EVENT DETAILS

June 4 at 7 pm Cost: Free
Kerry Grombacher in Concert
The Highway 281 Troubadour Tour

Western songwriter Kerry Grombacher will appear in concert at Lawton’s Museum of the Great Plains on Friday, June 4th, 2010. In the spirit of the troubadours of old, Kerry Grombacher’s songs paint vivid portraits and tell the fascinating stories of working cowboys and old camp cooks, roadside motels and prisons, wildland firefighters, cattle rustlers and wolf trappers – the landmarks and denizens of the west.

The Highway 281 Troubadour Tour, from May 21st to June 10th, will find him playing concerts in towns along the 1,872 mile-long road. Kerry was born in Kansas, a child of the Great Plains. His songs have found great acceptance among the poets, musicians and fans who have heard him play, and they’ve been recorded by other western artists, including The Texas Trailhands, Duke Davis, Trails & Rails, Earl Gleason, and Gary Prescott.

Kerry’s recordings include It Sings in the Hi-Line (2008), Sands Motel (2001), Riding for the Brand (1999), Dreams of New Orleans (1998) and Home to the West (1996). He’s a member of the Western Music Association and the North American Folk Alliance, and he endorses Elixir Guitar and Mandolin Strings and TKL Guitar and Mandolin Cases.

June 11 at 10 am & 1 pm Cost: Free
June 12 at 10 am, Noon & 2 pm
Rhys Thomas, Science Circus: The Physics of Fun

Rhys Thomas will present, Science Circus: The Physics of Fun, at the Museum of the Great Plains June 11 and 12. Science Circus explores gravity with bowling ball juggling, gyroscopics with Chinese yoyo spinning, balance with six foot unicycle riding, centripetal force with cowboy lariat swinging and recaps it all twirling 9 glass bowls while pulling a tablecloth from under a place setting to demonstrate inertia.  Whew! 

Rhys (pronounced ‘reece’) explains how he began this interesting career. “It all started with the rain… They wanted me to reenlist as a Middle School Journalism teacher, but I wanted to see if I could make a living as a juggler. So, Maria and I moved to Seattle and had a very rewarding summer street performing until the rains came. Depressed, I went to the Pacific Science Center and suggested that I could perform a show for their crowds under the breezeway roof. “A science show,” I hastily added. They said I could try it the next weekend and I worked feverishly putting together the first iteration of the Science Circus. When the crowds gathered and the applause parted the rain clouds, the Science Center Director offered to hire me for one weekend each month for the rest of the winter. Thus I survived my first winter as a juggler and started over 20 years of Science Circus shows in hundreds of schools across America and in museums from Singapore to Trinidad”.

Rhys Thomas will present two shows at the Museum on Friday June 11, and three on Saturday June 12. Tentative show times for Friday are 10AM and 1 PM. Saturday show times are 10AM, Noon and 2PM. Saturday’s show will be incorporated with the Museum’s annual Bicycle Festival. Admission to Science Circus, the Museum and the Bicycle Festival is FREE!

The event is sponsored by the Oklahoma Museum Network, which is funded by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.

June 12 9am – 3pm Cost: Free
Annual Bike Festival

The 3rd annual Bike festival will take place June 12 from 9am to 3pm at the Museum of the Great Plains. Activities are designed for all ages and will include Individual Time Trials, Segway Rides, Best Decorated Bike Station and more! Visitors will find two new additions to the scene. They are the Science Matters Mobile Museum and Rhys Thomas and his Science Circus show. Both sponsored by the Reynolds Foundation. The Science Circus: Physics of Fun show times are 10am, Noon and 2pm.

Free bike helmets will be fitted and given away as long as supplies last. A vendor will sell food and drinks.

The festival is held in conjunction with the Tour of the Wichitas. The Tour of the Wichitas, known to be the best ride in Oklahoma and a real cycling treat for kids ages 5 through 12, will begin in front of the museum at 8am. Bikers can pick up packets at the museum beginning at 7am.

June 12, July 9 & 16 Cost: Free
Here for the Bike Fest and two Fridays in July!
Open from 10am to 3pm each visit!
Science Matters Mobile Museum
www.sciencemuseumok.org/omn_mobilemuseum.htm

July 5-31 See below for times Cost: Varies
Metamorphosis

The Museum’s Summer Arts Program is guaranteed to be …A Life-Changing Experience! There will be much to experience and much to learn! Themes include, Nature, Art and Culture. Participants will draw upon unique experiences with nature, set up by the Museum educators and their Awesome-Cool-Guests! The experience may involve getting close and personal to some creepy crawly critters or slippery slimy ones! Students will then document that experience in meaningful ways. Options include - paintings, sculptures, mixed-media, creative story-writing, haikus, journaling and more. Students will be encouraged to experiment with different media and application methods. They will learn traditional and nontraditional methods of application of traditional and nontraditional media. Students will learn which media and applications to choose to achieve their envisioned goal. In addition, students will learn how unexpected results may lead to innovative ways of expression or documentation.

The Museum’s Summer Arts Programming is made possible through donations from our community members, business partners and the Oklahoma Arts Council. Through state appropriations and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Oklahoma Arts Council funds arts events and arts education programs throughout the state. Projects funded by the Oklahoma Arts Council generate matching funds create public/private partnerships that in turn impact Oklahoma’s economy throughout the state’s rural and urban communities.

July 5 – 31
Monday – Friday
9am to Noon
Ages 6 – 12

Weekly Themes: Ravenous Reptiles, Invasion of the Insects, Don’t Get Stumped & Animals Alive!

Saturday Sessions for Teens
July 10, 17, 24, 31
1pm to 3pm
Members $25 Nonmembers $35

 

Discovery Hour for 4 and 5 year olds
Each Saturday in July
11am to Noon

Members $50/per week; Non-members $60/per week, 10% off additional family members.
Cost includes all materials and a healthy snack.

Register early, as space is limited. Registration must accompany payment. (Payment is nonrefundable.) Registration may be completed by telephone (with a credit card), by mailing your check made payable to the Museum of the Great Plains, or by dropping this form off with your payment at the Museum of the Great Plains. Scholarships are available. For more information, please call the Museum at (580) 581-3460 or email the Curator of Education, Jana Brown educator@museumgreatplains.org

More Details: Each week will be given a different theme, indicating the type of experience students will have with nature and the subject for their art.

Themes are: Week 1- Ravenous Reptiles; Week 2 - Invasion of the Insects; Week 3 - Don't Get Stumped; Week 4 -Animals Alive The experiences in/or with nature will be set up by professors, museums educators, and artists. The experience is planned on the first day of each week. For example, on the first day of the first week of programs, Eileen Castle, an educator from the Science Museum Oklahoma will introduce the students to her reptilian friends.

Eileen has a large collection of snakes and lizards. Students will take time to look carefully at them and even touch and hold some of them. After Eileen's introduction, the students will begin a journal to document this experience. The Museum's Summer Arts program art instructor, Cynthia Clay, a Comanche artist, will facilitate the journaling and later art making experiences. The journals will serve as a reminder of the experience; of what the snakes and lizards looked like, felt like, and how the students felt when they saw, touched or handled them; of what they were thinking, etc.

Each day after (Tue - Fri), students will use the information and images in their journal to create individual, original works of art inspired from that first-day experience. Methods of application of watercolor, acrylic, pencil, pastels and clay will be demonstrated. Students will compare and contrast the different properties of each medium. Students will understand the likely effects a medium's properties or characteristics will have on the final form of an artwork. Loose, painterly styles of art will be compared to detailed, naturalistic styles. Media and the application of media will be discusses while comparing these styles. Students learn that there are many ways to document an experience and many aspects of an experience to document. We can express our feelings about the experience; our thoughts. We can be imaginative about the experience or we can describe what it is we really saw; the size, color, texture, patterns, and smell. We can choose words to express or describe the experience. We can choose clay, paint or another medium.

Saturday classes for Pre-Ks will be shorter in length, but also contain the same sort of activities: An experience with nature/journaling/creating a work of art from that experience. Saturday classes for Teens will also contain the same themes and similar activities.

SATURDAY SESSIONS FOR TEENS

July 10 – Creative Cache: The Art and Science of Geo-caching with Museum staffers Jim Whiteley & Jana Brown

July 17 – "Larger than Life Insects"  - Students will create a large mixed media journal page from direct observation and study. Sandra Dunn, artist, bug collector and facilitator!

July 24 – "A Big Mass of Bugs" - Students will 'magnify a small bug' by painting a large scale version.    Sandra Dunn, artist, nature-lover and facilitator!

July 31 – The Wonder of the Buffalo, with watercolor artist, Tom Biggs of Medicine Park

SATURDAY DISCOVERY HOUR FOR 4 & 5 YEAR OLDS with Faye Barnes

July 10 – Desert Life

July 17 – Woodlands & Meadows

July 24 – Ocean Life

July 31 – Animals in the Rainforest

For more information, please call the Museum at (580) 581-3460
or email the Curator of Education,

Jana Brown educator@museumgreatplains.org