Awareness Through Art

Wyoming Untrapped is proud to be collaborating with Yellowstonian and artist Helen Seay in telling the stories of Wyoming’s spectacular native wildlife that converge so joyously on two murals in downtown Jackson. Think of it as a journey of arrival. In the weeks and months ahead, we’ll be treating our readers to the natural history of each species and the pathways they take across the landscape of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Our goal is to engender empathy for an amazing congregation of free-moving species that exist in such congregation nowhere else in the Lower 48. They are part of our shared natural heritage and there is much we can learn from them.

We are delighted to introduce a magnificent bobcat sculpture, “SPIRIT”, a year-in-the-making piece by local artist Terry Chambers. It shows the spirit of a bobcat, a Wyoming furbearer that’s really a free-roaming spirit trapped within these pieces of steel. Terry painstakingly disassembled 50+ traps, cleaned, shaped and cut into an excess of 600 pieces.  There are at least 8 different types and sizes of traps, most of them vintage, 80-100 years old. These traps and snares were designed to trap and kill animals, but WU and Chambers are finding a new use for them as components in artwork to raise awareness about trapping.

Through our Awareness Through Art program, we are showing that art helps us feel it emotionally and physically.  Art can mitigate the numbing effect created by the glut of information we are faced with today, and motivate people to turn thinking into doing.  Art engages with the world to change the world.

In the initial call for submissions to Wyoming Untrapped, I said that I envisioned this chapbook as a reminder of the value of sharing our landscapes with our more-than-human neighbors and as a spark for reflection by readers into their own understanding of what untrapped lives can be. The poets who sent me work exceeded my expectations for what the chapbook might contain. To each of them, I am grateful. As readers, I hope you are inspired to reflect on your own relationship to the ecosystems we inhabit and the actions you can take to foster healthy relationships within them.

Poets were encouraged to think about the theme of the chapbook broadly, and I was amazed and impressed by the range of responses that came in. Some poems focus closely on the lives of fur-bearing animals. Others consider our relationships with and responsibilities toward our more-than-human neighbors. Still, others think broadly about what it might mean to live an untrapped life with an untrapped mind. Through all of the poems included here, I was inspired by the depth of feeling directed toward the landscapes and animals that make up our home ground.

I am also moved by the originality of voices that emerge across the poems. The poets collected here show that the poetic ecosystem in the Tetons thrives. They showcase a community of writers who know the ways we can bring words together to re-envision the world where we live.

– Matt Daly

Cover art:  Badger by Jocelyn Slack