Teachers and Friends: Plan Your CZ Tours & Lectures

Alexis Rockman’s art is at Bates College. Have you seen Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place Scale yet? You better hurry.

From Thylacines to Yowies, from Sasquatch to Sea Serpents, from Mothman to Malaysian Mawas, there’s a museum near you that is waiting for your visit. If you are a teacher, now is the time to schedule your classroom’s visit. Professors and teachers who add cryptozoology to their lesson plans find out quickly that more students become interested in what there is to learn in natural history, zoology, biology, and other life sciences.

In North America, the school year has begun or will soon. Avoid last minute delays, and fit a cryptozoology tour in your schedule, inside or outside the classroom, before it’s too late!

There are museums across the country that give unique learning opportunities through the gateway of cryptozoology. I encourage everyone – friends, fans, parents, teachers, professors – to look to the museums and exhibitions that are popular and fun for students and youth and you!

For example, the on-going exhibition Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place Scale continues in Maine, at Bates College, through October 8, 2006. If you wish to see it, have your class tour it, or perhaps even talk to me about giving you, privately, or your university or school class a very special tour/lecture of the exhibition, while it is still in Maine, do not hesitate planning this soon. [Contact can be made directly with me via email = lcoleman (at) maine.rr.com ]

Furthermore, look at these important upcoming dates for this traveling exhibition. It will be moving from Maine to Kansas in mid-October, and as you can see below, there are several planned events, including an ending reception in Maine, plus an opening reception, a class “Clay for Kids: Cryptozoology,” and a presentation “Cryptozoology: Illuminating the Unseen,” in conjunction with the Kansas showing.

Closing Reception Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place Scale Bates College Museum of Art Lewiston, Maine

The closing reception for Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place Scale is on Saturday, October 7, 2006, at 4 PM. Artist talks and speakers TBA.

Opening reception – Cryptozoology: Out of Time, Place and Scale Date: 27 October 2006 Time: 6:00 pm Location: H&R Block Artspace, 16 E. 43rd St., Kansas City, Mo. Description: Opening reception, 6 to 8 p.m. today, for Cryptozoology: Out of Time, Place and Scale, an exhibition that runs through Dec. 20 at the H&R Block Artspace.

Co-organized by KCAI and the Bates Museum College of Art in Lewiston, Maine, the exhibition includes a catalog, film series and range of public programs to explore where science and art share a mutual focal point.

Often considered a marginalized science or a farcical adventure, the practice of cryptozoology is the quest for unknown, rumored or hidden animals. Its most notorious pursuits include the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot and the Yeti, through it has also revealed animals that are now part of the classified natural world.

Artists in the exhibition include Rachel Berwick, Walmor Correa, Mark Dion, Sean Foley, Joan Fontcuberta, Ellen Lesperence, Jill Miller, Jeanine Oleson, Rasamund Purcell, Alexis Rockman, Shen Shaomin, Jeffrey Vallance, Jaimie Wyeth and Xiao Yu. (A separate, nonfiction room is filled with Loren Coleman’s International Cryptozoology Museum’s Bigfoot statue, as well as over fifty of his artifacts and pieces of evidence.)

Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. Admission is free.

More information is also available from the H&R Block Artspace at 816-561-5563 or on the gallery’s website.

What’s cryptozoology? It’s the quest for unknown or rumored animals like the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot. We’ll go on our own quest. First we’ll tour the exhibit “Cryptozoology: Out of Time, Place, and Scale” at KCAI’s H & R Block Artspace. Then, using fairy tales and myths for inspiration, we will create ceramic tiles and sculptures that tell our favorite stories without using words. Students will explore composition and design, as well as construction, textures and shapes. All supplies included. Instructor | Lauren Clay Date | 5 sessions, Saturdays, Oct. 28 – Dec. 2 (no class Nov. 25) Time | Saturdays, 9:30 – 11:30 a.m. Cost | $95 + $20 clay fee Enrollment limited to | 12 Location | Richard J. Stern Ceramics Building, lower level

Cryptozoology: Illuminating the Unseen Saturday, November 18 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. (lunch provided) H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute Jessie Fisher, Painting

Participants will construct elaborate mythologies based on the marriage between fact and fiction, folklore and science, within the role of the institution. By visiting the Cryptozoology exhibition at H&R Block Artspace at KCAI, the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, and a virtual tour of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, you will create a convincing fiction that highlights not only the viewers willingness to believe, but also exposes the context that creates the apparatus we call “truth.”

This workshop is held in conjunction with KCAI’s Artspace gallery where there will be an Art Educators Open House on Friday evening November 17 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. The Open House will feature the exhibition, Cryptozoology: Out of Time, Place, and Scale, co-organized by the H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute and Bates Museum College of Art in Lewiston, Maine. Come and meet the Artspace staff members and discuss aspects and ideas about Artspace educational programs, gallery tours for student groups and further opportunities for educational, artistic and professional growth for both students and teachers alike.

To enroll in the Saturday KCAI workshops, call Ruth at 816-802-3505 or email her at [email protected] at least one week before the workshop. Enrollment is limited to 15 participants. Lunch and most materials are provided.

There still is time to see all of this in Maine, which includes Marc Swanson’s White Yeti (a/k/a “Killing Moon”) – below – that is presently on exhibition at Bates College’s Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place Scale.

Here’s Strange Maine blogger Michelle Souliere with Swanson’s Yeti at Bates:

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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