Williams takes ‘Stay Wild’ community art project to Alliance Students from the Alliance Recreation Center create spray chalk animals as part of the Stay Wild community arts project, led by Associate Professor of Art Sandra Williams. Courtesy photos.
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chool of Art, Art History & Design Associate Professor of Art Sandra Williams spent a week in Alliance, Nebraska, in June to collaborate on her community art
project titled “Stay Wild” with the Carnegie Arts Center and the Alliance Recreation Center. “Community-based arts have always been, and always will be, part of my creative agenda,” Williams said. “Instead of a ‘top-down’ lecture, I prefer that the community explore the role arts play in creative placemaking, have the tactile experience of handling cut paper in the form of stencils, and engage with animals in a creative manner.” It reunited her with School of Art, Art History & Design alumna Kyren (Conley) Gibson (B.F.A. 2011), who is the executive director of the Carnegie Arts Center in Alliance. While an undergraduate student at Nebraska, Gibson was her UCARE (Undergraduate Creative and Research Experiences) assistant, as well as her teaching assistant for her Art in the Community course. “Professor Williams pushed beyond the usual mentorship role and tailored my experience towards my post-graduate goals, which were to move home and become an arts educator and advocate for arts in my rural hometown of Alliance, Nebraska,” Gibson said. “Professor Williams mentored me on the importance of arts in generating thriving communities. Now, as the director of the Carnegie Arts Center in Alliance, I am putting the skills she taught me to use and more.”
FALL 2021 | HIXSON-LIED COLLEGE of FINE AND PERFORMING ARTS
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