New Installation by Katie Hargrave and Meredith Laura Lynn at UW Art Museum

The University of Wyoming Art Museum is presenting a new installation by artists Katie Hargrave and Meredith Laura Lynn as part of the larger exhibition “Sympoiesis: Co-Creating Sense of Place.” The installation is available for public viewing through Dec. 21.

Featuring nine artworks created the last three years, the installation includes the debut showing of “Bad Outdoorsmen (Episode 2)” filmed at Flaming Gorge in Wyoming and Utah.

Hargrave and Lynn’s artwork is grounded in their shared interest in the outdoors. They explore the cultures surrounding and mitigating experiences of public lands, which are an important part of the identity as a country.

The artists infuse their artworks with humor, such as placing quotes from famed naturalist John Muir’s “A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf” over romanticized images of outdoor recreation and filming their own spoof survivalist series.

Beneath all of the “poking fun” at the history and culture of outdoorsmanship in the U.S., Hargrave and Lynn have a deep and abiding love for these spaces. The artists work together to engage with contemporary culture and art historical legacies to create new narratives about who public lands are for and how people might experience them.

The artists will return to UW for public engagement and residency activities this October.

“Sympoiesis: Co-Creating Sense of Place” is funded through the generosity of the Susan Moldenhauer FUNd for Contemporary Art, the Patricia R. Guthrie Special Exhibitions Gallery Endowment, WE Soda and By Western Hands.

For more information about the latest installation, email Michelle Sunset, UW Art Museum director of curatorial affairs, at msunset@uwyo.edu.

About the Artists

Hargrave and Lynn are artists and educators who collaborate to explore the historical, cultural and environmental impacts of public land. The pair met at the University of Iowa, where they both earned their Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degrees. They have worked together since 2018 following a residency in Oregon that connected artists with the environment. While traveling to and from Oregon, they spent time in national parks together and developed the initial projects that would evolve into an ongoing, long-distance collaboration.

Hargrave is an associate professor at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. She earned her MFA in intermedia from the University of Iowa, her MA from Brandeis University and her BFA from the University of Illinois.

Lynn is the curator at the Museum of Fine Arts and an assistant professor at Florida State University. She obtained her MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Iowa and her BFA from Cornell University.

Their work has been shown in such museums as the Knoxville (Tenn.) Museum of Art; Atlanta Contemporary; the Wiregrass Museum of Art, in Dothan, Ala.; Gadsden (Alabama) Museum of Art; and Austin Peay State University, in Clarksville, Tenn. Together, they have been artists in residence at the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum, in St. Augustine, Fla., and Signal Fire, in Portland, Ore.

For more information about the UW Art Museum, call (307) 766-6622, visit the website at www.uwyo.edu/artmuseum or follow the museum on Facebook and Instagram.

Located in the Centennial Complex at 2111 Willett Drive in Laramie, the museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursday hours are extended to 7 p.m. Admission is free.