Humanities Festival Biographies

Humanities Festival 202 Biographies

JP Cavigelli​

JP Cavigelli has been the Prep Lab Manager, Field Trip Organizer, and Collections Manager at the Tate Geological Museum at Casper College since 2004. He has led many field outings and prepared a wide range of fossil vertebrates, from a mammoth and a T. rex to micro-mammal teeth. Before this, he spent two years as Collections Manager at the University of Wyoming, where he designed the database he still uses. JP has also done freelance fossil preparation in his private lab for both private collectors and academic paleontologists.

He has had the good fortune of being invited on paleontological expeditions to Mongolia, Niger, Tanzania, Alaska, and North Dakota. When not working with fossils, JP enjoys birdwatching, traveling, and spending time with his supercalifragilisticexpialidocious wife. He recently retired from a 30-year hockey career.

Chad Hanson

Chad Hanson serves as a member of the faculty in sociology and religion at Casper College. He is also a co-founder of the Wyoming Mustang Institute, and the author of a wide range of books, including most recently, The Wild Horse Effect: Awe, Well-Being, and the Transformative Power of Nature. For more information, visit chadhanson.org.

Russell J. Hawley

Russell J. Hawley is the Education Specialist at the Tate Geological Museum at Casper College in Wyoming, where he gives tours and produces artwork for museum displays. He also contributes a palæontology question and answer column to the museum newsletter. Russell has worked at the museum since 1997, and started digging up fossils in Wyoming in 1990. He illustrated Islands in the Cosmos: The Evolution of Life on Land by Palæontologist Dr. Dale Russell. His one-man art show, A Thousand Unnamed Worlds, was on display for two years at the Wyoming State Museum in Cheyenne.

Jeremy Jones

Jeremy Jones (b. 1981, Casper, WY) is a multidisciplinary artist working in ceramics, casting, woodworking, welding, found objects, and drawing. He earned an AFA in Commercial Art (2003) and an AFA in Visual Art (2004) from Casper College, a BFA in Ceramics and Sculpture from the University of Wyoming (2006), and an MFA in Sculpture from Wichita State University (2012).

For over a decade, Jones has explored themes of parenthood, creating toy-like sculptures and assemblages that enshrine everyday moments of fatherhood. His work has been reviewed in The Nashville Scene, Nashville Arts Magazine, and Peripheral ARTeries Contemporary Art Review, and featured on the Instagram pages of Hyperallergic and The Jealous Curator.

He has exhibited in over 100 group shows across the United States and presented solo exhibitions at ShiftSpace Gallery (Wichita State University), Space 204 (Vanderbilt University), The Nicolaysen Art Museum (Casper, WY), Gallery 120 (Inver Hills Community College), The Goodstein Gallery (Casper College), The Up Gallery (University of Wyoming), Arts at the Airport (Nashville International Airport), The Coffman Art Gallery (University of Minnesota), and The Hopkins Center for the Arts (Hopkins, MN).

Jones maintains a home studio in New Brighton, MN, and serves as a ceramics instructor at Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, a progressive art studio for artists with disabilities in St. Paul, MN.

Dr. Joshua R. Mietz

Dr. Joshua R. Mietz is an Instructor at Casper College in Casper, Wyoming. He teaches Applied Clarinet and Saxophone, College Band, Jazz Ensemble I, Chamber Music, and the History of American Popular Music. He is the Wyoming State Chair for the International Clarinet Association and serves as the Executive Director of Casper College’s Annual Kinser Jazz Festival. He performs with the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra.

Prior to arriving at Casper College, Mietz served as an Adjunct Instructor at both Fort Lewis and San Juan Colleges, as well as the Director of Choirs at the First United Methodist Church in Durango, Colorado. He also directed a clarinet choir comprised of musicians from the Four Corners Region of the American Southwest and performed with the San Juan Symphony Orchestra.

While earning a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Mietz studied clarinet with Diane Barger and conducting with Carolyn Barber. His doctoral document examined David Maslanka’s Desert Roads from the perspective of a clarinetist and a conductor. It contains the transcription of an interview detailing Maslanka’s fascinating compositional technique.

While at the University of Montana-Missoula, Mietz served as the E-flat/bass clarinetist with the Missoula Symphony and studied Applied Clarinet with Maxine Ramey and conducting with Stephen Bolstad, Kevin Griggs, and Luis Milan. Prior to his study at the University of Montana, Mietz taught junior high and high school band/orchestra in the public schools of Colorado and performed with the Denver Pops Orchestra.

Mietz received a Bachelor of Music degree in Clarinet Performance from the University of Colorado-Boulder and studied clarinet with Daniel Silver, Bil Jackson, and Phillip Aaholm. He also studied conducting with Allan McMurray.

Additionally, Mietz completed the requirements as a Certified Massage Therapist at the Denver School of Massage Therapy, where he acquired positions both at local clinics and teaching cadaver-based Human Anatomy at the Laboratories of Anatomical Enlightenment.

In his spare time, Mietz enjoys ultra-marathon running, bread baking, and is an amateur radio operator.