Jackson Hole Art Blog

The University of Wyoming’s Art Museum has a great blog (I’d be happy to trade links with them) with lots of cool information on what’s going on in the arts in Laramie and around Wyoming.  Last summer I met a representative—and please forgive my forgetting her name—of the university’s  Artmobile Program, who tipped me off about the bus and its mission.

It is, specifically, the Ann Simpson Artmobile Program, a statewide visual arts outreach. Named for former Senator Alan Simpson’s wife Ann, the ArtMobile provides interaction with visual arts to  “…audiences across the 97,914 square miles of Wyoming, visiting K-12 schools, state park visitor centers, libraries, senior centers, and other community-accessible locations in towns throughout the state.”  Funding for U.W.’s magic bus is provided by an anonymous donor and its contents and programs utilize exhibition artwork from the museum.  Presentations and events are followed up by discussion and other activities.

The Artmobile visits remote Wyoming communities with programs geared for children and adults, reaching remote populations that otherwise lack exposure to visual arts.   For those people, the Artmobile is a breath of fresh air.   And fresh paint!   The Artmobile is even on Facebook.

Jackson is awash in arts initiatives; I’ve never seen U.W.’s Artmobile come to town but perhaps we should invite them.  Do a little exchange, partner up!  Might there be a new way to paint the Tetons?  Even here, many residents and kids could benefit from additional arts exposure.    Funding for such enterprises is in flux, and in addition to its anonymous donor, the Artmobile operates with funding from the Julienne Michel Foundation, the FMC Corporation, Helga and Erivan Haub, and Ann and Alan Simpson, and the Wyoming Arts Council.  The latter is funded by the Wyoming legislature via the National Endowment for the Arts.

Contact Artmobile’s curator Beth Wetzbarger to find out more.    307.399.2941 or email artmobile@uwyo.edu.     Beth, perhaps it was you I met last summer, in Jackson, at Jill Callaway’s pot luck?    A pleasure.

Item #2:

Art speed dating!

It’s already time for the UW Art Museum’s fifth annual 20:20 art slam. Presenters show 20 images of their work for a 20-second duration–total presentation time is 6 minutes, 40 seconds, allowing for 20 participants.

Visual artists from around the state may sign up, but sign up is done on a first-come, first-served basis.  So, signing up is fast, too.  You must submit your images in a PowerPoint format and submissions are due by Friday, April 9, 2010.    The show will take place in Casper at the Hilton Garden Inn on April 23, from 8-10 pm.

The museum notes that 20:20’s format is “borrowed from a program that was first developed in Japan by two architects who were looking for a new way to present design ideas in an upbeat and exciting way. Events like 20:20 now occur internationally as specially organized evening events where the focus is on sharing information and community participation.”

20:20 Statewide is another venue for sharing ideas about the visual arts from around Wyoming.   Saturday evening, April 24, a reception hosted by the Wyoming Arts Council will honor 2010’s visual arts fellowship recipients.    An artist roundtable discussion follows the awards.

For more information on 20:20, or to sign up, please contact UW Art Museum Assistant Curator Rachel Miller at 307.766.6621 or rmiller@uwyo.edu.

Chuck Close Self-Portrait Woodcut, 2009 Woodcut in 47 colors Image Size: 28 x 23 inches Paper Size: 35 1/2 x 28 1/2 inches Edition of 70 Printed by Karl Hecksher Published by Pace Editions, Inc.

Now that Teton Art Lab (TAL) has taken up official residency as a Center for the Arts tenant, with representation on the Center’s website, newsletters, et cetera, TAL’s executive director Travis Walker is announcing some exciting shows.

Though Jackson’s 2010 September Fall Arts Festival is a ways off, TAL has sent word that its FAF highlight will be a show of woodblock prints of the works of famed artists Chuck Close, Richard Estes and Alex Katz.    The show represents the first time these works will be seen in Wyoming.   Each exhibition print is the work of New York City master print maker Karl Hecksher, who will also be teaching a class on traditional Japanese hand printing, Moku Hanga.

The exhibition runs September 10 - October 5, 2010.   Mark your calendars.

Close’s work knocks Walker out.

“In 1998, I saw an exhibition of Close’s work at the MoMA in NY,” says Walker.  “It floored me. I had seen photorealistic work before, such as Richard Estes (also in the exhibit), but what he was doing with these images seemed pretty genius, an Escher like blend of math, art, and science. Close makes big pieces with fingerprints, paper pulp, and overlapping circles of color, that become little abstractions up close, but are photorealistic from a distance. Those fingerprint pieces are especially awesome.”

Walker feels the accessibility of Close’s work appeals to the TAL mission, because its so readily educational.  Walker himself says he’s not previously been exposed to Estes’ photorealism.  “When I was a kid, a Jackson Pollock said nothing to me, but the photorealistic stuff was really amazing, technically. How did they do that?”

Walker says this is an unprecedented opportunity for Jackson residents to work with one of the world’s most noted print makers.   And, he giddily notes, the exhibit is free.

Hecksher is a friend of TAL board member David Gottfried. Schwing!   Hecksher, the founder, owner and director of K5 Editions LLC, has been printing in a variety of media since 1983. He spent the first three years after college as head printer at Prasada Press, collaborating with artists on stone and plate lithography.  In 1986 he became a New York artist, printing editions at several major print studios.

Hecksher’s goal is to establish a more painterly approach to printmaking, one reflective of the individual artist’s touch; to make the print speak clearly and express the artist’s intentions.  He’s been at it for two decades, honing his skills, and working with a full roster of noted artists.

A few years back, Walker took in a Portland, Oregon show of these prints and their matrixes.

” At the show there were these intricately carved wood blocks, stencils, paper screens, and etching plates that were just as beautiful as the prints themselves, side by side with the work to help viewers mentally grasp his process. It was truly mind blowing, from a printmakers perspective, to see the work involved in carving the blocks or etching the copper plates….At that time the Artlab was only a couple of months old, and we had only started to plan our printmaking studio. I knew if we ever did get a print program off of the ground, this work was something we should try and exhibit. So Dave made it happen with a few phone calls and a visit to Karl’s studio,” says Walker.

For his part, Hecksher is thrilled to be introducing his experience and method to Jackson artists.  His hope is that students will develop their own personal approach to wood block printing.

(Photo, top Left: Chuck Close Self-Portrait Woodcut, 2009 Woodcut in 47 colors Image Size: 28 x 23 inches Paper Size: 35 1/2 x 28 1/2 inches Edition of 70 Printed by Karl Hecksher Published by Pace Editions, Inc.)

Item #2

“In 2005 I first had the idea to take Rappers, deify them, and frame them in the context of Byzantine, Orthodox, and Catholic iconography and illuminated manuscripts. The violent deaths of some rappers and their subsequent deifi- cation are comparable to the martyrdom of Christian Saints.” - Aaron Bradley Wallis

A few short years ago, a Jackson Hole High School student’s entry in a Y.A.R.D. exhibition was removed from the exhibit by the gallery hosting that exhibit.  A pair of high top basketball shoes nailed at the top of a tall wooden cross was interpreted as protest and rejection of faith.  In other words, the First Amendment was violated because a work of art, funded in part by grant monies, was censored because of its perceived message.   And though funded art may be ejected from exhibitions, rejection cannot be made on the basis of disagreement with any message inherent in the art.

The young man who created the work protested the censoring by positioning himself as if he were nailed to a crucifix, and duct taped himself to the gallery wall.  Far from decrying Christianity, he said, he was celebrating it.  He felt a certain basketball star was a personification of a higher power, that the player was, in fact, a messenger of God.

Show censors got it very, very, wrong and did themselves more harm than good in the process.  The boy’s work was simple genius.

Teton Art Lab’s upcoming show, The Street Bible, heralds rap stars as Christian icons, and rap music as a form of gospel. Created by artist Aaron Wallis, the show is a ticker tape parade of colorful images: prints, drawings, photos, and paintings depict rap stars Jay-Z, Notorious B.I.G., Public Enemy and more.  Running March 26 -  April 31, The Street Bible’s opening reception takes place March 26, 6-8 pm.

For information on these and all other upcoming TAL shows, log onto their website, or phone Travis Walker at 307.699.0836.

Bonus Prelude: YouTube Rock Art Epic Sensation!

Now, back to work.

Perhaps Spring’s promise of fresh earth and sky is potent serum for new collaborations.   With Daylight Savings Time just days away, Altamira Fine Art announces a rare two-person show, No Limit. The exhibition joins the work of landscape artists John Felsing and Kathryn Mapes Turner. An opening reception takes place Thursday, March 11,  5-7:00 p.m.  

Turner grew up on Grand Teton National Park’s Triangle X Ranch, her family’s homestead.  Felsing has lived in his rural Michigan home twenty years; the artists have been friends for many years.   Strong rooted landscapes are part of humankind’s great collective unconscious and while Turner’s landscapes are traditionally loosely impressionistic, she’s not let go of realism.  That would be difficult to do, growing up in the Valley of the Park, a landscape packed with every imaginable element but the sea.  And understandable, because the urgent impulse to relate this true magnificence in recognizable form is a constant.   But in this show, I see a loosening of that emotional grip;  a loosening that, far from letting go, allows more interpretation of light and form in.   The results may be less specific to geographical place, but not less specific to sense of place.

This may be Felsing’s influence; he has long been encouraging Turner’s painterly explorations.  Felsing’s minimalistic, tonalist palette relates memory of place, Michigan’s more dissolved and meandering open territories.  He describes his work as being adverse to labels, and his paintings are responses to moments.  Viewers of Felsing’s paintings say they often have to step across the room to view his works before realizing their subjects as the paintings, up close, appear abstract.   Felsing thinks of his paintings as anything from portraits, to deductions, to music.

As in Whistler’s nocturnes, there is a meeting of the east–Asian–and Western influences in Felsing’s work.  An essay I found on Whistler’s nocturnes says that for Whistler, “nocturne” is a reference to the tendency of French Romantic painters to relate art to music and a “binary color scheme.”

“I am not interested in reproducing what is visible, but in attempting to make things visible,” says Felsing.  “Not until I visit a place repeatedly, do I feel enough intimacy to attempt a painting; only then does one realize that art grows out of love.”

(This is an active period for Michigan’s “state of mind” in the arts;  playwright Sam Shepard, a long time Michigan resident, is currently enjoying both a successful New York run of a new play and a revival of one of his classics.  His spare, tight stories are almost molecular in their scarce structure and prose.)

Turner, a partner in Trio Fine Art, is taking a spring break with this show, germinating a few new seeds.   She continues to be fully associated with Trio.

No Limit remains on display through March 31.   For information, email Altamira Fine Art at connect@altamiraart.com.

Two items from the Art Association:

Having just read a Jackson Hole News and Guide profile on  Art Association new Executive Director Jennifer Crawford’s feeling for space between art and its viewer, it really seems like kismet that a new show, Redefining Space, has opened at Artspace Loft Gallery.  Kismet, or great marketing coordination…you decide!  Whatever the force, this exhibit does something new.  Creative personalities fall into ruts; our spaces can rot, and worn space often sabotages creativity.   It creates resistance, a monumental foe for artists and writers.

Gallery and museum spaces manipulated to make the best of any display are not as common as you might think. In that spirit (and not because there’s worn space to rectify) Redefining Space aims to flex and stretch existing concepts about gallery space in particular.  Former Art Association board member Cindee George flexes her own creative biceps by reinterpreting Artspace’s  Donnelly Photography Loft Gallery.   The result is an exhibit within an exhibit, as George’s redefinition of gallery space is the backdrop for a current art exhibition.

The Art Association notes, too, that its Summer Class Registration process begins March 15, 2010.    Log onto the Art Association’s website, www.artassociation.org, to see this year’s offerings.  There are classes for all ages and artistic predilections.   A variety of levels of expertise are accommodated.   The roster includes loads of childrens art classes, so keep your little ones in mind when signing up.

Item #2:

Death, Debt and Divorce. Those are the three certain facts of life continuing to drive the art market, even in an economic downturn.  So says Christie’s CEO Edward Dolman in a business profile on the arts, published in Newsweek’s February 22, 2010 issue. (page 52.)

Last month, a Sotheby’s auction sold  Alberto Giacometti’s 1960 sculpture of a needle-thin man, “Walking Man I” for $104.3 million.  The price broke the previous record fine art sale, $104.2 million.  That record was also set at Sotheby’s, six years ago.  The hammer price bought Pablo Picasso’s 1906 work “Boy with a Pipe.” Prompted by the shockingly robust Giacometti sales price, Newsweek probed Doleman on the “hows and whys” of the sale.  With the collapse and confusion in current world economies, where does a sales price like this come from?  Is there no tactful reluctance, even when art up for sale is renowned?

According to Dolman, the answer is “no.”   Top of the market art sales flourish because of rare supply and rare personal fortune.  Dolman notes that as the Asian and Middle East art markets have grown, so has Christie’s investment in their sales bases.  “Our Asian works of art department is now the single biggest revenue-generating part of our business, superseding impressionist (darn it!) and modern pictures, postwar and contemporary art,” says Dolman.   He adds that when the most expensive art is involved, only a small number of people have the funds to buy it.  Those buyers have so much wealth it is almost impossible to put a dent in it.

The bottom line on “bargains,” says Dolman, is that death, debt and divorce happen no matter how wobbly economies become.   Death often piles debt onto family fortunes, and selling art that has accumulated high value is a handy way of paying off that debt.  Even then, top works of art are scarce.  So when a great work comes on the market Christie’s and Sotheby’s alert their best collectors and encourage them to bid while they can.

Supply and the ability to demand.   Can’t help but think about Jackson Hole’s plunging real estate market, a market with limited pinnacle supply and that only the wealthiest can buy.   Jackson’s real estate market has dropped near 80% in the last year, plus.   Since the recession began, according to Newsweek,  Christie’s sales have dropped from a reported $6 billion to less than $3 billion.  A very few of the highest end valley properties have sold recently;  “moderate” priced home sales remain fallow.

Lately, plein air painter Jen Hoffman has been screeching.  “Scree!”  I suspected she’d mistaken herself for a hawk, but she’s just excited about the National Museum of Wildlife Art’s upcoming exhibit, Birds of Sage and Scree.  Twenty-seven paintings by artist Greg McHuron with correlating text by writer and conservationist Bert Raynes will be on display.  The show opens Thursday, March 4, 2010 and as  Raynes and McHuron wouldn’t think of not having a party, there is one!  The party starts at the Museum at 5:30 pm, with a targeted end time of 7:30 pm.    I predict a packed house.

Are there two more admired and loved men in Jackson? Two figures whose passions are never dimmed, whose work is more purely motivated…devoid of narcissism?  I don’t think so.  Franz Camenzind is the only activist/conservationist/artist who holds a candle.  These spiritual leaders follow their muse, waking up daily considering and honoring the natural beauty surrounding us.  They wonder what they can do next to help it all along, and they don’t think about how they might benefit professionally or politically.

Back to the point, the show.   McHuron’s paintings and Raynes’ text are combined in a book, also titled Birds of Sage and Scree. This party celebrates that book’s upcoming Spring 2010 release, the finish line to a collaborative quest.   All proceeds derived from book sales will benefit the Meg and Bert Raynes Wildlife Fund. That organization’s mission is to “…initiate, augment, or simply fund projects or activities to help maintain viable and sustainable wildlife populations into the future, especially in Wyoming and Jackson Hole, through support of research, education, habitat protection and habitat restoration.”

A Raynes-McHuron collaboration provides an excellent in-your-hands example of the power of connection between nature and art.  Wildlife art nurtures love for, and engagement with, the natural world.  This show and the book are beautiful, and they are a tool.  The exhibition is also an opportunity for NMWA to  “…highlight two long-time supporters of the Museum,” says Museum President and CEO James McNutt. “The show furthers the Museum’s mission to inspire visitors to examine both fine art and humanity’s relationship with nature.”

Raynes, with his late wife, Meg, have been recognized for their dedication to conservation and wildlife issues by the National Museum of Wildlife Art, the Wildlife Heritage Foundation, the Wyoming Chapter of the Wildlife Society, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, and the Town of Jackson.   As the book profile on Raynes notes, he “….noticed that some promising bird habitats with difficult access got (little) attention. In particular, Raynes found that students in beginning birding classes tended to avoid scree slopes and attempting to cross expanses of sagebrush. Thus, birds that inhabit these ecosystems are lesser known. (Raynes) has long thought that these birds should be better understood.”

Greg McHuron especially delights in painting en plein aire in locations ranging from northern Alaska to the Grand Canyon. McHuron regularly participates in the Museum’s Western Visions® show and received numerous awards and special recognition from his peers and the Museum. In 2009, his painting Alpine Flush won the Trustee’s Purchase Award.

“I prefer painting…en plein air as the drama and excitement that occurs all around me is difficult to recreate in a studio environment,” notes McHuron.  “When I paint the rapidly changing scenes, I put into each of them the feelings and excitement that I felt while watching the scene unfold. Years of watching, analyzing and learning from nature’s school ground has helped me to understand the interrelations between organic and inorganic entities and how different lighting, seasons and locations affect how they look and react. If I can capture that particular feeling, I know that those viewing my works will come to feel some of the emotions and excitement that motivated my wanting to record this particular fleeting moment.”

Birds of Sage and Scree remains on display through April 18, 2010.   Phone the Museum at 307.733.5771.

A huge benefit of Facebook is reconnecting with friends you thought you’d never see or hear from again.

I want to tell you about Elizabeth Galindo and her sister Pam.  Elizabeth was my earliest, best childhood friend.  I knew her as Beth Wright; she now goes by Elizabeth, or Liz.   We became friends in the ’60’s.  We went to elementary school together, up in the hills of Santa Monica, California.   She had long, dark, tendrils and olive skin; I was a squinty blond with blotchy pale skin and a bowl cut.  We both loved Barbie.  We loved the Mamas and the Papas, the Beatles, Nancy Sinatra, the Beach Boys, boys, swimming in the pool, riding, her mom’s hot dogs, granny gowns, 45’s, cool cars, lying on the beach, gym class, sleep overs, summer camp, Yardley lipsticks, Marco Polo.  We were inseparable.

That’s me on the far right, Beth next to me.  I and my brothers are hangin’ at the Wright’s pool.

I had two baby sisters, Sarah and Annie.  Beth had an older sister, Pam.  We idolized her, of course.   We never thought we’d grow up, but if we did it would be very hip to look and act like Pam.  She was a loving big sister.  She watched over us when she was asked to, she chuckled at our little girls games, she was very protective of Beth.  And, as you can see from the photo top left, she was gorgeous.

About a year ago, out of the blue and after decades of not having a clue what had become of my childhood friend, Liz found me through Facebook.  A miracle!   Liz–I will refer to her as Liz from here on–had very recently lost Pam to lung cancer.  If ever a broken heart jumped through a website it was Liz’s as she spoke of her loss and emotions.   Pam would have been just 61 a few weeks ago.  These sisters had a powerful connection; they were best friends,  continuously supporting one another.

People come together for a reason.  We are sent to one another to learn and exchange energies and passion and lessons.   And hopefully love.   When Liz contacted me, she had no idea that I too had lost a sister to cancer.  Annie, the baby in our family, had died five years earlier, a victim of metastatic colon cancer.  She was 35.

Pam’s birthday is February 15.  Annie’s is February 18.

Liz is a couture designer and researcher.   She designs remarkable period costumes and gowns for the film industry.  She has two sons she loves with fervor.   And Liz has created a remarkable way to commemorate Pam and to raise funds for cancer research.   Here is her story, a story that began in the Fall of 2008:

“While taking care of my best friend and sister Pamela during her battle with lung cancer,  I began doodling on my clothing.  I doodled on jeans, skirts and blouses—whatever I had on, as I waited outside Pam’s treatment rooms.  I doodled as I watched her sleep. Writing in a journal was not personal enough at that time;  I wanted to create something  I could physically feel as well as write down my thoughts and prayers.  Drawing was my way of keeping in touch with my passion for art, fabrics and my “couture sister.”

After more than a year of mourning I finally approached my dear friend, pattern-maker Colleen.  She helped me create garments I call  Journal Skirts. I wore them to various functions and my classes (Liz is pursuing a PhD).   I used the journals for taking class notes, doodling, autographs, recording memories…. all sorts of record-keeping!   After a while, people began asking me where they could purchase a skirt or journal;  and that is when I knew Pamela was guiding me towards an idea that would help raise funds for cancer research.

20% of every journal skirt purchase price will be donated to the American Cancer Society.   This link will bring you to my Journal Skirt Website: http://web.me.com/journalskirt/Journal_Skirts/Welcome.html .  These skirts are wearable art, they’re performance art, and they are art from my heart to yours.  Go forth and create.  And thank you.”

Sincerely,  Elizabeth P. Galindo

Kaidi Dunstan’s first show took place some 20 years ago, in a small Deloney Street gallery.   In a matter of hours, the exhibit was close to sold out.  Her first collection of oil paintings, a grouping of still lifes and portrayals of the female human figure were so masterfully painted as to remind us of the great Post Impressionists Gauguin and Cezanne.    Dunstan’s compositions were inspired by some of the former’s paintings of Tahitian women, and a small study of a bowl of cherries could have been snatched from the latter’s studio.   Dunstan displayed, with her premiere show, a genius for mixing and applying paint.   Evident, too, was an affinity for capturing exotic color and patterns.

Transported, Dunstan’s first Jackson show in some years, opened February 22 at the Tayloe Piggott Gallery. An opening reception takes place Friday, February 26, and the exhibit remains up through April 17.

Dunstan currently lives in London.  Her life, recently touched by personal tragedy,—she lost her husband to cancer—remains enigmatic to the public at large. Though Dunstan’s work is contemporary and her colors echo those of the Expressionists, her work can be likened to Kiki Smith’s “Victorian”  artistic interpretation of mourning.   Dunstan continues to work on the human figure, but her work has become almost completely abstract.   Faces and human forms are transparent and Dunstan’s paintings are marked by overlapping lines and mosaics of color.   Structurally, she’s turned her paintings inside out.   They look as if they were complicated to create, and they are.  Dunstan uses transfer paper as a material on which to sketch, then transfers that drawing to another surface like canvas or paper.   She can use her original image over and over, and so creates multiple layers of the same image in a single work.

Often, Dunstan’s forms seem to be dissolving before our eyes.

“The human figure holds an enduring fascination for me providing both oddness and mystery,” says Dunstan.  She has incorporated media images of daily disasters into recent work, and is otherwise taking materials from the world at large into the maze of her compositions.   Through the imposed mystery and hints of grief emerge works that, with their bow to biology and minutiae, speak of teeming life.

The large nude double-portrait I purchased at Dunstan’s first show remains the centerpiece of my own little art collection.  And to this day, it’s often mistaken for a Gauguin by those seeing the painting for the first time.

Altamira Fine Art continues its ascent by adding yet another new artist to its roster:  Marshall Noice. Some years ago I wrote about Noice for Planet Jackson Hole. The column went something like this:

Noice, who lives and paints in Kallispell, Montana, is a nationally noted artist whose works are part of many prestigious collections.  However, the prize he holds most dear comes from the Blackfeet Nation, which, in 1987,  honored Noice with a name-giving ceremony.  Medicine man George Kicking Woman, who saw Noice’s name in a vision, gave the artist a Blackfeet name: “E-Kah-She-Mah-Kin.”

I don’t know the translation, but I do know that Noice began his artistic career as a photographer.  The work taught him about light.  In fact, Noice was Ansel Adams’ assistant during the summer of 1977, and the experience gave birth to Noice’s love of landscape.

“I have sometimes wondered if I live here because of the work I do, or if I do the work because I live here,” muses Noice.  “An interesting question without an answer. I learned how to see light from Ansel Adams.  He was a great teacher.  I really learned how to recognize landscapes.  I feel that my experience in photography has helped me to develop a heightened sensitivity towards landscapes.”

Noice’s work also has to be influenced by Fauvism.  For the Fauves, color is TOUT.  It is applied furiously, without restraint, and it is wholly interpretive.

Art history lesson alert!

“Fauvism” refers to a period in art history having its genesis in 1905, when French painter Henri Matisse and his buddies Andre Derain, Maurice Vlaminck, Albert Marquet, Raoul Dufy, and Georges Braque first displayed new paintings drenched with color; huge, vast masses of unbroken, emotional, explosive color.   These painters and others were given the nickname “Les Fauves,” –the Wild Beasts. Upon seeing the collection of wildly colorful paintings surrounding a comparatively run-of-the-mill sculpture, unveiled for the first time at the 1905 Paris Salon d’Automme, French art critic Louis Vauxcelles remarked that “it was like a Donatello ‘parmi les fauves’”-among the wild beasts.

Wildlife art. Wild Beasts.  Sense a century-old connection here?

Contemporary Western Art is in no way disconnected from art history’s great movements; it descends from many masters and traditions.  Artists in the West articulate landscape and are paying homage to light, color, and “the shapes of things,” as artists always have.

In addition to Trio house artist Lee Carlman Riddell hosting a painting workshop in Tuscany, her gallery partner Kathryn Mapes Turner has said “yes” to an invitation to exhibit her work alongside those of Michigan painter John Felsing.

The two artists plan a joint exhibition at Altamira Fine Art, where Felsing is represented.  The show runs March 11-13, kicking off with an artist’s reception on Thursday, March 11, 5-7 pm, at Altamira, in Jackson.

The show does not signal any change in Turner’s affiliation with Trio Fine Art.  More on this special exhibition soon.

Item #1 (With a bullet.)

Via Facebook, the Art Association of Jackson Hole has announced a lecture on censorship taking place Thursday, February 18, at the Center for the Arts.

The forum is set to be a panel discussion and runs sixty minutes.  Beginning at 5:30 pm and scheduled to end at 6:30 pm, this talk will allow participants to head out early in the evening—however, I can’t imagine an hour being enough time to really tackle this subject, particularly given the Jackson Hole late-arrival trademark.   At this writing the Blog is unclear as to whether this discussion will deal with perceived censorship issues within Jackson, or with censorship in the world at large.  Maybe both.

Whatever the focus, it’s a convenient and welcome chance for creative persona to bring censorship’s causes and repercussions to light.

The irony of censorship is that when a show or artist is censored their particular spotlight only burns brighter.  And usually, as we’ve seen in Jackson, the entity doing the censoring gets much more negative attention than the art in question.

Figure of Speech: Censorship in the Arts will be held in Artspace’s Main Gallery.  Panel members include reps from writing, dancing, theatrical and visual  arts.

Item #2:

A reminder that Lee Carlman Riddell and Ed Riddell are guiding a photography and painting workshop to Tuscany, Italy this spring. The trip begins April 29, 2010 and concludes a week or so later, on May 5.

Ed Riddell has details about the trip on his website, www.edwardriddell.com. You can also visit Lee’s website, www.leeriddell.com. Lee is represented locally by Trio Fine Art.    A previous post on this blog has more details regarding fees and application processes; do a search using key words “Riddell,” “workshop” or “Tuscany” and the post should appear.

Diehl Gallery features works by artist Angie Renfro now through March 6.   As they’ve been doing, Diehl is offering collectors a chance to deduct 10% of the cost of any art work towards a particular non-profit.   This show benefits WomensTrust, an organization providing outreach to Ghana, via microfinancing, education and healthcare.

So who is Angie Renfro?   Why are her works simultaneously so melancholy and strikingly beautiful?   Looking at press images, I’m struck by Renfro’s split subjects.  The birds, bees and spring’s new budding branches are here; so are abandoned industrial landscapes depicting rusted piles of pipeline, muddy fields, flat gray skies and blackened telephone poles.

Blackened telephone poles, crying rivers of red.  Dripping red.

A Texas native now living in California, Renfro says she’s haunted by the vast landscapes of her home state.  There’s overlooked beauty in desolate lots, deserted factories.  She’s yet to be carried off by California’s blue tides, its sunshine, undulating mountains and deserts.

Renfro takes long drives across Texas, a state the size of a small planet.  She believes placing the natural world on the same podium with broken down palaces of  industry and farming will help viewers appreciate a shared “quiet, unassuming beauty.”

Along the lonesome Texas highway, there’s little obvious distraction, says Renfro.  But, if you stop and sense the quiet, you’ll find quiet makes its own noise.  Like Pompeii’s ruins, these Texas subjects are frozen in time.

Renfro’s landscapes are works one could live with for a long time.

Diehl Gallery phone:  307.733.0905.

Item #2:

Word has it that Center Street Gallery is closing.  Timeline is unclear.

As long as I’ve lived in Jackson, Center Street Gallery has been there on Town Square’s east side, lighting up the boardwalk with its eclectic collection of contemporary art.

The gallery carries some very noted artists.   That list includes: Thomas Batista, Lynn Berryhill, Kathy Bonnema-Leslie, Bruce Dean, Bill Drum, Robert Deurloo, Jeffrey Jon Gluck, Siri Hollander, E.H. Klink, Marshall Noice, Raymond Nordwall, Andrew Parent, Francine & Neil Prince, Stephen Rolfe Powell, Jean Richardson, Dennis Sohocki, Sari Staggs, Kay Stratman, Louis Von Koelnau, Joy Watson, Don Webster and Elizabeth Wright.

Center Street and the former Martin-Harris Gallery broke the contemporary art ice in Jackson Hole. Center Street’s art references in regional beauty interpreted by new, as well as practiced, modern day artists.    Works are intimate, grand in scale, colorful, tonal, two and three-dimensional.  A couple of decades ago, it was a brave act to open a contemporary gallery space in a traditionally representational Western culture.   As Western art scholar Peter Hassrick has noted, we’ve yet to fully address the impact of humans on the remarkable landscapes and wilderness we inhabit.   Without the continued health of contemporary arts in Jackson, we’ve less of a chance of approaching that still sensitive subject; it’s unmentionable, marketing-wise, to create content pointedly addressing human effect on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

The hope is that a good percentage of these artists will find alternate local gallery venues.   Center Street Gallery, thank you for playing an important role in our arts history.