Laramie River Buffalo Rainbow
UW Lab School, Laramie WY, Sharon Mathiesen and 5th Graders,18'x5', May 2011.
This mural began in 2000 at Michael Day's UW College of Education, Annual Folk School. Participants painted the Aboriginal mythical Rainbow Snake, the great ancestral spirit who created the water and rivers all over the world. Rainbow represents the Laramie River for our land here with a buffalo headdress and fish tail to represent all the land and water creatures that are made of and need water (Rainbow). The seeds of all life are embedded inside rainbow, plants, birds, animals, insects, people, all dependent on water for survival.
In 2011, Sharon Mathiesen and the Lab school 5th graders completed the Rainbow by adding the landscape dot painting showing the path of the Laramie River winding it's way from the Medicine Bow Range in the west to the Laramie Range in the east and passing through Laramie and the UW Lab School represented by Rainbow's stomach filled with the spirit children.
The handprints by the artists represent the "caring for country" teachings
that the students have acquired in the process of making this painting.
