Archive for June, 2010
We Interrupt This Program…
To bring you a great link. Posted this on Facebook today, and will post it here, too. I’ve become a bigger fan of the opinions of columnists considered, traditionally, as “conservative.” The energy and tumult of the world is shifting values of liberals a little to the right, and the values of conservatives a little to the left. More meeting in the middle. If you didn’t see it, newly appointed Democratic State Chairman Chuck Herz just recently had his letter to the Op-Ed page of the New York Times published. In the letter he praised the views of David Brooks, who spoke of the situations humans create for themselves that are too big to solve when the worst happens. And when the worst happens, it is catastrophic.
Thomas L. Friedman, in this column, is saying that the worst has happened many times over and both political parties are culpable. And that means the population at large is culpable.
A pull quote: ” It is not your imagination,” says corporate strategy consultant Peter Schwartz – there is a lot more scary stuff hanging out there today. Since the end of the cold war and the rise of the Internet, we’ve lost the walls and the superpowers that together kept the world’s problems more contained. Today, smaller and smaller units can wreak larger and larger havoc – and whatever havoc is wreaked now gets spread faster and farther than ever before.”
We’re at the watershed; we need to consider good ideas, where ever they come from. To read the full article, click here.
This is a lesson we in Jackson could learn; I hope we are learning. The truth expressed in Friedman’s article is applicable to Jackson’s economic woes: we’ve put our eggs in one or two baskets. We have crashed hard. We need more baskets.
(“You know… more money funds — flows through the private capital markets in a day than through all the world’s governments in a year. So, there’s no question that this job, this transition, this move of America and the world to a clean energy future is not going to be done by our governments. It’s going to be done by our entrepreneurs, by our investors, and — and by our business leaders.”- John Doerr )
An “up” note: I applaud Jackson’s resilient, ever-expanding and brave arts community. So much positive energy and ideas are hatching (from the arts basket), and growing! We stumbled, but in recent months I see one of our private sectors taking up the challenge and running with it. Congratulations, all you entrepreneurs, new galleries and public art pushers! You are picking up on ideas and bringing them forward. It’s a beautiful thing. I love hearing about new ventures, so do send news to me via my email: tammy@jacksonholearttours.com. I don’t always pick up info from Facebook, because I rarely scroll past the first page of posts on my wall. Direct mail is best.
This summer visitors to the National Museum of Wildlife Art (NMWA) can reacquaint themselves with a group of works from the museum’s collection that have been on the road. Wild at Heart: Highlights from the National Museum of Wildlife Art, returned May 22 and is on display through August 15, 2010.
More than 70 works make up the collection, an homage to America’s wild places. Paintings and sculptures are grouped by region (North, South, East and West of America) rather than chronologically. Significant European and American artists are represented, including Albert Bierstadt, William H. Dunton, Bob Kuhn, John Woodhouse Audubon, George Catlin, Charles Russell, Ken Bunn and Carl Rungius.
Artists heralded the power and magnificence of America’s wildlife and wilderness.
“Beginning with explorer-artists and continuing with the best contemporary painters and sculptors working today, wildlife has been a consistent subject in American art,” says National Museum of Wildlife Art Curator of Art Adam Duncan Harris. “We hope that this exhibit helps viewers see the connections between wildlife and art in new ways and prompts further appreciation for the wilderness that remains at the heart of what makes North America exceptional.”
Harris is the author of the recently published book, Wildlife in American Art, which includes many images from the Wild at Heart exhibition.
NMWA’s strong ties with the city of Pittsburgh may have played a role in the exhibition’s premiere at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in the summer of 2006. The exhibit subsequently “toured” the Rockwell Museum in Corning, N.Y., the Vero Beach Museum of Art in Vero Beach, Fla., and the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi.
For information on NMWA’s exhibitions and schedules log onto the Museum’s website, www.wildlifeart.org.
Item #2:
“Artists in the Park” was, I’m told, originally known as “Artists in the Environment.” I’ve known it under the former identity; they are one and the same, however and here is this summer’s (2010) schedule of participating artists:
This coming Saturday, June 12, painter Eliot Goss will be painting from 9am – noon on the shore of String Lake near the main String Lake parking lot, in Grand Teton National Park, weather permitting. The public is invited to view Goss as he works; bring your chairs, water, snacks, sketch books, paints, questions, cameras, whatever strikes your fancy for this summer’s first plein air painting demonstration.
The rest of this summer’s schedule is as follows:
July 10 – Shannon Troxler – Cottonwood Turnout, 9am – noon (first turnout on the right after Taggart/Bradley Lake)
August 14 – Joslyn Slack – Oxbow Bend Turnout, 9am – noon
September 11 – Kathy Wipfler – Chapel of the Transfiguration, 9am – noon
“Artists in the Park” is a great tradition of sharing the plein air process, as well as the special places in GTNP, with the public. Make sure you catch at least one of these exceptional painters this summer. For information, contact Liza Millet at 917-864-9395.
We now return to American Idle……
Now, I must say something—go a little outside my comfort zone—about Jackson’s green marketing blitz.
We’re over- market-greening, risking the individualism we Jackson Holers hold so dear. An overall energy policy for Teton County would set a great standard for counties residing in such special territory. Set standards, legislate for the environment. Just don’t bury me in “green” emails and overtures and solicitations. I know you are green. We’re the green choir, we are. My email box is crammed with solicitations for donations because the asker is “green.” I’m asked to contribute to one green event after another. Everyone seems to be finding ways to weave a green thread through their marketing.
I am pretty green myself. I’m not perfect, but I try. Our marketing is homogenizing, and I cannot tell the difference between recycling centers and hotels and retail stores and restaurants and ANYTHING!!!……I’m often chastised because I still read news printed on paper, and I enjoy reading real books–not flat, tiny iridescent slabs costing hundreds of dollars apiece, soon to be outdated. We’re an army of iPadding, iPodding, crackberry droids. We look silly!
There is, actually, evidence that books are much greener than electronic readers. Every big event promoting initiative costs money and creates a large carbon footprint.
When will one of our leaders take a leap and begin campaigning for JOBS in Jackson? That’s the elephant in our room. We know how to ask one another for money. Can we please confer on how to create jobs that will provide long-term salaried positions in Teton County? Our real estate prices remain among the highest in the country; as sales statistics show only the most expensive properties are seeing some movement. As for the rest of the inventory, it’s reasonable to expect a rebound lagging behind most of the rest of the country, because we are not showing any inclination to nudge asking prices down to an acceptable level in this recession. That means all the real estate based jobs we’ve lost in Teton County will be slow to recoup. And that sector is where a high proportion of salaried jobs have been.
The technology sector is widely viewed as the sector most likely to create jobs for the future. How can we attract that sector to Jackson? There are ways, but I fear that the same single vision for Teton County–a rich county basing income on expensive real estate and tourism–is remaining intact with our political and civic “deciders.”
We’re ever more elitist and controlling; this is the same sort of restraint one finds in country clubs where rules are rigid and there is real trouble if you’re
caught wearing anything but white on the tennis court. PLEASE, Jackson Hole — consider our visitors. Only the wealthiest of the wealthy will be able to afford (and for that matter be attracted to) a destination that has plastered over every sign with green paint.
I don’t want to go for “green drinks.”
We are GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK. We are YELLOWSTONE. We are JACKSON HOLE. We’re losing the ability and will to stand out amongst ourselves, and if it gets blurry for us, it gets blurry for the public at large. I don’t idle my engine, but I hate the idea of a see-all community eye gauging my every errand and measuring my idle index. If I park my car outside in sub-zero Jackson winter weather, it’s going to idle for a while after I get it started before I drive it. Particularly if I don’t have a block heater.
We need JOBS.
I’ll say this too: The Virginian got a raw deal. Talk about stealing a last toehold from the original population of Teton County. The Virginian is one establishment, one eatery and bar, for God’s sake!! We’re arrogant in our persecution of its smoking policy. If you hate smoke, don’t frequent the Virginian. People I know and admire very much support cutting the Virginian off, but their judgement is in error here; a line was crossed. Eventually, possibly as soon as the next generation, the Virginian’s status will evolve because the good people frequenting it will no longer be with us. But leave the Virginian, a vintage (one of the last un-monkeyed with vestiges of Jackson) and salty Western holdout of Jackson Hole, to its own devices. We’re squeezing out the “undesirables.” When will we see the first harassing graffitis sprayed on the doors of those we deem “non-green-compliant?”
We’re an army of drones. Be conscious, but know, too, when your marketing and driving “greenego” © requires an intervention.
Yikes! This mass marketing is so pervasive it’s redundant and …vain. Lead by example, not persecution and retort. Our agendas are proved not by what we proclaim or explain, but by what we do. The action is the measure.
I’m talking here about marketing outside the realm of scientific conservation; NOT about the mission of orgs like the J.H. Conservation Alliance and their sister science and research-based groups. We need to support such organizations in every way we can, keep the pressure on full blast lest we lose the wilderness we’ve managed to save thus far.
I’m a registered Democrat and an independent thinker.
Item #3:
The Art Association holds its Free Art Class Sampler on Thursday, June 10. From 5-6:30 pm the public is invited to the Center for the Arts to get a taste of the many classes offered by the Art Association this summer. Head on up to the third floor studios for an opportunity to get to know a bit more about the large variety of classes offered. Meet the teachers, tours the studios; it’s all FREE. Sign up for a class that night and get a discount–10% off your class cost. For more information, call (307) 733-6379, or log onto www.artassociation.org.
“In the years since meeting David, I’ve come to respect his ability to combine his artistic eye with a strong understanding of the craft of photography, the technique of putting light on paper. A stunning example of this is David’s unique interpretation of platinum/palladium printing, which incorporates many layers of visual information, giving it a painterly quality. The effect is to draw the observer back to the image repeatedly, unlike a typical photograph that can be absorbed in a single viewing. This is why David’s work is fine art that transcends specific time and place.” – Angela Pearson Bramson
Photographer – entrepreneur David Brookover, now the owner of two galleries showcasing his large format photography, has published his new book, The Road. Brookover is publishing two versions, each with its own price point. The book becomes available in June 2010.
The Road – The Photographs of David Brookover will be published in a “trade edition” and a “collector’s edition.” The former is available for $125, and the book’s first run is 1350 editions; the latter sells for $975 and will have only 150 editions printed. Portfolio cases will be Kanji stamped with the Japanese symbol “Michi,” Japanese for “Road.” Brookover is using heavy Italian cotton rag paper, with “absolutely no optical brighteners so the images will be around for a very long time.”
That’s a heck of a price differential but Brookover is a savvy, hands-on marketer. The Road collector’s edition will be bound in rich red cloth and housed in a clothed portfolio encasing a Brookover platinum palladium print. Two years ago, feeling the need to move away from the large, sexy color photographs (noted for seemingly endless depth of field and detail) that built his reputation, Brookover began creating platinum prints from existing plates, as well as taking new photographs.
The Road catalogs Brookover’s platinum prints, the focus of the photographer’s endeavors in recent years. A few images depict physical roads, but the book’s title signifies Brookover’s continual travels around the United States and Japan in pursuit of his muse. His camera captures deserts, coastlines, forests, the Southwest, pueblos, canyons, solitary trees of garden, woods and valleys, and Japanese gardens. The book includes one nude portrait.
The Road, self-published, is only available for purchase at Brookover’s two galleries, located in Jackson Hole and Santa Fe. www.davidbrookover.com.
Item #2
Collage artist Ricki Arno divides her time between Jackson Hole and New York. A native New Yorker, Arno has been steeped in that city’s arts culture all of her life. Her one-woman show, “Ricki Arno,” goes on display at Teton Art Lab on June 4, and a reception will be held that evening.
Her art is heavily influenced by New York’s fast moving, self-updating art movements. Arno, a grandmother, is a graffiti artist at heart. Do not look for an artist dudette, even though Arno is, by her own account, an “urbanista.” When you find yourself attending this show’s opening reception, look for the lady resembling Edith Head.
“Street Art that has become a part of my vision living in NYC, and the constant barrage of natural crisis and world events heavily pepper my work by influencing my eye, my heart and my hand. I love passionately seductive colors and have used them full force in my new works,” says Arno.
A woman, presumably the artist, is at the core of most of Arno’s compositions, which she calls “sketches.” These are personal works reflecting the effects of global change and life experiences on Arno; dream content floods each space. Arno’s attention to, and ability to manipulate, detail is almost excruciating in its exactness. Years ago, NYC life had her working in fashion and textile design, advertising and….cake decorating. Arno’s decorated sweets and confections were legend for New Yorkers demanding her work, and brought Arno to the attention of many industry publications.
In my mind Arno’s dramatic, multi-dimensional and hotly colored compositions are operatic. In her next life, she’ll make a grand set designer.
Though I know quite a bit about Arno’s creative process, I am going to keep that knowledge to myself; mystery is part of this magic. See her results first, get everything you thought you knew about collage blown away. Then, ask Arno about her process.
If the deadline has not passed, you might sign up for her summer 2010 Art Association Class. Arno will lead her workshop “Mixed Media Collage: Combining Bare Bones Photoshop with Traditional Palettes” June 21-25. Check their website for more info or call Mallory at 307.733.6379.
Trailside Galleries annual Salute to Summer exhibition kicks off the 2010 season with a month-long group (all gallery) showcase. Salute to Summer runs June 1-31 and underlines the myriad mediums and artistic styles the gallery embraces. This year landscape artists Robert Moore and Michael Godfrey will enjoy individual showcases within the larger exhibition. Linda St. Clair’s whimsical, colorful wildlife art will also be spotlighted.
An impressively long list of artists–painters and sculptors–make up the Trailside roster. Look for new works from:
Cyrus Afsary, Bill Anton, Steve Atkinson, Wayne Baize, Gerald Balciar, Dan Bodelson, Harley Brown, Perry Brown, Bruce Cheever, Elaine Coffee, Nicholas Coleman, Brent Cotton, Don Crowley, Pino Dangelico, Tom Darro, Stan Davis, Angela de la Vega, John DeMott, Andrew Denman, Frank DiVita, Patricia Dobson, Mikel Donahue, Robert Du
ncan, Nancy Glazier, Michael Godfrey, Veryl Goodnight, Lanny Grant, Bruce Greene, Brad Greenwood, George Hallmark, Robert Johnson, Laurie Lee, Calvin Liang, Z.S. Liang, Huihan Liu, Mike Malm, Paul Mann, Bonnie Marris, Buck McCain, Dan McCaw, Danny McCaw, Greg McHuron, Dan Mieduch, Robert Moore, James Morgan, Brenda Murphy, Scott Myers, Bill Nebeker, Gary Niblett, George Northup, Ralph Oberg, Chris Owen, J. Peralta, Andrew Peters, Dave Powell, Clark Kelley Price, Howard Rogers, Mike Roths, Sherry Sander, Bill Sawczuk, Brad Schmidt, Lindsay Scott, John Seerey-Lester, Suzie Seerey-Lester, Kyle Sims, Ryan Skidmore, Adam Smith, Daniel Smith, Matt Smith, Tucker Smith, Gordon Snidow, Tim Solliday, Linda St. Clair, Richard D. Thomas, Zhiwei Tu, Kent Ullberg, Kent Wallis, Jeffrey R. Watts, Morgan Weistling, William Whitaker, Kathy Wipfler, Sarah Woods David Yorke and Jie Wei Zhou.
For full details, contact Trailside by phoning 307.733.3186, or log onto the gallery’s website here.
