Page 10 - Ivan Mcclellan News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

7:08 A new exhibit at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West focuses on Black cowboys and rodeos: Eight Seconds: Black Cowboys In America. Wyoming Public Radio's Kamila Kudelska spoke with photographer Ivan McClellan about his work, and the first Black rodeo he went to in Oklahoma. Ivan McClellan: I got out of my car and saw 2,000 Black cowboys there and I was just enamored of the culture immediately. The way the people dressed. The way that people wore braids, people had long acrylic nails, there was hip hop music playing. Like, it just completely shattered my conceptions of like what a rodeo ...

A Casper-based non-profit, ART 321, is holding its first statewide conference aimed at addressing the health concerns of Wyoming residents through the arts. Wyoming has the highest youth incarceration rate and one of the highest suicide rates in the nation. But the Casper-based nonprofit, ART 321, plans to fight against it using the arts. Wyoming Public Radio's Naina Rao talks with the nonprofit's executive director, Tyler Cessor, about the need for a conference like this right now. The latest coronavirus relief package includes $20 billion for tribal governments -- a potentially transfor...

Credit Kamila Kudelska Eight Seconds is the work of photographer Ivan McClellan. He was raised in Kansas City, Kansas and is a Black man. But McClellan wasn't exposed to Black rodeos and Black cowboys until 2015, when he went to the first one in Oklahoma. "I was like, 'Black people aren't cowboys.' I just kind of had that idea in my head. And it wasn't until I went to this rodeo and I saw people roping and wrestling steers and riding bulls and wearing Stetsons and all of that stuff, but they were all Black. I was like, 'It's undeniable. These are cowboys. They're real.'"

Growing up, Kansas City native Ivan McClellan knew he wanted to leave Kansas. He didn't know where he was going, but he knew he would go. After high school, he headed for Manhattan - New York. McClellan went to a drama conservatory and acted for six years before trying his hand at design.  But it was photography and telling people's stories that piqued his interest.  "When I turned 17, I was determined to escape Kansas," McClellan said.  Six years ago, McClellan went to his first rodeo run by Black cowboys, and he was hooked. "In mainstream media, there's not a lot of opportunity for Blac...