Articles With Keyword "Tours"

Sheridan’s downtown in recent years has become as popular a draw for art lovers as it has traditionally been for shoppers.
From a reflection of the city’s historic roots to the purely whimsical — from the “Bozeman Trail Scout” at the corner of Main Street and Grinnell Plaza to the bronze rhino just a few blocks away — artwork abounds.

And not just downtown. “Art on Display,” a brochure published by the Sheridan Public Art Committee, provides a convenient guide to nearly 30 sites where visitors can view artwork ranging from sculpture to paintings to the stained-glass windows in several churches.

The brochure is available at the Fifth Street Visitors Center, local motels and restaurants, and downtown businesses.

Literature, art and culture have been part of Sheridan’s foundation from the days, more than a century ago, when an opera house flourished on the third floor of the Cady Building on the corner of Main Street and Alger Avenue.

The Cady’s third floor is gone, destroyed by a fire in the early 1900s, but the legacy remains. Art galleries may be found along Main Street and in Sheridan County’s outlying communities.

In recent years, the city’s wealth of sculpture and stained glass has gained attention thanks to the Sheridan Public Art Committee, an organization of volunteers whose goal is to promote the area’s visual arts.

Among works highlighted in the brochure are the pair of cast-iron Civil War cannons that guard the Grand Army of the Republic graves in Sheridan Municipal Cemetery and the pair of bronze lion-dogs that greet visitors to Kendrick Park.

Also included are the sculptures, both publicly and privately owned, that line Main Street and both sides of Grinnell Plaza just off downtown Main Street, the paintings and bronzes outside and inside Sheridan County Fulmer Public Library on Alger Avenue, the nine “Resurrection windows” at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, “Joyful” at the YMCA, and exceptional murals in several Sheridan banks and businesses.

Additional paintings and sculptures are found at Sheridan College and Sheridan High School, in Whitney Commons park, at the Sheridan County Historical Museum, in the small museum at the Visitors Center itself, and at the Sheridan Senior Citizens Center, 211 Smith St.

All of the art is on display at no cost to the public, and the brochure, which includes a map for a self-guided tour of the locations, also is free.

By Janet Donoho, The Sheridan Press 2010 Tour Guide