Posts from ‘National Arts News’
Nicolai Ouroussoff’s March 31, 2010 article in the New York Times Arts Section brings to light a plan to reconstruct Haiti’s urban infrastructure by 
breaking up the population of over-crowded Port-au-Prince into smaller cities.  These compact towns, if realized, are termed “smaller urban growth poles,” and could dramatically change Haiti’s economic, social and political future.
If you haven’t already, you can click on the above link and read the entire article. If you are short on time, here’s a bare-bones synopsis:
- The new urban distribution plan centers on the idea that many smaller cities would be established in areas of Haiti least likely to be struck by natural disaster. Port-au-Prince would no longer be the dominant city. Currently, Port-au-Prince has almost no sewage treatment and its building code is “barely two pages long.”
- Ouroussoff says these plans, still being developed, already best early rebuilding plans post-Katrina and post-Tsunami.
- Haiti’s woes go back a century, when America began concentrating trade ops in Port-au-Prince, shutting down other existing Haiti ports.  By 1960, François Duvalier shut down any remaining ports in a bid for total political control via a single power base.
- Over 20 years, the city’s population almost doubled, to 3 million people. The “effect of the shift was an urban disaster – one that has put more and more pressure on the capital while draining the provinces of economic opportunity.”
- The quake has made redistribution away from Port-au-Prince’s major fault line and its exposure to landslides and floods a logical step.  Thousands of the city’s buildings were destroyed, practically leveling it, as the world has seen.  Refugees have fled, moving to other regions
of Haiti. - Planners hope relocation services like hospitals and schools will encourage re-establishment of new urban centers. They propose organizing new buildings around public parks and the like, which would provide sorely needed civic center points.  Similar plans would be applied to rural areas, with farms surrounding central core services areas.  Public structures would be paid for by the government.
- Light rail is proposed. Earthquake debris (millions of cubic tons) would serve as shoreline landfill, that could be turned into parks.
- One planner noted that “We should think in terms of the city’s urban evolution rather than large-scale development.”
- Haiti planners need access to money and ideas; the University of Miami’s “new urbanism” proponents can advise.
- Ouroussoff ends his article by observing that “….a connection between good urban planning ideas and political realities on the ground was never made (in New Orleans). The best plans went nowhere. Let’s pray that doesn’t happen in Haiti.”
Item #2:
University of Wyoming (UW) Adjunct Professor Nathan Abel’s print exhibition Origins, on display at Teton Art Lab May 7-31, also includes prints produced by members of the UW Print Exchange.
Besides being an accomplished artist, Abel is able to write with languid beauty about his work. Â Working to connect with a father he has no conscious memory of, Â Abel incubates his native landscapes, giving them new life that exists in binary-colored melancholy.
“In a time when oral history is diminishing I cling to the histories passed on to me by family members. My interpretation of those memories exist between the unconscious and the conscious mind. Through my work I explore the common ground that I feel I share with my father whom I never consciously knew. I utilize the rural landscape (where I grew up and still feel the most at home) in juxtaposition with integrated personal archetypes. The images exist as a dialogue between memories of the old family farm, photographs my father took, and my own personal narratives.”
Through his printing process, Abel is building what he calls a “dialog of history.”
“Wyoming” connotes thoughts of vast, wind blown space. Â Memories, in pictorial and written forms, sift their way through the ages. Â Abel is a highly conscious artist, taking history seriously. Â This is the true road.
A gloved hand grasping a warm gun. The gloved hand, avec pistol, pushes its way through the back of a steeple-shaped enclosure, and the gun is pointed at…..?  The gun barrel is wrapped with what appears to be a barbershop pole spiral; all are framed inside a fire-engine red border.
Hold on, that tiny steeple is flanked by feral, sharp wing formations. Chubby jet propulsion feet set the base.
Hmm. Blows my theory about what this little sculpture may be about…..
It’s all subjective! And that’s the fun.
Found objects are the media of choice for artist John Thompson. His show, Accumulation, is on display in the Artspace Theater Gallery at the Center for the Arts through May 26.
Thompson says he sometimes conjures full works out of thin air. He wakes up and “there they are.” The Art Association describes Thompson’s work as experiments in color, pattern and finishes that come together in artistic statements—perhaps queries, perhaps pure observations–about universal themes:Â good and evil, positive and negative, decay and belief.
Also on display, in the Artspace Main Gallery through the end of April, is the Art Association’s 2010 Members Only Exhibition. The show is a grass roots, community inspired exhibition of artworks by all Art Association members.  Hundreds of works are on display, representing all manner of medium.  Come and see what Jackson’s creative community dishes out.  It’s great dish!
If you have an idea for a show, submit your proposal to the Art Association by May 2010, to be considered for exhibition space in the Artspace Galleries in 2011.  The Art Association’s policy and practice “….considers exhibition proposals on an ongoing basis as part of its mission to encourage a vital, creative community. The free contemporary art exhibition programs presented in the Artspace Main, Loft, Theatre and Lobby Galleries enhance the creative and educational environment of the organization and showcase a balance of local, regional and national artists. The Exhibition Committee of the Art Association considers complete exhibition proposals on a periodic basis.”
Not long ago, on New York’s Lower East Side, the world’s first Art Handlers Olympics took place. An article appeared in the New York Times.  Here’s an excerpt:
“The event, the first-ever Art Handling Olympics - a combination roast, “Jackass”-style stunt extravaganza and excuse to drink a lot – drew about 200 people at its height who came to the Ramiken Crucible gallery to watch a dozen four-man teams (art handlers are, by and large, male, and, by and large, large) go head-to-head, demonstrating their skills with a lot of fake art and untold amounts of Bubble Wrap.
“We kind of thought maybe this was the wrong time for this, because everyone who works in this field was worn out from working the Armory Show and everything that goes on around that, but it turned out it was the perfect time, because everybody needed to vent,” Ted Riederer, an artist, former art handler and one of the event’s organizers, said. For some of the events, Mr. Riederer took on the role of a cruel German curator, wearing a tight houndstooth suit and sunglasses, shouting abuse at the handlers like “Nein! Nein!” and “Hold it higher, higher, a little higher!” and “I pay you people to do this?”
dot, dot, dot……..
“Called “The Eliminator,” the final punishing round involved a kind of Nascar-pit-crew competition for the remaining two teams – one named the 
Kings of Cleats and one whose name was a slightly racy double-entendre. The teams had to take pieces of art out of a wooden crate and, with the clock ticking, assemble them into an installation with no instructions or curatorial guidance. (The “art installation” kit consisted of a blanket, a tambourine, streamers, two rattraps and other things that resembled street trash – in other words, the kinds of things many art handlers have actually had to try to assemble by themselves on the job.)
If the time constraints weren’t tough enough, the art handlers were often heckled during this round by onlookers; one shouted “Derivative!” as the artwork was thrown together. Asked if he and his friends had practiced for the event, Paul Outlaw, a member of the team that went home with the silver, said: “Other than doing this all day, anyway, and sometimes all night? No.”
At the end of the day the Kings of Cleats, in an upset, won the gold, a “lovely handcrafted medal,” as the organizers described it, embossed with an image of a hand holding up a majestic flaming tape dispenser. “Plus, of course, they win enduring fame,” said Shane Caffrey, an art handler for the Marianne Boesky Gallery (daughter of Ivan Boesky!) and the event’s lead organizer.
No money?
Mr. Caffrey laughed. “In this business?”
Here in rural Connecticut, I can’t find a ding dang movie theater inside of 12 miles. 
But the New York Times is sold in every nook and cranny;Â weekends, I get it delivered.
Sitting in bed with the Sunday Times at 7:30 am, watching yet another raging New England gale blast the landscape, is one of life’s great pleasures.  Sorry, I’m still a hold-the-paper-in-your-hand kind of girl. When I can be.  It’s civilized. And so much more interesting in a sensory way.
I do recycle. And my rabbits, Minnie & Pearl, make good use of old newspaper for certain projects of theirs. We’re efficient with our newspapers, o.k.?
Getting to the point, I want to make a point about the deep devotion the N.Y. Times has towards the arts. It’s HUGE. Of course, it is huge because New York is swimming in arts. You could spend a solid month viewing art in NYC and not come close to seeing everything.  More arts there than there are grains of salt in the ocean.
The arts are struggling, but for those cities and towns committed to their arts, they are a giant economic engine. Stop and think. How interesting is any city or town without its arts? Without expression of environment and culture?  What would Jackson Hole be without its galleries, without Dancers Workshop, Grand Teton Music Festival, NMWA, the Art Association, the Center? Without pARTNERS? Without Nicole Madison? Without Candra Day? Tina Close? 
Without Rocky Vertone? Without David Swift and Tom Mangelsen and Jon Stuart and the Riddells? Teton Art Lab? Off Square and Jackson Community Theatres? Without venues like the Brew Pub and Pearl St. Bagels and Koshu and Elevated Grounds? Charlie Craighead? Without Missy Falcey, our fabulous Library and its programs and exhibits? Without our movie and playhouses?
We’re already finding out what it’s like without McCandless; we’ve found out what it’s like without other galleries that didn’t make it, and we’ll find out what it is like without a few more.
Well?
I wouldn’t live here. Who’d want to? We’re not exactly ethnically diverse, so there’s no interest there. If town didn’t exist and we were a park only, that would be one thing. But we’re not. We’re an urban center, we’re Wyoming’s equivalent of Connecticut’s Fairfield County. (Hey, I’m a hugely boring WASP…self-deprication here! And actually, Fairfield Co. is now much more ethnically diverse than Jackson…) What can keep us from being just another snow village country club? Art, for one thing. All kinds of art.
This weekend, the New York Times has four sections devoted to the arts. A reflection of a reflection of commitment. Here are a few items from those pages–along with one item from the Travel Section, often packed with arts news from around the globe. (Because when people travel, they usually enjoy visiting regional art and architecture!):
The Whole Earth Catalog: The Prequel. The article reviews “Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe,” on view at the Rubin Museum of Art. Pull quote: “Western science and Eastern religion imagine the beyond.”
Time, the Infinite Storyteller. The article discusses the many ways that great institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, takes a visitor through time’s linked histories.
Growing Up Biracial Before Obama: Years of Pain and Eventual Progress. A theater review of a one-woman show at the Roy Arias Theater Center.
Nothing about “NINE.”
A 1965 film, Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster, is on view at MOMA.
George Orwell was born in…India? A small article about restoring the author’s birthplace.
A music review of the band Soulive, on the occasion of the band’s 10th anniversary.
Small Museum Captures a Rare Chagall. London’s Jewish Museum of Art has acquired a rare depiction of the Holocaust, by Chagall. The work is entitled “Apocalypse in Lilac: Capriccio.” The work is perhaps the most “brutal and disturbing ever created by an artist primarily known for his brightly colored folkloric visions.”
A review of the show “Struttin’ With Some Barbeque,” featuring musicians Henry Butler and Donald Harrison.
36 Hours in Mountainous, Multicultural Tucson includes a mention of a great collection of American Photography, the Center for Creative Photography. You can also check out “Jet Age Graveyards” and the Titan Missile Museum—a largely underground nuclear silo not demolished, where you can get a quick view of a warhead “700 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.”
Degas Work Stolen from French Museum. Swiped while on loan from the 
Musee d’Orsay. (By the way, did Jackson’s police ever solve the mystery of the artworks stolen from galleries this past summer?)
Struggling Actor Tweaks Script, Buddy and Bodies. A review of the movie “Film With Me In It,” a “…slender, supple comedy graced with appealing performers and laced with agreeable poison.”
So, Jackson Holers–next time you bump into one of our town’s creative souls, give them an extra big “Thankyou.”  And contribute what you can. Maybe we can expand our arts coverage, and I and my rabbits will like that.
A number of Jackson Hole area artists are experienced in working for our two parks, Grand Teton and Yellowstone. Ed Riddell, Greg McHuron, and Dan Burgette are three examples.  Riddell and McHuron conduct workshops, often taking their students into the wilderness or abroad.
This month and next, sculptor Dan Burgette is the National Museum of Wildlife Art’s Lanford Monroe Memorial Artist-in-Residence.  Burgette will be on hand in Johnson Hall on Tuesday – Saturday, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm through August 1.  Demonstrations are free and open to the public.
Burgette’s artistry springs from his three decades as a Grand Teton National Park backcountry ranger.  He is a sculptor inspired by wildlife, particularly by birds and the aerodynamics of flight. Burgette creates dynamic works depicting indigenous birds in flight; he visualizes spiraling air currents of beating wings, dissolving any separation of a bird and the air around it.  In some instances, Burgette’s birds become the air.  Burgette works primarily with wood, metal and stone–materials seemingly too weighty to produce a sense of flight. Seemingly. Burgette smashes barriers, suggesting speed, grace and space with every work.   For information, visit www.wildlifeart.org.
Item #2:Â A New WSJ Culture Section?
Columnist Laura Collins-Hughes reports that the Wall Street Journal is working on
a new NYC-only culture section.  The new section would compete with the New York Times’ predominant arts coverage.   Collins-Hughes reports that a budget is being worked up and the new section could debut as early as 2011.  She quotes one WSJ staffer as saying that the new section will be “…arts-and-culture-oriented…The ad side thought they could sell ads on a local New York basis, given the Broadway scene and the arts scene overall.”
Arts sell ads, baby. By the way, did I tell you about the J.H. Art Blog’s incredible visitation stats?
Item #3Â Altamira Fine Art Bends It
Altamira Fine Art has moved into its new, 172 Center Street (Suite 100) space. And it’s pretty cool.  Altamira opened its doors with a Nieto ( check out the fancy dancer canvases, they are spectacular ) exhibit and now Amy Ringholz’s Storytellers is the gallery’s focus, through July 28.  Ringholz’s opening reception night was pretty rockin; music on 172′s street front plaza brought the crowds in.   Ringholz’s artwork kept them there, and Altamira’s relatively dark-hued interior creates a clubby atmosphere.  Check it out.
Next up at Altamira:Â Mary Roberson’s “Nature is Life in the Dream” opens August 5. Â Info:Â 307.739.4700 & connect@altamiraart.com.
Item #4:
Artist Ashley Collins is the focus at the Diehl Gallery this week. See previous posts 
about her work, exhibit and resume.  Wednesday evening a special opening benefitting the Community School takes place, 6-9:00 pm.  20% of all purchases go to the school, supporting educational initiatives for children.  Call Karen Hodges at 307.733.5427 for more information on this special preview event.
The National Endowment for the Arts is in the process of reviewing the applications that were received for Recovery Act funds. The NEA received approximately 2,400 applications requesting support for projects that focus on the preservation of jobs in the arts, now under review. The amount of money requested by applicants far exceeds the nearly $30 million available for grants.
For Wyoming this means that, if an application is denied, applicants can look to other possible NEA sources:
•   Wyoming’s state arts agency deadline has passed, but there may be a second deadline January 15, 2010, depending on funding.
•   A designated local arts agency that receives Recovery Act funding. (See the list of state arts agencies and regional arts organizations on the NEA Web site; a list of local arts agencies that receive Recovery Act funding will be available in July.)
Applicants are encouraged to consider the NEA’s traditional funding opportunities: the Access to Artistic Excellence category deadline is August 13. The NEA Chairman will make final decisions on Recovery Act funding following the meeting of the National Council on the Arts at the end of June. Applicants will be informed of funding in July. In the meantime, check the “Recovery” section of the NEA web site for the most up to date information on all aspects of the NEA’s Recovery Act program.   http://www.arts.gov/
