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| Fort Collins Museum of Art's website displays Laurie Beth Zuckerman's "Up in Smoke" Memory Jug for their 2014 exhibition, "Artistic Eye on History: Fort Collins 150"
Laurie Beth Zuckerman completed three memory jugs for the Fort Collins Museum of Art's "Artistic Eye on History: Fort Collins 150" invitational exhibition, curated by Marianne Lorenz, former Executive Director of the FCMOA. This show honors Fort Collins 150th birthday. It opened July 24 with a private reception for members, sponsors, and all seventeen artists in the exhibit, and will be on display to the public until September 28, 2014. The FCMOA's featured artists are: Amelia Caruso, Bob Coonts, Louise Cutler, Jennifer Davey, Monica Deming, Clint Eccher, Diane Edwards, Diane Findley, Wendy Franzen, Jennifer Ivanovic, Mary McCauley, Dolores Rowland, Ajean Ryan, Two Sisters Mosaic’s Jane Sullivan and Jean McBride, Eldon Ward, and myself.
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| Fort Collins Museum of Art in Old Town is housed in this National Register of Historic Places former US Post Office. |
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| Fort Collins Museum of Art exhibition banners picture Laurie Beth Zuckerman's "Up in Smoke" Memory Jug |
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| Laurie Beth Zuckerman's Crossing Over the River Styx Memory Jug |
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| Laurie Beth Zuckerman's Crossing Over the River Styx Memory Jug, with painting by Jennifer Davey and sculpture by Wendy Franzen |
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| Laurie Beth Zuckerman's Crossing Over the River Styx Memory Jug, left, and Up in Smoke Memory Jug. Paintings by Clint Eccher. |
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| Laurie Beth Zuckerman's "Home on the Grange" memory jug was constructed in Laurie's backyard studio |
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| Detail of Laurie Beth Zuckerman's "Home on the Grange" Memory Jug |
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| Laurie Beth Zuckerman's "Home on the Grange" Memory Jug side view |
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| Laurie Beth Zuckerman's "Home on the Grange" Memory Jug installation at the Fort Collins Museum of Art's "Artistic Eye on History: Fort Collins 150" |
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| Laurie Beth Zuckerman's "Home on the Grange" installation base displays antique cast iron shoe lasts, rusted cowbells, and a SAD iron |
Background information on Laurie Beth Zuckerman's three Memory Jugs at Fort Collins Museum of Art:
UP IN SMOKE Memory Jug
I worked my "Up in Smoke" Memory Jug into a found-object assemblage installation for this exhibition. Vintage souvenirs depicting Western-themed stereotypes of wrangling cowboys, warring Indians, and covered wagon trains, were applied to this antique stoneware whiskey jug. Lucky pennies, good luck horseshoes, charms, and keychains, tourist ashtrays, and other copper-plated memorabilia were gathered throughout Northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming during years of flea marketing.
This memory jug honors my father's sixteen years in Hollywood as a dramatic screenwriter of psychological westerns, dark film noir flicks, and smoldering melodramas during the mid-40s and 50s. In the late 50s, George Zuckerman’s career in cinema went "up in smoke," due to a sea change in Hollywood toward family friendly comedies. He carried on his author's life as a Broadway playwright and novelist. George's best known novel, The Last Flapper, was based on his close friend, Zelda Fitzgerald, who died when the mental hospital where she was staying went "up in smoke" as she awaited electroshock therapy in a locked room.
CROSSING OVER THE RIVER STYX Memory Jug
Antique copper coins and brass war medals, all souvenirs of travels to faraway lands, are used to encase this enigmatic memory jug, made from an antique stoneware whiskey jug. According to ancient Greek mythology, relatives placed a coin in the mouth of the deceased to help pay their ferry toll across the River Styx. The compass I added points the way to the afterworld, and bells signal the dead's arrival.
My Home on the Grange Memory Jug is a pun on Brewster Higley's 1873 poem “Home on the Range,” which served as a anthem to frontier life. My jug was constructed on an old dairy farm cream jug, and stands as a memorial to the pioneers who settled Fort Collins in the early mid-1800s. The homesteading act helped multiply the few farms and ranches already existing on the abandoned military fort in Old Town and the town was incorporated in 1873. Granges were established in Fort Collins around the same time, encouraging families to band together to promote the well-being of the community and agriculture. Fort Collins enjoyed favorable conditions for farming and livestock to flourish, and once the first railroad was completed 1877, these products were shipped out and consumer goods brought in.
