Jackson Hole Art Blog

“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.

“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?

No matter where she goes to hang her hat, Jackson’s plein air artist  Kathryn Mapes Turner paints the landscape.  As a fourth generation Triangle X Ranch family member — the famed dude ranch is located in Grand Teton National Park — Turner grew up observing wilderness and ranch life in one of the most spectacular landscapes on earth.

Even Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman noted Jackson Hole and Grand Teton National Park’s exquisite beauty while referencing  the annual Fed Economic Summit that takes place there.

Turner also has strong Washington D.C. ties.  She finds beauty in that city’s historic, classical landscape, an expansive city conceived as the seat of our country’s government.  D.C.’s architecture is influenced by ancient Egypt,  Greece and Rome and 19th century France.

For Turner, painting is a language expressing  her deep appreciation of the world around her. “My paintings are my response to what I find magnificent. This magnificence can be found everywhere from the monumental to the mundane,” she says.

“Magnifique,” a collection of new paintings and drawings by Turner, opens Friday November 13, at Susan Calloway Fine Arts, in Washington.   An opening reception is scheduled that evening from 6-8 pm.   The show remains up through December 12th, 2009.

Says the gallery of Turner’s work, “Her superb drawing ability and familiarity with her subjects allow her to break at will from pure representation, successfully abstracting her subject matter without losing its essence. She moves seamlessly from watercolor to oil without changing her style, using each medium to its fullest extent to bolster her own style, rather than changing her style to suit the medium. This show will feature her cityscapes, landscapes and figurative works.”

Turner lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she is represented by Trio Fine Art.

For information, contact Susan Calloway Fine Arts by telephoning 202.965.4601; or email gallery@callowayart.com.

Item #2:

Contemporary Western artist Matt Flint, an artist featured at Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary, is one of six artists to be highlighted at the Wyoming Arts Council’s Biennial Fellowship Exhibit.

The exhibit is on display at Wyoming’s State Museum through January 9, 2010.  An opening reception took place November 5th. The earth tones and primal forms Flint uses in his work bring cave paintings to mind; natural forms and images of birds seem scratched on ancient rock.   Check the Wyoming Arts Council website for full details.

Memorial Weekend Monday as I write this.  Earlier today I took a walk around town.  It was an extremely pleasant walk because I was able to stroll easily around the Town Square, able to find a bench to sit on, able to browse lazily in a few shops.  It was mellow out there.

It’s not supposed to be this mellow in Jackson Hole on Memorial Day.  Earlier in the weekend, a friend emailed me to find out what was happening in the arts over the holiday.  My answer was….not much.  No big parties or receptions.  No extravaganzas; I wasn’t even certain all the galleries would be open.

Our galleries are gasping for breath.  I’ve posted an idea about window art being utilized to fill and brighten empty storefronts; sent a letter to the editor at the Jackson Hole News & Guide that has yet to appear.   Which is o.k., because we’ve got some mega-issues going on with our revised Comprehensive Plan.

We need some stop gap action, though; simple, non-political gestures to shore us all up while the economy writhes and we search for a livable future for Jackson.  Our Center for the Arts needs a loan, galleries have closed, artists are scrambling. Artists are leaving, too. Comprehensive Plans include internal solutions, solutions that don’t have to do with sketching out a building, but that include using our hearts, minds and space in the most giving ways.

Ok, enough.   In the end, Jackson’s future is about how we decide to act in this community.

Earlier this spring Bruce Richardson, Chair of the Wyoming Arts Council, spoke on the subject of the importance of arts to our economy.   Richardson, a board member of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, takes the elusive, often seemingly quirky and odd aspects of art, and boils it all down to sensibility. Here’s Richardson’s essay, taken from the Wyoming Arts Council Blog. Note his point about the number of people working in the arts in Montana.

Arts Mean Business
By Bruce Richardson

I am here to talk about the ordinariness of arts and why include them in job bills and economic development. Simply put, arts are business and the arts business, both for-profit and non-profit, is a substantial part of the Wyoming economy.

People tend to think of art as odd and special, a separate, realm of elevated, difficult and unusual activities done by talented, but eccentric, flaky people. People remember Beethoven’s genius and bad temper, Vincent Van Gogh’s ear-chopping, and think of starving writers not paying the rent (as in the musical Rent).

In fact, most art workers are pretty regular people. They take and sell photos, repair instruments, plan buildings, design websites, make and sell jewelry, build hand-crafted furniture, teach guitar, fiddle, oboe, make and market sculpting tools, sculpt antlers into beautiful objects and sell them over the web, frame pictures, paint portraits, play Mexican dance music at your wedding, do entertaining and uplifting concerts, make fine pottery, do leathercraft, sell paintings in a downtown gallery and design your building.

All of these are businesses in Wyoming. The owners rent or own property, buy supplies, pay insurance and taxes, pay salaries, buy groceries and furniture and participate in the local economy just as do the owners and employees of manufacturing companies or coal companies.

So the arts portion of the stimulus bill makes good sense. The grants that will go out in Wyoming must be used to preserve significant jobs in non-profit arts organizations facing cutbacks. As reported in The Casper Journal, arts organizations such as the Symphony and Nicolaysen Art Museum have suffered from decreases in their endowments, donations and fund-raising.

The Arts are taking an especially big hit as philanthropy moves their diminished resources to others areas. Layoffs and canceled programs are a likely result that can hit small towns as well as large. We want to see the robust Oyster Ridge Music Festival in Kemmerer or the Basin Art Center continue to thrive. In the performing arts, a cancelled concert is similar to a layoff. Musicians lose work and money, the audience loses a program, and the organization loses the ticket and sponsorship income.

The small stimulus allotments contemplated by the Wyoming Arts Council will be out there fast and function as a short-term bridge to preserve jobs in the arts. The program will not remove all the threats to jobs, but it is timely, targeted and temporary.

Some may be surprised how many people in Wyoming make their living from the arts. In Sheridan there are 1,123 people (5.8% of the labor force) working in the creative, arts-based economy according to a recent, very careful study, “Tradition, Expression and Recognition: Creative Opportunities in the New West.” Stuart Rosenfeld, the author, gets his data from on-the-ground counts that find the self-employed and others not listed on the standard sources. He also found a cluster of leather and saddle artisans.

The study (available from the Center for Vital Communities in Sheridan) is of significance to the whole state and our efforts to increase economic diversity and attract top creative talent. There is much here already that we can nurture.

For example, the arts economy in Jackson, according to a recent study by Americans for the Arts (Arts and Prosperity III), is one of the largest in the nation. While the study, using Dunn and Bradstreet lists, misses much of the activity, it does allow comparisons and they are staggering. Jackson has ten times more arts spending per-capita than Boulder, Colorado, and twenty times more than Boise, Idaho, both places that promote themselves as arts centers. Cody, not included in the study, is probably not far behind Jackson, and clusters of activity can be found in many Wyoming communities, including Casper.

This matches national trends. Rosenfeld found that the arts economy in Arkansas was the state’s third largest employer and that in Montana, astoundingly, there were more people working in the arts than in the energy industry. It’s no surprise then that arts councils are often part of state offices of economic development, as is the case in Louisiana and Connecticut and that many towns actively recruit artists and promote themselves as arts destinations. Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a decaying manufacturing city has made a huge comeback by stressing music, pottery and food. Each night the downtown swarms with young shoppers and music lovers having a good time and spending money.

We know that appealing towns have lots of arts and that arts draw people and businesses. We also know that arts are fun, that they give pleasure and meaning, that strong art lifts the soul and unclutters the mind.

Lots and lots of National Museum of Wildlife Art news and updates!   Here is a full list of activities related to our museum on the hill.

#1:  Dr. Seuss!

Whose childhood–and by extension, adulthood–has not been charmed by Theodor Geisel’s opus?  We all occasionally find ourselves thinking “Seussical.”

“The Lorax: Original Illustrations by Dr. Seuss” is on display at the museum through September 7.   NMWA notes that the Lorax’s tale is a cautionary one, a tale ahead of its time, warning us of our own penchant for wrecking our beloved environment.   The exhibit gives us access to Seuss’ process, from conceptual sketches to to camera-ready line art.  Anthropormorphism of wildlife and our relationship to the natural world are the coal in creative story-telling engines; Disney has built an empire around these themes.   Stand out exhibit characters include Swomee-Swans and Humming-Fish.

“Seuss was not one to shy away from contemporary topics or social commentary. The Lorax is among his most pointed, taking to task a company whose greed causes grave environmental harm,” notes the Museum. ” This exhibit combines original art as it probes humanity’s relationship with nature, making a perfect match for the National Museum of Wildlife Art.”  The exhibit is on loan from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library & Museum.

Special fun-for-kids activities tied to Seuss’s art will be offered throughout the Museum. The Lorax exhibition is included in Museum admission: $10 for adults, $5 for kids 5-18, and free for children under 5. A family rate of $30 for the first two adults, first two children, and $1 for each additional child helps make the Museum affordable for larger families.

#2:  Out of the Box!

NMWA’s biennial “Out of the Box Show and Auction” is one of the museum’s best-loved events.  This year, the show and sale takes place Friday, June 12 and includes over 115 creatively altered boxes by regionally and nationally acclaimed artists.   Prices have typically ranged from an affordable $25 to $4,000 and more.  Proceeds support the Museum’s adult and youth education programs.

Each box is unique, and artists are invited to work in any medium as long as the work retains its function as a box.  The box artworks will be auctioned by auctioneer Jim Loose, and the evening’s M.C. is KMTN’s “Fish.”   Of course, there are door prizes: two CityPass books, a two-hour art appraisal by Art Appraisals of Jackson Hole, LLC, two bird-themed notions boxes and a tour of the newly opened Jackson Hole Raptor Center with guide Roger Smith.

Volunteer Chair Ann Nelson notes the event is a labor of love, with 15 volunteers devoting much of the last two years organizing the show.    “The community of Jackson Hole anticipates Out of the Box with great enthusiasm; this show will have something for everyone,” says Nelson.

Out of the Box is free for museum members, $7 for non-members; free for children.  Event admission includes light hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar.  Doors open at 5:30 p.m.    733-5771.

#3: Wyoming 2009 Junior Duck Stamp Winners!

Through August 23, take time to visit this year’s entries and winners of the Wyoming Federal Junior Duck Stamp Contest. Now in its 15th year, this exceptional program, a national art competition for students in grades K – 12 simultaneously teaches art, conservation of wetlands and natural resources, and awareness skills.

The exhibit is traditionally on display in the Museum’s King Gallery; check with the front desk to confirm.   The list of winners is long, and every entry is a winner in itself.

The following information on is provided by the Museum.

Eighteen year-old Bryant Helm, of Cokeville, Wyoming, received the 2009 Best of Show award for his painting, “Provocative.”  His oil painting depicts a striking portrait of a Long-tailed Duck.  Bryant’s painting represented Wyoming at the Federal Jr. Duck Stamp contest Wednesday, April 22, 2009, at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C. The winner of the national competition will receive $5,000, a trip to our nation’s capital along with a parent and the art teacher, and have his or her artwork used to make the 2009-2010 Junior Duck Stamp.  Proceeds from the sale of the Junior Duck Stamps, which cost $5.00, support conservation education.

Baily Schupp, a eight year-old student from Pinedale, for the second year in a row,  won the 2009 Betty Nelson Artistic Promise Award for the best art in the youngest age group.  The Betty Nelson Artistic Promise Award was established eight years ago to recognize the artistic accomplishment of students in the K-3rd grade age group and to honor the late Betty Nelson, a generous supporter of the Junior Duck Stamp program.

The 1st through 3rd place Wyoming winners of the Jr. Duck Stamp contest can be viewed online on the Museum’s web site, WildlifeArt.org.  The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place contest winners will be honored at a dinner and awards ceremony at the National Museum of Wildlife Art on Saturday July 18, 2009.

For more information, please contact Amy Goicoechea at (307) 732-5435.

Art, be not proud.  Here’s an innovative idea out of Berkeley, California that would brighten the ever-increasing number of empty storefronts in downtown Jackson. In fact, it is a wonderful idea even when times are good, when streets are paved with, if  not gold, lots of C-notes.   Local artists have a tough time finding venues; we’re very creative, and space is limited.  Artists wait months for an exhibit at PSB, Koshu, Hard Drive or the Brew Pub.   Jackson’s operative businesses could set aside a corner of their store window to display a little local art.  Take a percentage—just don’t take 50%!   Think 20%.

Berkeley’s economic downturn has inspired an innovative use of empty downtown commercial space.   Empty store window display spaces are being used to exhibit the work of local visual artists.   The practice brightens an otherwise increasingly gloomy, doldrums downtown.

According to releases, a year-long discussion between Berkeley’s Office of Economic Development and the Downtown Berkeley Association culminated in a spring kickoff of Berkeley’s new window art program.  Click here to see a slide show.

“We really wanted to bring the community into the Downtown,” said the association’s Marketing Manager Katherine Scherbel, who coordinated the project. “We wanted to make it fun and bright, celebrating the Downtown instead of letting it feel dismal and empty.”

Window displays include ceramics, jewelry, photography, paintings and works from the Habitot Children’s Museum and local high school students.  Empty commercial space had reached 15.1 percent of total commercial space when organizers began discussing the project.

Public Art and Placemaking are, as many of us in the arts community have been saying, inextricable from contemporary, smart, even green, urban growth.  Right now, the Teton County Comprehensive Plan is available to for the public to review.  This is our chance to comment on the way we will grow, not only quantitatively, but qualitatively.   Quality urban growth must include public urban spaces and public art.

If Jackson Hole’s citizens do not make reviewing this plan a priority, we essentially determine not to vote.  And those of us determining not to vote lose a lot of “street cred.”   Writing letters to the editor is a crucial public right;  writing them when you’ve opted not to be a part of the process by showing up at town meetings or workshops is a bit fraudulent.  The Comprehensive Planning process has been activated for many, many months.

YOU are the Plan.

I know it’s hard; but make this a priority.  Here’s a way to start.

TUESDAY, MAY 12, beginning at 5:30 p.m., attend a public meeting at the CENTER FOR THE ARTS. The meeting takes place on the Center’s third floor, in Teton Art Lab’s new space.  The Art Association’s digital photography studio will be available for those wanting to contribute comments electronically.   Members of our arts community will ask questions and submit comments on the inclusion of public art and placemaking in Teton County’s Comprehensive Plan.  Please try and make time to study Themes 3 and 7, in particular.

Preserving environment and quality of place, managing growth, and creating a more viable, broad-based economy are Jackson’s great challenges. Most crucial is ensuring we promote and protect our wildlife, its habitat and other environmentally sensitive areas.  In our region, the arts are a keystone in preserving place.  Although our Town Square’s monument,  various land art and myriad creative educational projects provide continual reminders of our inherent love for the arts, we’ve so far not included researching and moving towards making the arts a part of our “constitution,” as it were.   We can remind ourselves and all visitors of this history by including beautiful and lasting public place making in our Comprehensive Plan.   Such planning aids in building tourism and strong market values. Think logo.

Art captures the essence of the places dear to our hearts.  Successful public art resonates on a national level.   Our traditional themes may be translated traditionally; they may also be translated using contemporary aesthetics and materials.

We must not only include the words.  We must decide upon a logical process of implementation.  Without implementation any plan is simply an exercise.

For information, contact Don Kushner at don@jhcenterforthearts.org or Carrie Geracie at carrie@centerofwonder.org.

Oh, I LOVE this.  This is a story about Vertical Gardens.  The Art of Green.  Green urban gardens. Happy Earth Week, Jackson Hole!  The photo above is from Vertical Garden’s Exit Art website.

Vertical Gardens is “…an exhibition of architectural models, renderings, drawings, photographs and ephemera that depict or imagine a vertical farm, urban garden or green roof.”

Imagine Jackson’s new downtown garage transformed as a vertical garden.  A vertical forest, a vision of vines!   Imagine it surrounded with indigenous wildflowers and plants, an ever-changing public art installation, transforming itself with every season.  Wow.

Vertical Gardens encompasses over 20 projects by “…artists and architects that envision solutions for building greener urban environments.” Cities all around the world are finding ways to include gardens in their planning, knowing the urban aesthetic will increase a hundred fold.   They’re great ways to feed and inspire urban dwellers, and since Jackson’s downtown is bent on adding multi-million dollar commercial and residential spaces, how about including green gardens in the design?   Provide space for sustaining, aesthetic projects in every development and pay it back, pay it forward to the community.   And bring our town’s profile up to new age marketing snuff while you’re at it!   Bring the region’s great beauty right past the city line and into…town’s heart.

Here’s more from their site:

“Largely based on the principles of hydroponics, vertical gardens would also be mostly self-sustaining because they would capture large amounts of natural sunlight and water, and could use wind as an energy source. In a country where cities are suffocated by high rises, cement and industrial materials, where can green space exist? As this exhibition demonstrates, one possible answer is “up.” These and other urban parks and gardens provide areas for socialization and recreation; a location for a city farm or community land-trust; an outlet through which hundreds of people can learn about farming and agriculture; and the addition of much needed plant and animal life to the otherwise concrete jungle.”

Vertical Gardens is a project of SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics) , which is an off shoot of Exit Art, which “…is an independent vision of contemporary culture prepared to react immediately to important issues that affect our lives.”  The New York City center, 25 years old, engages in “…experimental, historical and unique presentations of aesthetic, social, political and environmental issues.”  Exit Art says it “absorbs cultural differences that become prototype exhibitions,” and embraces multiple disciplines.   Starting as a ‘grass roots’ project, it has grown into a contemporary green, artistic powerhouse.  Always changing, it is now internationally recognized for its innovations, curatorial depth, media savvy and stick-to-it-ness.

Few endeavors build community like gardening.  And few activities provide the warm sense of well-being that gardening does. Win. Win again.  If we incorporate the Verticle Garden vision into ours, we won’t be able to take our eyes off the results.

A couple of time zones away from Jackson Hole–it seems light years away–in Hartford, Connecticut, Aid To Artisans (ATA) has worked for decades to create opportunities for third world artisans.  ATA provides small grants that go a long way towards educating artisans and crafts people in poverty-stricken regions, while keeping cultures intact.  ATA helps these creative enclaves bring their goods to the American market.  Once an artisan has established a relationship with a U.S. vendor, ATA steps back, allowing infrastructure to develop and the artisan to sustain its own business initiatives.  

ATA is passionate about all cultural traditions and makes sure environmentally sound practices are followed.  ATA says it recognizes it can “…can only bring lasting economic growth if (it can) provide an integrated approach to product development, business skills training, market access and eco-effective processes.”

For 33 years, ATA has provided mentoring in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and Asia.  I’m proud to say my mom, Thyrza Christel, contributed years of service to ATA, working in the grants department and travelling solo to Armenia, for a month, in her mid-sixties. The experience changed her life, and the lives of Armenian women working in crafts collectives.    Working for ATA and the warm, creative craftspeople around the globe has been one of her life’s great passions.

ATA is offering a Market Readiness Program Aug. 15-19 in New York City; the course coincides with ATA’s annual presence at the New York International Gift Fair. The course offers “…the latest trend and market information offered by industry experts.”  Marketing, distribution, design analysis, buyer relationships, importing and exporting, strategies, how to prepare your work for export…these topics and more will be explored.

Deadline for registration is July 15.  A discount is available for early registration.  To learn more, log onto www.aidtoartisans.org.   Phone:  860-756-5550.

The envelope, please.

Several spring seasons ago, the Teton County Library hosted a most memorable show.  That spring, one could visit the library’s gallery and get lost in a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibit, “Graceful Envelope.” It’s impossible for me, a person who values tradition (I feel about printed newspapers the way Charlton Heston did about guns; you’ll have to take it from my cold, dead hand!) to refrain from gushing over that show.

The contest’s website says  “…Calligraphers and artists from around the world are invited to participate in the 15th annual Graceful Envelope Contest, conducted by the Washington (DC) Calligraphers Guild under the sponsorship of the National Association of Letter Carriers. The contest is open to all ages, with two separate categories for children.” This year’s theme is “Address the Environment.” Log on here to view the site.

You can still enter 2009’s Graceful Envelope Contest; entries must be postmarked by April 30.

A old friend recently asked for my mailing address, as she likes sending letters in lieu of email.  She loves her writing paper.  That request prompts this re-running of my original article on Graceful Envelope, below.    Happy Easter!

“More than kisses, letters mingle souls; for, thus friends absent speak”.

John Dunne’s poetry embraces the tone of “Graceful Envelope”, a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibit now on display at Teton County Library.  If you haven’t been to see these illuminating, exquisite envelopes, go.  The artwork evokes longing sighs, remembrance, and a feeling that you’ve tripped along a mossy, hidden path to discover a secret garden.

A hundred painted envelopes are included in the Smithsonian exhibit, that originated in 1995.  Artists create envelopes for the competition, their subject matter based on a stamp or a theme chosen by the National Association of Letter Carriers.  Ah, if every letter were thus conceived!  The show is heartrending in its beauty.  It is nectar.  Step softly along the library’s walls to find artwork that seems rendered by fairies; elegant, wispy, fables for a 4 x 6 inch tablet.  You will choose your own favorites, but I mention a few of mine here: Cathy Chilton, of New Mexico, fancied “Water, Earth, Niagara Falls, Grand Canyon”, an envelope inspired by stamps portraying those locations.  The envelope is creased like an accordion, with alternating slices of bottle green, baked canyon orange, and an indigenous lizard.  This Crafts-styled piece stands in sturdy comparison to envelopes weighted with laced grapevines and golden pears hanging heavy on the branch.  Humorous takes on the funny papers include a work picturing Popeye knocking the stuffing out of the mail, and a careening “Blondie and Dagwood” sketch.   “Celebrating Nature” bears a regal butterfly, emerald on its envelope, wings and antennae dipping into lacey calligraphy addressing the work.

Rhapsodic, I realize, but this exhibit unleashed such images and memory.  Days of Easter Egg hunts, overgrown gardens choked with wild roses, sprawling hillsides and ladies with parasols looking down from the top of sunny hillsides to a picnic in the meadow.  And I remember writing on thick paper, pages and pages of summer letters sent and received as a child.

Save your letters and envelopes.  As exhibition curator Ester Washington notes, “Letters were once precious possessions, tied in bundles with silk ribbon, and kept safe in scented drawer.” We can recreate that time.   Let’s try.