Jackson Hole Art Blog

“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?

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

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

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

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

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

Item #2:

Art speed dating!

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

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

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

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

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

The Buffalo Bill Historical Center’s Whitney Gallery of Western Art is set to re-open June 21.   It has been closed for remodeling since October 2008.

Curator Mindy Besaw has been neck deep in the project.

“It’s been “all Whitney, all the time” says Besaw.  “I hope to provide visitors with a rich new perspective on the role of art in understanding the American West.”  Besaw feels the gallery’s 50th anniversary catch phrase, “Seeing the West in a whole new way,” captures its essence.  She notes that the “… reinterpreted gallery goes beyond a traditional chronological display of artwork to create a mixture of historic and contemporary art, grouped together based on such themes as, “Horses in the West,” “Wonders of Wildlife,” “Heroes and Legends,” and “Inspirational Landscapes.” Put another way, it “celebrates the past and envisions the future.” ”

The gallery’s history began when the Buffalo Bill Memorial Association commissioned a New York artist, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, to create a monument to Cody. She donated Buffalo Bill – The Scout, which was dedicated on July 4, 1924, and forty acres of adjacent land.

Besaw tells us that,”For 30 years, the Scout remained a solitary horse-and-rider at the outskirts of town. In 1954, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, the sculptor’s son, donated funds in his mother’s honor to create a western art gallery in Cody, Wyoming. Then, in 1957, the Honorable Robert Coe, acting for the Coe Foundation, purchased the Frederic Remington studio collection of paintings, sketches, and artifacts and gave it to the Buffalo Bill Memorial Association for a new art museum.”

And, as they say, the rest is history.  For information, contact  Mindy Besaw at mindyb@bbhc.org , or phone 307.578.4053

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.

Trailside Galleries turns toward summer like an artist to its muse.   Three related shows take place at Trailside this June:  Salute to Summer, June 1-31; and landscape artists  Robert Moore and Lanny Grant will showcase, in conjunction, at the gallery June 1-30.

The annual Salute to Summer provides a chance to see the latest works by that gallery’s premiere artists. The broad sampling includes works by Gerald Balciar, Bruce Cheever, Nicholas Coleman, Brent Cotton,  John DeMott, Andrew Denman, Robert Duncan, Allen & Patty Eckman,  Michael Godfrey, Veryl Goodnight,   Z.S. Liang, Mike Malm, Bonnie Marris, Buck McCain, Greg McHuron, Dan Mieduch,  Jim Morgan, Bill Nebeker, Gary Niblett, Ralph Oberg, Andy Peters,  Jared Sanders, Bill Sawczuk, Lindsay Scott, Kyle Sims, Mian Situ, Adam Smith, Daniel Smith, Tucker Smith, Richard Thomas, Kent Ullberg, Kathy Wipfler and more.

Robert Moore

Every time I’ve taken a Jackson Hole Art Tours client to Trailside, Moore’s singularly romantic, rich canvases command attention.  Moore’s thick use of paint, his ability to move from warm to cool palettes and back again, his composition and lively landscapes fit a variety of tastes.  Canvases are often large, but there’s a price point for everyone.  Born and raised in the Snake River Valley of Idaho, Moore is a 20-year Trailside veteran, widely collected.

Lanny Grant

Landscape painter Lanny Grant, noted for his mountain vistas, also paints more intimate scenes, such as a sun-drenched hillside blanketed in flowering sage.  A native of the Colorado Rocky Mountain region, Grant’s passion for these western ranges never wanes.

Up to 10 new works by Grant will be on display. The artist was recently asked to be Artist-In-Residence at Rocky Mountain National Park for the 2009 summer season.

Contact Trailside Galleries by Telephone: 307.733.3186
Facsimile: 307.733.0369
Email: cara@trailsidegalleries.com
Website: www.trailsidegalleries.com

Photographer Robert Turner’s large format, color landscape photography show “Rare Places in a Rare Light” is on display at the Buffalo Bill Cody Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming.   It remains on display in the BBHC’s John Bunker Sand Photography Gallery through July 31.

Forty-three images make up the show, which has traveled to notable natural history museums at Harvard University and the Mumm Napa Fine Art Photography Gallery. The exhibit showcases Turner’s landscape shots of vistas in Utah, California, Maine and New Mexico…and of Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest and Yellowstone National Park.

“There are times when my camera frames a scene that sweeps 50 miles to the horizon without a trace of human life. Those times are rare and thrilling,” says Robert “Bob” Turner. “More often, I work to frame out the footprint of man on the landscape.”

I’m not familiar with any mantras saying human beings should be included in wildlife photography in order to show scale, even though Turner says one exists.  If it does, he’s not a disciple of that photography sect.

” As a species, we have the capacity to respond to the essence of wildness in a place, even if that place is only an island in the larger sea of human commotion,” says Turner.  “When [a photograph] works, it is often because I’ve managed to capture a fleeting moment of light, color, motion, or stillness that gives the image a sense of heightened reality. I’m left feeling that I have witnessed something that has transcended the realm of ordinary experience.”

The historical center’s education department is working with Turner for lecture and workshop opportunities in late July. Details will be forthcoming later this spring. Monitor www.bbhc.org for more information.

An affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, the BBHC is open 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. daily.  For general information, visit www.bbhc.org or call 307.587.4771.

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.

If you missed, as I did, the opening of “People of the Plateau: Native American Photography by Edward S. Curtis,” on loan to the Art Association from the University of Wyoming Art Museum, you have through May 25 to see this historic collection of photographs of Native Americans.   Curtis’s great work, “The North American Indian,” is 20 volumes in length, with 20 portfolios of over 700 copperplate photogravures. The exhibition is on display upstairs, in the ArtSpace Loft Gallery.

Terry Winchell, owner of Fighting Bear Antiques, opened the show April 10th.

The magnitude of Curtis’ work cannot be overstated. It brings together myriad people and languages.   I’m grieved to have missed Winchell’s talk, and in an effort to assuage myself and learn more about Curtis, I did a bit of research. I found a wonderful site, Edward S. Curtis’s “The North American Indian”/Edward S. Curtis in Context.

There you will find five other pages that together provide an excellent context on Curtis: A biographical timeline for Curtis; Curtis and the North American Indian; The Myth of the Vanishing Race; Curtis as Pictorialist and Ethnographic Adventurist; and a map of the North American Indians as experienced by Curtis.

Mick Gidley, Professor of American Literature, School of English, University of Leeds, England’s essay on “The North American Indian” is excellent.  Here is an excerpt:

“But when the seeming white brother appeared on the mesas of Arizona in the sixteenth century, the Hopi had been expecting him for hundreds of years. That is, they had an extensive history quite their own, and a corresponding literature. Indeed, all of the Indian peoples–however much the coming of horses and other later imports affected the bases of their cultures–had a history, a religion, a system of government, social customs, handicrafts, and myths and songs of their own which predated the coming of white people among them. Edward Sheriff Curtis’ The North American Indian was a truly magnificent effort to record a vast amount of very many of these aboriginal cultures. Published between 1907 and 1930 in twenty volumes of illustrated text and twenty portfolios containing more than seven hundred large-sized photogravures, The North American Indian, which was issued in a very limited edition and sold rather expensively on a subscription basis, contains millions of words: descriptions of homelands; accounts of religious beliefs that some might find strange; accounts of tribal organizations ranging from the aristocratic to the casually democratic; records of ceremonies so subtle in their significance, or so seemingly bizarre, that an alien eyewitness could easily not understand what it all meant; versions of haunting myths, songs and stories; descriptions of domestic chores and of intricate and skilled arts and hunting practices; and heroic tales of arms and men. In short. The North American Indian is a monument in words and pictures to a range of cultures which most white men could not or would not see.”

A Wyoming Arts Council (WAC) release has announced that applications are available for the new “Art Works for Wyoming” grant program.  The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is providing this one-time opportunity, and is able to offer the program as a result of its recently secured federal stimulus funding package.  Any and all Wyoming arts organizations may apply, which, of course, includes Jackson arts entities.  Grants are available to all qualifying arts venues.

WAC manager Rita Bascom says, “We are fortunate to live in a time when the arts are recognized for the impact they have on our economy.  The fact that the NEA was included in our nation’s Stimulus Funding Plan is a credit to all of the artists, arts businesses, and nonprofit arts organizations who make their living through the arts, or hire artists to paint, dance, act, write, sculpt, design, etc. – not just at this point in time, but throughout our nation’s history.”

Throughout world history.

The program offers up to $25,000 in grants monies for projects meeting one of the following two criteria:

Salary support, full or partial, for one or more positions that are critical to an organization’s artistic mission and that are in jeopardy or have been eliminated as a result of the current economic collapse.

Fees for previously engaged artists and/or contractual personnel to maintain or expand the period during which such persons would be engaged.

Applications are due at the WAC by May 15, 2009. Applications will be forwarded to the Western States Arts Federation on June 1.   June 3-5, applications will be considered and winning grants will be notified by mail on July 1.   NO PAPER APPLICATIONS will be accepted.

For full application information on this program, log on to WAC’s online granting site here.

“We are excited to be a part of this national effort to save arts jobs.  And we encourage all qualified Wyoming organizations to apply for funding,” Bascom said.