Jackson Hole Art Blog

Long a haven for creative and curious souls, the Murie Center — former home of environmentalists Olaus and Mardy Murie — is redefining itself, as it has been since the passing of Mardy, in 2003.

The Murie Ranch, a National Historic Landmark located in Grand Teton National Park, is just up the road, then down a gentler road, from the new Grand Teton National Park Visitor’s Center in Moose, Wyoming.  The Center still feels like the Park’s best kept secret; hours that it is open to the public are limited, however group tours are offered free of charge every Monday and Thursday, 2:00 p.m.

The Center, “Conservation’s Home,” has a mission to “engage people to understand and commit to the enduring value of conserving wildlife in wild places.”

July 22-25, the Murie Center will conduct an Avian Art and Writing Workshop. An extensive three and a half day schedule includes such activities as an introduction to Olaus Murie’s artwork, exploratory writing sessions and exercises, meals, bird watching and sketching activities.    The Teton Raptor Center is providing live birds as inspiration and subject matter for sketchers, painters, writers, photographers and sculptors.

Long time valley resident and accomplished plein air painter Greg McHuron leads the sketching workshops; McHuron’s work is represented by Trailside Galleries in Jackson.  He recently co-authored “Birds of Sage and Scree,” with valley ornithologist Bert Raynes.   and Jackson-based writer Susan Marsh will conduct writing classes.

Sculptor Greg Woodard (represented locally by Altamira Fine Art) will provide a sculpting demonstration.

$595 includes lodging in a Murie Ranch cabin for three nights, all meals and tuition; $395 includes all meals and tuition only.  The Murie Center has provided the following tentative schedule of events – for more information email info@muriecenter.org or phone 307.739.2246.

Thursday, July 22

5:30 pm – Welcome reception

6:30 pm – Dinner at Homestead Cabin

7:30 pm – Introduction to the Murie Center and Olaus Murie artwork – guest presenter Dr. Jamie Cornelius talks about tracking the red crossbill on the Ranch as a Murie Center biologist-in-residence.

Friday, July 23

8 am – Breakfast at Homestead Cabin

9 am – Exploratory writing session with Susan Marsh around the Murie Ranch

12 pm – Lunch at Homestead Cabin

2 pm – Greg Woodard sculpting demonstration with live birds from Teton Raptor Center

3 pm – Writing exercise with Susan Marsh and live birds from Teton Raptor Center

5 pm – Dinner at Homestead Cabin

6 pm – Avian bird-watching/photography

Saturday, July 24

8 am – Breakfast at Homestead Cabin

9 am – Greg McHuron and Dwayne Harty lead avian sketching session

12 pm – Lunch at Homestead Cabin

2 pm – Greg McHuron leads avian sketching session with live birds from Teton Raptor Center

5 pm – Dinner at Homestead Cabin

6 pm – Avian bird-watching/photography

Sunday, July 25

8 am – Breakfast at Homestead Cabin

10 am – 12 pm – Tours and demonstrations on-site at the Teton Raptor Center in Wilson ($10)

As many Jackson Holers know, local artist Ben Roth recently collaborated with friend and fellow artist Brad Watsabaugh, creating an extraordinary public art project for the ski town of Vail, Colorado. The project, “Singing Trees,” captured the Inter Mountain West’s creative community’s attention — the artists received quite a bit of press and media coverage.

A few days ago, Roth and Watsabaugh were interviewed for Vail’s morning television show, “Good Morning Vail.” The artists got a chance to discuss the project, one that made use of dead lodgepole pines killed by mountain pine beetles.   Roth explained that the art form is a temporary one—although the placed trees can remain standing for quite some time.  Trees are “manipulated” by the artist, so that their beauty and embedded messages about their living time on earth are more accessible to people who wish to view the work.

The trees are split top to bottom, so that one half of the tree remains vertical, while its other side rests horizontally, like a bench, above the ground.  All the work was done by hand—no lasers, etc.  Watsabaugh and Roth’s individual creative spirits fed one another, making it a pulse-pounding, thrilling experience.

Take a look at the “Good Morning Vail” interview here.

Roth says he’s planning on collaborating with writer/environmentalist Terry Tempest Williams and Jackson artist Felicia Resor.  The environmentally inspired work will involve installing a ring of 23 Pronghorn and Deer skulls on old metal fence posts.  They skulls are “….witnesses to the environmental degradation occurring in Wyoming,” says Roth.    Installation locations have yet to be determined.

Want to talk to Ben?  Call him with questions and kudos at this number:  970.754.8888

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.

“How Green is my iPad?”

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.

(Picasso!)  Pablo Picasso’s ”Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,” which had a pre-sale estimate of between $70 million and $90 million, sold the evening of May 4 for  $106.5 million, a new world record for any artwork sold at auction.  New York Auction house Christie’s hammered the sale to an as yet unidentified buyer.   Christie’s auction house on Tuesday evening to an unidentified telephone bidder.

The Washington Post reports that “There were nine minutes of bidding involving eight clients in the sale room and on the phone, Christie’s said. At $88 million, two bidders remained. The final bid was $95 million, but the buyer’s premium took the sale price to $106.5 million.

Conor Jordan, head of impressionist and modern art for Christie’s New York, said he was “ecstatic with the results.”

“Tonight’s spectacular results showed the great confidence in the marketplace and the enthusiasm with which it welcomes top quality works,” he said.

The striking work of Picasso’s muse and mistress Marie-Therese Walter has been exhibited in the United States only once, in 1961 in Los Angeles to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Picasso’s birth. The painting, which measures more than 5 feet by 4 feet, shows a reclining nude figure with an image of Picasso in the background looking over her.”

This is really special. Writer/Conservationist/Activist/Friend Cate Cabot has sent word that world renowned biologist artist Patricia Johanson will speak at the Jackson Hole Community School on Tuesday, May 4, 2010 at 5:30 pm.    The event is free and open to the public.

This is a talk everyone who feels the Town of Jackson should evolve with consideration to new urbanism, and as a sustainable and cultural reflection of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, need attend.   These are the ideas and concepts crucial to how Jackson, now an urban entity, can become a model of sustainable, artful urban existence in the midst of protected land.  Jackson leaders mandate must be  this: to consider all indigenous and cultural qualities of our region in their civic planning.

A wonderful story:  Johanson used her time with her young children wandering the woods and open spaces.  As her children explored, she created biological, artful field sketches of the places they visited.   According to Cabot,  Johnson’s “small artistically stunning studies became what her earlier vision had anticipated, massive functional interactive installations which incorporate sculpture with local natural history and the cultural story line of an area with the intent to resolve a problem…”

A problem, in Johanson’s case, is defined as  polluted water and heavily polluted land sites.   Johanson has worked to design passive natural filters for dirtied waters, and restore it as potable.  She also creates systems that reclaim crucial habitat shared by mankind and myriad species.

“Her work is jaw dropping in scale, composition, effectiveness, beauty and comprehensive synthesis,” says Cabot.  “These installations have regenerated environments all over the world with many works completed, many more under development. I think of Thomas Berry’s perspective, that “we humans are genetically coded for beauty” when I consider Patricia Johanson’s work.”

Descriptions of Johanson’s book, Art and Survival: Patricia Johanson’s Environmental Projects , published in association with the Islands Institute, praise her environmental solutions expanding, healing and softening sites ranging from congested waterfronts to urban wastelands.  Johanson’s designs are accepted as important new models for the reclamation of gardens and parks eroded by neglect, lighting the way for new sustainable, integrative landscapes.

Johanson’s book is available at the Teton County Library.

For more information about May 4th’s event, contact Sarah Drake at 307.733.5427.

To read other posts relating to landscape and planning, an invitation is extended to search this site using any of these key words: Urban Planning, Landscape, Placemaking or Walter Hood.

Item #2:

The Jackson Hole Art Auction is back, returning to the J.H. Center for the Arts Theater, on Saturday, September 18, 2010.   I believe the Auction is still open for consignments–last year’s cut off date was June 1.    The Jackson Hole Art Auction is its own entity and is produced by the partnership of Trailside and Gerald Peters Galleries. It is a pinnacle event of the Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival.

As anyone who has attended this auction knows, it is the real thing.  The Auction features “Past and Present Masters of the American West,” focusing on historically recognized artists, according to the Auction’s Emma Zanetti.   Lots auctioned in past sales include works by the Taos Society of Artists, and deceased Masters.  Artists you may recognize include, but are not limited to  C.M. Russell, Albert Bierstadt, Maynard Dixon, Charlie Dye, Frederic Remington, John Clymer, Bob Kuhn, Carl Rungius, Donald Teague, Olaf Wieghorst, and more. Top contemporary artists include William Acheff, Clyde Aspevig, Ken Carlson, Martin Grelle, Clark Hulings, Z.S. Liang, Bill Owen, Jim Norton, Kenneth Riley, Mian Situ, Howard Terpning, Jie Wei Zhou and others.

Last year’s solid auction sales totaled just under $6 million.   To talk with the Auction about consignments, stop by Trailside Galleries in Jackson (130 East Broadway) or email Emma Zanetti at registrar@jacksonholeartauction.com.

A Jackson Hole cultural and community rite of Spring, the Federal Junior Duck Stamp Contest, is on view May 1 – August 10, 2010 at the National Museum of Wildlife Art (NMWA).  The show hangs in the Museum’s King Gallery and a virtual exhibition can viewed on line at WildlifeArt.org/Learn/FedJrDuckStamp/.

2010 marks 16 years of Federal Junior Duck Stamp art exhibiting at NMWA.   The contest and subsequent show, lovingly administrated by Sugden Family Curator of Education Jane Lavino, has a mission to awaken children’s knowledge of the connection between wetland conservation, natural resources and, I must add, art.

Pictured top-of-page, left,  is this year’s winning entry, “Flight of the Blue Moon,” by 17-year old Pinedale, Wyoming student Lisanne Fear.    The exhibition features the top 36 ribbon winners out of 610 total Wyoming entries. In addition to the top winners on exhibit, 64 Honorable Mention ribbons were awarded in each of the four age groups (grades K – 3, 4 – 6, 7 – 9, and 10 – 12).

Fear’s oil painting depicts a pair of Pintail ducks, a species common to Wyoming.   For her efforts Fear will have her work representing the state at the National Junior Duck Stamp contest scheduled for Friday, April 23, 2010, at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul, Minnesota.  If she wins there, she will win $5,000 and head on to Washington D.C. and also be the artist whose work is the image for the 2010-2011 Junior Duck Stamp.   Buy the stamp for $5.00 and your contribution goes towards supporting conservation education.

There are many more winners in many divisions.   Get a full listing by visiting the Museum’s website, AND by visiting the exhibit itself.  Doing so is a great treat, and a reminder of the talent and heart behind each and every Jr. Duck Stamp competition.  Conservation lay people will gain new knowledge of duck species.   This exhibition educates adults as well as youth.

First through Third place contest winners will be honored at a dinner and awards ceremony at the National Museum of Wildlife Art on Saturday July 24, 2010. For more information, please contact Amy Goicoechea at agoicoechea@wildlifeart.org or call (307) 732-5435. Information for next year’s contest will be posted on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service homepage at DuckStamps.fws.gov.

“Planning in the West,” the second annual conference on the topic of Intermountain West development, takes place in Boise, Idaho, June 2-3, 2010. The conference is billed as featuring “leading planners, policy-makers, architects, developers, and landscape architects from around the Rockies….to track planning and development trends, showcase best practices, and understand how thoughtful and place-inspired planning can help us shape our region in the most positive possible ways.”

Planning in the West’s keynote speaker is Mark Muro, of the Brookings Institution, a Washington D.C. based public policy think tank with a mission to  “conduct high-quality, independent research and, based on that research, to provide innovative, practical recommendations that advance three broad goals:

• Strengthen American democracy;
• Foster the economic and social welfare, security and opportunity of all Americans and
• Secure a more open, safe, prosperous and cooperative international system.”

Muro studies intermountain economic trends; you can find “Mountain Monitor – Tracking Economic Recession and Recovery in the Intermountain West’s Metropolitan Areas” when you do a search on the Brookings Institute website.  The study tracks trends through the fourth quarter of 2009.  It looks at large metropolitan regions (Denver, Boise, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque), and smaller areas (Reno, Fort Collins, Las Cruces, Boulder); but transpose Muro’s larger points on intermountain real estate booms, education, and diversity of economic base to Jackson’s profile, and you will get a pretty good idea of the pace of economic recovery Teton County might expect, and why.

Soft Opening for Heather James Gallery

Heather James Fine Art opens its doors at 172 Center Street, Suite 200, next door to Altamira Fine Art, in April.  This month’s opening is soft.  Lyndsay McCandless has been hired as the gallery’s director.

“We welcome our new neighbors, Heather James Fine Art, to the Center Street art district,” says Altamira Executive Director Mark Tarrant. “This is an important addition to the Jackson art market, providing the quality of fine art that people expect when visiting Jackson.  We are working with the gallery’s director, Lyndsay McCandless, and planning cooperative events that will set the pace for the Jackson experience.”

Based in Palm Desert, California, the gallery “represents a world-class spectrum of art-bridging genres including Impressionist and Modern, Classical Post-War and Contemporary, American and Latin American, Old Masters, design, cutting-edge contemporary and photography.”

A partial list of artists the gallery represents includes American artists Marion Kavanagh Wachtel, Oscar Bluemner and Irving Norman; Latin American artists Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, Francisco Zuniga, Naum Knop and Marta Minujin; and Impressionist/Modern masters Berthe Morisot and Alberto Giacometti.

A friend passed along a recent local art “review” —perhaps “commentary” is a better word — concerning the closing of the Oswald Gallery.

I’ve been criticized for some of my own commentary, and I know the sting of having someone in our close Jackson community express strong negative feelings about what I’ve written.   I also believe that the First Amendment is one of our most precious charges.  Thou shalt not shoot the messenger.

The piece I’m referring to was particularly bizarre.  Is the writer trying to be facetious?  If so, the effort fails.  (Sign up for Satire:101)  Here’s why:   The writer, an artist, should know better than to characterize all art galleries as a whorl of  “…musicians, models, artists, writers, homosexuals, and wealthy patrons milling around in unbearable hipness…….”

(Dude.  You have a show about rap artists interpreted as holy gospel singers.   Which isn’t such a stretch, but it’s certainly hip-hoppity.)

If, in fact, he’s pretending not to know about the gallery business, he did a good job.   If he really knew, and his writing was up to par (not saying mine is, I know my limits) we’d read his piece and think, “What a great skewering of the art scene!  Brilliant!”

That didn’t happen, so I’m going forward with this post taking the position he really doesn’t know.  If he does know, he should build himself a much, MUCH bigger platform before venturing out into such territory.   Think Woody Allen.   Or Colbert.  Or Tracy Morgan.   Or Mike Bressler!  Catch the Shouts & Murmurs “Cursing Mommy” column sometime.

The writer goes on:  “There would always be plenty of blow and smack at hand and somehow the entire enterprise makes money and garners international acclaim.”

Are you a kid?  Or are you just brain dead from your early days spent snorting and writhing around on the floor at Studio 54? Stuff happens, but this ain’t the 80’s.  I understand Leya is fond of you, and she may share some of your views, and you are lucky to have someone as professional and savvy as Leya in your corner.    But for those not in on your “inside” stuff, what you write is not cutting it.

“If any of you vultures reading this article want to save 25 to 50 percent on some really nice picture frames, now is the time.”

How much will your art be worth in a few years?  If your stuff doesn’t sell, by what method will you toss the carrion into the yard? Maybe you’ll go “Ebay.”

We are in a Great Recession.  Not a mild recession, a GREAT RECESSION.   Picassos are selling.  Big stuff.  Because people with that kind of money can buy as much as they like, and are.   Many galleries are having their artists size down their work, to make it more affordable.  And we’re talking about all levels of artists, all genres.   Travis Walker does a great job of coming up with innovative ways for his artists to sell, and new collectors to collect.

There’s quite a bit of information on the art market out there.  Why don’t you read some of it?

I won’t touch the Wilson/butlers in the basement bit.

“Leya looks great in black, and I did not imagine anything beyond that was necessary for success in the art world.”

Perhaps you should apply for a gallery intern job this summer.   You will be lucky to get hired, even for free, but give it a shot.

“We are still surrounded by landscape paintings, of moose in front of the Tetons or Indians painted by white people.  So obviously Americans prefer art that does not make us think but rather reinforces stereotypes and clichés.”

By that logic, people would be buying landscapes and wildlife art in SoHo.

Why are YOU here in Jackson Hole?  It can’t be because of intense city energy, urban infrastructure and sounds, interstate highways and their traffic, or cultural diversity.

Maybe you’re here to snowboard?    On big mountains, surrounded by wildlife?

Can you name the photographers Oswald has carried since the day they opened?  Lots of landscape shooters……and damn, they’re hip!  One of Leya’s favorite photographers, Nine Francois, is largely about portraits of animals from the wild.  They aren’t in the wild, I don’t believe, when Francois takes her photos, but they are, at their core, wildlife.   I mean, this is the West.  If we were in Key West, what would you see?   Santa Fe?  Cape Cod?  San Antonio?  Art is a reflection of place.

What do you imagine people visiting Jackson Hole and the Parks want to think about while they are here?   What do you think they want to take back with them, and why?  I don’t have statistics, but my experience tells me that wealthy locals, many with several homes and access to all art markets, buy much of Jackson’s contemporary art.   We certainly need our contemporary arts in order to thrive.  I adore them.  I even like your work, but I’ve deleted my story about it because I feel what you are writing for your newspaper is toxic, bitter and scary; it may even foreshadow some violent act.   I hope your newspaper takes heed.

Most visitors buy art here for reasons having to do with the unmatched experiences they have in Wyoming.  And many collectors buy  representational and abstract or contemporary art.    Because it all has value.

Pop quiz: Who was Edward Curtis?

Half a mile from the county fair
And the rain keep pourin down
Me and billy standin there
With a silver half a crown
Hands are full of a fishin rod
And the tackle on our backs
We just stood there gettin wet
With our backs against the fence

Oh, the water
Oh, the water
Oh, the water
Let it run all over me…

The Art of Water, a public art exhibition celebrating the beauty and role of water in the Teton Watershed and its surrounding area, is on exhibit at the Driggs City Center. Opening day March 24, will include an open-to-the-public reception 5:30-7:30 pm, at the Driggs Senior Center.   The exhibition, a collection of photography, paintings and sculptures, courtesy of Friends of the Teton River and the Teton Arts Council, hangs through the month of June, 2010.

March 24th’s schedule of events:

5:30: Welcome by FTR and TAC representatives
Gallery open for viewing 5:30-7:30 PM

6:00: Sounds of the Teton: Audio recording natural sounds on the Teton River
Audio recording artist Charlie Otto

6:15: Performances of Poetry and Prose
Poet Garl Drake
Poet Ty Mack
Author Bruce Smithhammer

6:30: Healing Waters: A journey into the waters of Idaho, California, and Chile
Filmmaker Joe Lindsay

6:45:  River Songs
Singer/songwriters Thomas Sneed and Ted Wells

7:30 Closing thoughts by FTR and TAC representatives

Participating artists include: Bart Walker, Kelly Sullivan, Dorothy Galloway, Marcia LeMire, Dan Burgette,  Sue Tyler, Marina Nell, Teri Manigalt, Beach Huntsman, Carole Flaherty, Anna Taylor, Rosemary Thomas, Claire Vitucci, Cynthia Guild Stoetzer, Philbin De Got, Mary Lou Oslund, Virginia Grosse, Michele Farrier, Shauna Crandall, Tami Milligan, Nancy Nielson and Rosemary Franz.

The exhibition pays homage to the river’s fresh water and the creative personalities interpreting its particular bountiful beauty.    A light meal of soup, along with bread by the new local bakery 460 Bread will be provided.

For more information and a schedule of the evening’s events, visit www.tetonwater.org. Megan Hatch is the Friends of the Teton River contact.  Email Megan at megan@tetonwater.org.  Phone:   208.354.3871.

“Years later I’m going back and looking at the projects we did.  My critique is, they are pastiche.  They are cardboard facades.  The real town is a block behind them, and it’s still awful, in trouble. So we didn’t help the people who live there, the thing that was supposed to be helped.” – Walter Hood

Finding what is particular and special to a community is part of what urban landscape designer Walter Hood does; over the years it has become clearer to Hood that urban centers require different formulas for renewal, depending on relevant measurable goals.

Pittsburgh, with its steel industry history, at one time existed for opposite reasons than Jackson exists.  But, says Hood, Pittsburgh  (sort of a sister city for me, and a great example in urban renewal) has found itself again. Like other mid-west industrial towns Pittsburgh fell on hard times; hard enough that a few decades ago many were giving it up for lost.  Jobs disappeared, people left in droves, and the city was gritty and depressed.

Jackson and Pittsburgh have traditionally relied on single industries. Jackson’s magnificent beauty and location have made it an economy inflated by landscape;  Pittsburgh’s economy relied on steel.

Now Pittsburgh’s economy is strong; it has weathered this recession relatively well, in large part because the city has taken pains to attract diverse market sectors.  Healthcare, education, technology, financial jobs play a large role. City parks are being restored. Abandoned spaces are recycled into new housing and businesses.

Hood opines that whatever direction Jackson takes in shaping its future, keeping traffic in check is crucial.   Open space cannot be fully protected unless we control congestion and emissions.

“I think where we are as Americans, things are hitting the fan.  We will have to make some really serious decisions about the land.  I have a lot of projects where people are investing in alternative transportation modes; they are starting to say “we don’t need that much parking.”  They are beginning to say we want to be greener—it will force them to act differently.”

Its community locking horns over a new Comprehensive Plan, Jackson’s town and county officials are attempting to correctly address a demand for affordable housing.  The risk of over development is very real.  To date, officials are treating mass transit as a finishing touch for building more units;  most urban planning takes the opposite approach.

Whenever I return to Jackson from the east coast, my immediate sense is Jackson’s traffic is under control.  Then summer arrives.

“In the winter it is really fantastic to be here—you could drive and everything goes back to scale,” says Hood.  “When spring comes the scale gets smaller but it is still big.  You see more in Jackson.  It’s sensory overload.”

A national park’s purpose is defeated, says Hood, when 4,000,000 tourists a year jam the roads and the scenery is…”unseeable.” If you want to reduce traffic, and impact, you make roads smaller and narrower. Cars then have to get smaller.  Discourage, don’t encourage, more traffic.

We agree that the town of Jackson should be about this place.  That gentler transitions from park to town are optimal, but not planned.  Approaching downtown Jackson, there is a sense that our open spaces are chopped off at the knees.  It’s good, we conclude, that the National Museum of Wildlife Art is one of the first things you see.   But many buildings and landscapings closer to town are visually harsh.  Lots of aging concrete, signage, little shoulder softening, no real thought to the landscape.

And simply as a marketing concept, in addition to the conservation benefits, planning should accentuate sensitivity to place.

But what about helping a community through recession?  Hood may not have Jackson’s specific economic remedy, but he does have experience with plans that didn’t work.

Hood says that collectively, we often make big mistakes when trying to “save” community.

“There are some amazing places, but the way we act in those landscapes is still the freakin’ same way,” he notes.  “I worked for a firm in the 90’s that would go to lots of small towns, particularly in Washington state. There was, at the time, the whole notion that you can go to these communities and save them by design.  A lot of them have lost their industries; they were river towns and people logged, or fished…those economies died.

The community then dies.

So we’re in this amazing valley or setting and what do we do?  Tourism. Immediately the main street programs help fortify the preservation of these towns—and I was into it.  At the time it seemed like the right thing to do.

Years later I’m going back and looking at the projects we did.  My critique is, they are pastiche.  They are cardboard facades.  The real town is a block behind them, and it’s still awful, in trouble.   So we didn’t help the people who live there, the thing that was supposed to be helped.”

Hood says the reasons people do choose to live in Jackson Hole are clear.  Safety is big, he says, and that feeling of safety springs in large part from how we control growth.

“It is a gift to have the ability to just walk around without fear and collision.  Last night I saw a woman running in the near dark, without street lights, without fear.  Wow.  She’s safe, there’s no traffic, the landscape is still visible, and she wants to be there.

I could not do this where I live.  Those are the kind of experiences to save.   The ability to navigate the landscape at night!  But more people, more traffic—more security and more lights come in. Success breeds more demand. It’s a circle.   I asked for a room on the upper floors of my hotel, facing the mountains, so I could take that in.  That’s the experience!  I know why people live here.”

To find out more about Walter J. Hood and his work, log onto his website here.

Post Script:  The Jackson Hole Art Blog is VERY happy to hear of Blaize Oswald’s encouraging progress as he recovers from a bad fall from a ski chairlift.   Our prayers and best wishes go out to the Oswald Family.

I don’t have many answers, but I do have lots of questions. Jackson’s sustainable and artistic efforts should fuse. But how? What models are out there in the world that we can study, even emulate?

Jackson’s future, in many ways, depends on the questions we ask. We should be asking more “baby step” questions and the larger ideals will naturally evolve. Just the other day, the Grand Teton Music Festival announced some news: Anonymous pledges (signaling that donors  don’t wish to be placed on pedestals for their contributions) totaling $3.5 million will establish a Housing Fund that will support its participating artists and stabilize “the largest line item in the Festival’s budget.”

The money is out there. Affordable housing, one of our biggest crises, will be available where the Festival is, in Teton Village. Where the artists actually work. In theory, not a lot of additional traffic. Green.

If we’re not going to create better mass transit opportunities, we’d better put housing where workers work.

I did not attend Jackson’s recent Energy Summit. No doubt I missed a lot of cool interaction, scintillating discussion, theory, science, inspiring vision, good networking and even a photo op or two.

The questions that formed in my mind, that weren’t answered to my satisfaction prior to the Summit, are these:

What was its cost?  Will Summit organizers offer up a financial report of this and any subsequent summits, as it is “for-profit” and not “non-profit?”

Who receives any fees the community pays out to the Summit? Why should the community contribute to it now, rather than to established initiatives? Perhaps it’s simply a choice, but am I the only one feeling stretched?  And kind of guilty just for sometimes having to say “no?”   In this economy, I’d love a time line for practical Summit results related to Jackson.

How big was this summit’s carbon footprint?

Are our new, empty buildings green? Are they going to be made green before or after they’re occupied?  What is the plan to fill all these empty spaces?  Is anyone considering reducing rents in exchange for tax credits, in order to attract new businesses that would provide good jobs?

How do such summits aid or detract from efforts to resolve, in a financially prudent way, our Comprehensive Plan?  Do they address land use? What is the interface with the planning process?

Will we price out middle class families looking for memorable, but affordable experiences here? If we can’t offer lodging under $400 a night, “regular” people can’t visit. And if they don’t visit, they won’t know the valley, or feel any impetus to protect it. How can we move forward with being green and ensure keeping it “real?”

Many less sexy communities without real estate hyper-spikes haven’t crashed as hard as Jackson.  How will we address that?

A tunnel running under Teton Pass would provide safer and faster commutes, run beneath habitat, and balance real estate values. On this side of the Pass, values would come down a bit.  Over in Idaho, they’d go up a bit because Jackson Hole would be more accessible. We’d give the mountain back to wildlife.  Mass transit would operate more efficiently.  That road is treacherous.  Avalanche emergencies and related deaths would be reduced.

Ted Kerasote once suggested a tunnel, in lieu of a bridge, for GTNP. How about a tunnel to go under that freakin’ Pass?