramie Plains Civic Center. With support from these organizations, participants spent the week exploring issues, while designing a large-scale art installation under the guidance and support of public artist Conor Mullen. They identified two major themes for their piece: celebrating diversity in Laramie by making queer and BIPOC people visible through the work, and celebrating the things in their community that bring them joy.

Super stoked to be hired to this position to bring together individuals - especially young people- organizations, and resources to promote and improve the overall wellness of our community through education, collaboration, and advocacy to envision Laramie and create change in our community.

It is an honor to receive Wyoming Arts Council’s Visual Arts Fellowship for 2023. And, it’s an honor to be among an incredible cohort of visual, performing, and writing creatives in the state.

I was hired to teach cultural anthropology at Laramie County Community College. Excited to share this discipline with my community.

Thank you for to the Wyoming Humanities Council, awarding me the Crossroads Digital Preservation Grant. This funding will directly support all field work in Kemmerer-Diamondville Wyoming this summer, where I am working alongside the community to preserve coal identity and heritage amidst the backdrop of a transition to nuclear power.

I will be creating at the UW-NPS Research Station in Grand Teton National Park in July- creating 4×5 images tracing the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871. Very thankful for these opportunities, created work up end of summer.ere

I am very grateful to have just completed a residency at BLM’s Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey, where I spent time photographing in the largest raptor nesting area in North America along Idaho’s Snake River…and during fledgling season.

I am showing three pieces from the Tracing an Atrocity series at the grand opening of Laramie Plains Civic Center Gorgan Gallery. Show will be up through the fall.

It is with incredible joy to announce the launch of We Are Anthracite. A project very near to my heart, and years in the making alongside University of Maryland’s Paul Shackel and the Anthracite Heritage Museum.

From the press release:

The Anthracite Heritage Museum in partnership with the University of Maryland recently completed phase one of a new digital exhibit titled “We are Anthracite” to collect and share the stories of people not represented in the museum. To share the stories of new immigrants in real time and to understand these cyclical patterns of behavior. To share the stories of people who have been in our region for centuries but whose stories weren’t presented.

Thrilled to the May artist-in-residence at Homestead National Historical Park out on the prairies of Nebraska. I’ll be creating a quilt comprising archival imagery printed on cotton, profiling and bringing visibility to women homesteaders who are often left out of historical narrative. Looking forward to researching some incredible folks like Lucretia Marshbanks and Mary Forgal Lowell.

A huge thank you to editor Yiorgos Anagnostou and interviewer Artemis Leontis for the profile in Ergon, a magazine highlighting the Greek diaspora in American through arts and letters.

You can read the piece here.

It’s a pleasure to be a part of the Newcomb’s group exhibition Unthinkable Imagination: A Creative Response to the Juvenile Justice Crisis. It’s been an honor to work alongside 20+ other artists, creating a piece in response to a respective oral history with a formerly incarcerated young person in New Orleans. My large scale photograph printed on aluminum is accompanied by a vocal track artist Renee Benson created to sing with my piece.

Opening Reception at Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University

Saturday January 21, 2023, 2-6:30 pm