Jackson Hole Art Blog

February 5, it’s all happening at the Art Association.

Really!  Sounds like a happening, 1960’s style, with symbolism and emotions and poetry readings and exploration of the human body’s nuances (Our Bodies, Ourselves, a ground breaking book about sexuality and women’s bodies, still available and updated, btw…), power and faith, Arlo Guthrie and Aristotle.

Arlo, Aristotle, Art Association: Triple “A” alliteration.

These shows represent a quantum leap forward for Jackson’s art community.  Don’t miss it. A joint opening reception happens at the Center for the Arts on Friday, February 5th, at 5:30 pm.

Show #1:

Nekkid, a group figure exhibition, includes a noon Brown Bag Lunch Art Talk with participating artists. In our “democratic”, post-industrial, high-tech country  we still struggle with being cool with nudity (unless you are John Edwards).  This show offers a chance to probe that resistance.   Works in various media alternately explore and celebrate the human body.  As part of the evening’s festivities the spirit of the Beat Poets will resurrect, with live poetry readings.

Participating artists include, but may not be limited to: Eliot Goss, Sue Sommers, Shannon Troxler, Suzanne Morlock, Susan Thulin, Bobbi Miller, Amy Larkin, Barbara Trentham, Mark Nowlin, Jenny Dowd and Valerie Seaberg.

Writers/poets to date include: Sarah Kariko, Marcia Casey, Valley Peters Bradley and Nicole Burdick.

(Bressler, where are you in this?  You write great poetry about nudes!   Get going, don’t make me bring out the poem  you wrote a few years back…..yes, I still have it, it’s bookmarking my souffle recipe.)

Show #2:

Power & Faith: The Photography of Paul Adams will be on display in the Artspace Loft Gallery.    Here, I defer to Paul Adams’ quotation describing the inspirations for his work.

“Through most of my professional photographic career I have tried to make beautiful photographs simply for the sake of beauty. Recently though I find myself motivated more by the same challenges the American folk singer Arlo Guthrie faced when he said, “For me it is not enough to write a song that is good. I want to write a song that is good for something.” The stimulating and exciting challenge for me as a photographic artist is to try and seduce the viewer into thinking as deeply as they feel. As we look into the faces of these Spiritual Leaders I hope to accomplish Aristotle’s goal for art when he said, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”

Show #3:

The Scotch and Watercolor Society, comprised of painters Barbara Barella, Holly Bishop, Barbara C. Kuxhausen, Skip Larcom, Michele McDonald and Joan Melius, deliver their creative messages solely in watercolor.

Watercolors are considered by many to be the most difficult paint medium to master.  Artists in this show offer up a variety of impressions, interpretations and subjects in their paintings.  The exhibition will be on display in the Artspace Theater Gallery.    Perhaps a fine single malt will be served.

Show #4:

Art Association Ceramics Director Sam Dowd is, in my opinion, a great ceramicist.  His space-inspired clay compositions are sheer intergalactic fantasy.

It’s exciting that Dowd’s collaboration and guidance of Jackson Hole High School students has resulted in this new art project and show, Blast from the Cast.

On display in the Artspace Lobby Gallery, students from Shannon Borrego’s art classes will mount their sculptures and vessels.  Students have learned the slip cast mold process, and created works depicting, or speaking to, objects “chosen from life,….making a plaster mold… to produce several reproductions. The students then created clay projects that incorporated, repeated, and altered the mold pieces.”

And that’s quite a process.  Results are colorful, well-designed and fanciful.  Art created by youth is the most free; with Dowd teaching them, these students may hang on to that creative joie de vivre.

The Art Association may be contacted via their website, or you may phone 307.733.6379.

The University of Wyoming has put out the call for entries for their nationally acclaimed literary and arts journal, the Owen Wister Review (OWR).  The competition is open to all writers and artists contributing work about the Western experience.

The University recently provided the following information:

OWR, printed each spring, won its second Associated Collegiate Press Pacemaker, the college equivalent to a Pulitzer Prize in October.

“We are looking forward to another great year and can’t wait to start looking through this year’s submissions,” Editor Joshua Watanabe said.

Journal editors will be selecting original works of fiction, poetry, photography and art for inclusion in the 2010 edition. Submissions are open to artists, authors, poets, photographers or designers of any age.

Visit www.uwyo.edu/studentpub/owr for detailed submission requirements and contact information. All submissions, regardless of media, must be unpublished, original works and may not be simultaneously submitted elsewhere. Submission deadline is February 15, 2010.

University students published OWR’s first edition in 1978 with the goal of producing a magazine “the magazine reflected the talents of writers and artists in our community, recognizing them in the great tradition of Western literature and art.”

Named after Owen Wister, who set the first modern western novel, The Virginian, in the town of Medicine Bow, the review’s focus remains on the western experience interpreted by western people, but all writers and artists are invited to contribute their visions and stories.

Item #2

The National Museum of Wildlife Art’s Winter Carnival Quick Draw takes place Thursday, January 28, 5:30-7:30 pm.   Proceeds from the 1-hour paint-in and auction benefit NMWA’s educational programs.

This year’s Quick Draw will include more than a dozen artists, including four young up-and-comers from Jackson Hole high schools.  $10 admission for members, $15 for non-members, and children under 18 are free.   Get your “Chilly Bar, and some short beers, courtesy Snake River Brewing. Gessler gets tall ones, and so does McHuron.  Not sure why….Website: www.wildlifeart.org.  Phone: 307.733.5771

Last year something good did happen.  Photographer Edward Riddell experimented with a new kind of photography workshop, taking students on a photographic journey through Tuscany, Italy.    Those workshops were so successful, he’s repeating the program in 2010.

This spring, Riddell will take another small group of students through Tuscany; come fall, those who sign up will follow Riddell through Yellowstone National Park.  A Jackson Hole resident, Riddell has been shooting the Park’s landscapes for decades and conducting workshops for 33 years.  If you’ve lived here for any length of time, and have been paying attention to photography, you should be familiar with Riddell’s Ansel Adams-like black and white landscapes, and his more abstract color compositions.

Students must submit images to Riddell in order to be considered.  Workshops are geared to intermediate and experienced photographers.

With an emphasis on shooting in the field, and lots of personal attention and day-to-day critique from Riddell, class sizes are limited.

“Landscapes, People and Life of Tuscany” runs April 28-May 5, 2010.   This class is limited to six students; Italy’s touring vehicles are smaller than U.S. vans.  Cost is $1,995.   Riddell, who recently published “Range of Memory” with the writer Terry Tempest Williams, has branched off into portraiture.  Students will work with human subjects, as well as the natural world.

“Fall in Yellowstone - From Photograph to Gallery Print,” is scheduled for September 25 - October 1, 2010.   Limited to eight students, the cost is $1,250.

“The class will focus on morning and evening field sessions spent at Ed’s favorite locations (very generous in the world of photography) along with daily critiques of the previous day’s shoot. The goal of the course will be for each student to develop a portfolio of 6 to 10 photographs taken during the workshop,” says Riddell.

The Yellowstone session will give students the opportunity to produce exquisite inkjet prints at Riddell’s home studio, learning the basics of his editing and printing techniques.   Each student will leave with at least one finished print, finished with the best archival materials available.

I believe travel is included in these prices, but that is NOT confirmed, so please make sure you are clear on workshop costs.  Sounds like a deal to me!

Further details and links to signing up for either or both workshops can be found at http://web.me.com/edriddell/Riddell_Photography_Workshops.

Telephone Ed Riddell at 307.733.9093 or 307.690.3980.

One tough thing about not being in Jackson is being absent from watershed events. Karen Stewart, Art Association steward for the past 16 years, officially leaves her post as Executive Director of Jackson’s prominent arts non-profit this month.

If you are in town on Friday, January 15, please take time and good energy, and stop into the Center for the Arts to thank Karen. A reception is being held in her honor in the Center for the Arts Theater Lobby that day, from 5-7 pm.

Most of the time we don’t tell each other what we’ve done right. It’s hard for many of us; this is an excellent opportunity to practice your gratitude skills. Many other Jackson art venues might not exist if not for the ground breaking efforts of the Art Association and those who have, at one time or another, contributed and worked for its success.

Farewell, and Fare Well, Karen! Thank you for caring about Jackson’s visual arts. Thank you for all those years of service. Sixteen years heading up a Jackson non-profit may be some kind of record. I certainly hope to see you when I return.

Now, Ms. Stewart–go relax! Rev up the Vespa, pop a few corks, breathe.

Contact Cathy Wikoff, the Art Association’s Director of Development, for details. www.artassociation.org.  307.733.6379.

Also happening at the Art Association: Many Moose!

The Show: Twenty-six Moose: A Winter Photography Exhibit

The Dates: January 13 - February 2.

Opening Reception: Wednesday, Jan. 13 5-7:00 pm

The Space: ArtSpace Loft Gallery, Center for the Arts

By the time this posts, the first twenty-six photographs of moose brought to the Art Association’s front desk after the call went out, will be on display.

Apparently, unframed photographs are nailed to the wall. (Trying to block that taxidermy image….) It’s a great idea, this exhibit. First come, first serve. An excellent chance for fledgling/new/semi-pro photographers to show their work along side that of more established shooters.

Website: www.artassociation.org

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;  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.

Carmen.

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.

I let CIAO down;  I did not get their photography deadline posted in time, but hope to make up for that hole-in-the-blog by posting the following comprehensive information sent by gallery director Michele E. Walters.    Visit CIAO’s website to find out more about the gallery–you can even view a video–or call 307.733.7833 to find out about upcoming opportunities for artists.

CIAO Memberships:

The gallery is taking applications.  Membership includes:

* Gallery representation in downtown Jackson Hole, WY
* Website representation on a busy site and webstore representation
* Free application fees into any of the juried competitions.
* Representation in press releases, newspaper articles, emailing, etc.
* Accessibility to potential collectors

First Annual Open Photography Competition

This competition is open to landscape, wildlife, candid, portrait/studio, abstract & architectural shots and more.  B&W and color photography accepted.   Eligibility requirements include:

• Semi-Professional and beginning photographers (Photography revenue must be less than 50% of your gross income.)
• Photos of people must have release forms.
• Work must be ready to hang, and clearly labeled with the artists name and contact information.
• No substitutions of accepted work.
• All work will remain on display during the duration of the exhibit.
• Art work must be for sale.

Exhibition date:  January 8, 2010.

You could win some cash!

1st Place-$500 Cash Prize and one months representation of selected works
2nd Place-1 month free representation in featured artist section on gallery.
3rd Place- 6 months free representation in featured artist section on gallery website.

Deadline is December 18th 2009!  (This is the late part.  Call anyway, what could it hurt?)

Naturally Nude

Join CIAO’s 3rd Annual Naturally Nude Show. Open to all artists in any medium, traditional images and not-so-traditional, just bring it.  Entry deadline: January 22, 2010. Exhibition takes place on Valentines Day.

*1st Place*-piece featured in gallery for three months with no exhibition fee; six months free representation in featured artist section on gallery website.

*2nd Place*- Six months free representation in featured artist section on gallery website.

*3rd Place-* Three months free representation in website’s featured artist section.

Submissions must be received on or before January 22nd, 2010.

Please visit CIAO’s website for links to specific events and invitations, or phone 307.733.7833.

A poignant holiday note for Jackson Hole’s contemporary arts scene is that two of its best galleries, the Oswald and Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary, are closing their doors.   With them go venues for myriad contemporary artists - photographers, painters, sculptors, multi-media artists, crafts people, filmmakers - and the loss pries open, to a greater degree, a cultural chasm our community must strive to close.

Ever entrepreneurial, McCandless and the Oswalds are combining their artist rosters for one great contemporary art sale opportunity.  The two galleries offer up the works of more than 40 artists in a special series of Seasonal events, taking place at the Oswald Gallery, 165 North Center Street:

December 17 & 18, 6-8 pm:  “Art Cocktails”

December 26, 6-9 pm:  “Holiday Party”

December 28, 29 & 30, 6-8 pm:   “Art Talks”

Through the months of December and January, 2010, all proceeds will provide a percentage of art sales as donations to local arts non-profits.  Beneficiaries include the Center of Wonder, the Art Association, Teton ArtLab, Womentum and the National Museum of Wildlife Art.

Press materials feature images of works by Bronwyn Minton, Rick Bartow and Nine Francois.   Check both gallery websites for their complete artist lists, and phone 307.413.4331 for more information.

En-Joy!

Item #2

Galleries West sends word that a new hardcover coffee table book, “Sculpture of the Rockies,” has just been released by the editors of Southwest Art Magazine. The book “surveys the broad spectrum and spectacular variety of current sculpture being created in the Rocky Mountain region.”

“The Rocky Mountain region of the American West is renowned for its natural beauty - rugged, snow-capped peaks, sweeping valley vistas, towering pine trees, delicate wildflowers - as well as its artistic splendor, with many noted sculptors living and working in this area,” herald the book’s publishers.

As many as 97 sculptors have chosen favorite works to share; they also talk about their process and inspiration. The book includes both contemporary and traditional sculpture, even providing a sampling of purely abstract works.   Galleries West will have the books on sale, and suggest you call to reserve a copy. The gallery is offering some special deals on holiday shopping, so jingle their telephone bells (307.733.4525) to find out more.

Galleries West is currently showcasing its annual holiday exhibit, the 7th Annual Little Jewels Holiday Miniature Show, running through January 15, 2010.   An opening reception takes place December 30, 3-8 pm.   In this miniatures show, paintings measure 11×14 inches and smaller; sculptures are 12×12x12 inches and smaller.   Chimney-sized gifts for all!

I like the way this new show of hot art screens and still photography by filmmaker Peter Pilafian has come together: it’s been very “techno.”  I have lots of “techno” feeling notes—why am I thinking of Astro Boy? Why, when I’m featuring Peter’s image of melting glacier ice that resembles molars?

Peter Pilafian’s new show is up at Elevated Grounds, on the Teton Village Road.  An opening reception takes place December 5, and you should be prepared to see something completely different.  Comprised of thematic groupings, Pilafian plans to explore such stimuli as Texture, Indigenous Portraits, Architecture, Shadows and Landscapes.

Watching Pilafian define and curate, I began thinking of these thematic groupings as a series of reflective pools. Fluid videos surrounded by a string of photographic pearls.  The show offers a glimpse, in National Geographic style, of some of Pilafian’s memorable earth journeys.

The exhibition will feature as many as five hot art screens and a selection of still photographs taken around the world.   A Delphi tablet, aged city walls of Havana, coffee farmers, Irish fiddlers, evocative shadows, orange trees and images of Athens are all part of the multi-layered story Pilafian wishes to tell.  High definition BluRay DVD footage provides vivid, crisp focal pointsPilafian plans on framing his videos as a painter frames canvases.  Why not frame moving landscapes?  Pilafian’s images are part of Grand Teton National Park’s Lawrence Rockefeller Preserve Visitor’s Center installation; consider that sensory exhibit and you will get a feel for this show.

Contact Peter Pilafian via email at: ppilafian@earthlink.net.

Item #2:

Ring-a-ding-ding!

Dancers’ Workshop’s 2nd Annual Affordable Art for Christmas Sale takes places Saturday, December 5, in the Center for the Arts Theater Lobby.  The sale runs 11:00 am -  5:00 pm and is open to all.  It’s free!

DW’s Alissa Davies tells us fifteen local arts vendors will be on hand, offering holiday arts and craft items.  Jewelry, paintings, bags, and knit items (fingerless gloves!) neck warmers and hats are specialties of this sale;  proceeds help support DW dance programs.

Price points are in line with a Scrooge-like economy - everything on sale is priced between $1 and $99.  A DW holiday rehearsal will be taking place on stage in the theater, a joyous treat.    For more information, call DW’s offices, at 307.733.6398.

Shhhhh.  It’s a silent auction.

The 15th Annual Out of the Woods Silent Art Auction, an Art Association favorite, takes place Friday, November 20th, 6-8 pm at the Center for the Arts Theater Lobby.

We don’t have Todd around, but we still have his “shhh!”  A sort of an in-house ‘palates and palettes’ arts event, the evening promises a throng of art-lover clamoring for food, wine and….local art.  Artists donate works, and the public bids on art of all kinds, via a silent auction.  It’s loads of fun, and all proceeds raise money for the Art Association’s Educational Programming.

On your mark, get set…..start shopping!  For information, contact Amy Fradley at 307.733.8792 or email amyf@artassociation.org.

Also at the Art Association - specifically upstairs in the Artspace Loft Gallery - check out “Little Cayman,” on display November 13 - December 31, 2009.

Drool and live vicariously through News & Guide grand dame Liz McCabe, who has been visiting Little Cayman. The exhibit is billed as a collection of visions of the south seas idyll by McCabe, Jon Stuart, Laura McWethy, Tom Montgomery and others.

If they need someone to carry their bags, they should give me a call.  www.artassociation.org.

Item #2:  Thal Glass

Glass blower Laurie Thal blows and fires her magic goblets, vases and vessels in her Teton Village Road studio.  Every fall -or early winter, depending on how you experience November -  she hosts a holiday open house, and this year’s holiday event takes place Saturday, November 21, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm. This is a free event, and a fun excursion for the whole family.

Thal will be there, giving demonstrations and answering questions–the studio is typically stocked with a variety of glass items, in a variety of sizes and price points and a veritable rainbow of colors.

Thal has not supplied a contact phone number, but click on her website–linked above–for more information and a good look at her wares.

A few months back–a few warmer, sunnier months back– toy photographer Brian McCarty came to town and introduced his neat-o, media activating work.   He is the step son of local philanthropist and producer Mickey Babcock; McCarty’s opening took place at Babcock’s new home.   The Jackson Hole Art Blog posted a story on his work, and McCarty keeps in touch.

Here’s one of his latest, “Moon Wanderers,” shot in the Tetons.  McCarty says the little guys are resin figures.  The toys are created by Russian Sergey Safonov, who, says McCarty, has “… hand-built a mysterious cast of characters that exist only at night. The Moon Wanders float along, sleeping and waiting.”

McCarty openly discusses his process, and in this case the process began with an imagined image of small figures afloat under a paper moon.  The toys were mounted on metal rods placed in soft mud, at Two Oceans Lake, in Grand Teton National Park.  ( Is this legal?  Not sure.  But I didn’t do it! )  A long exposure taken by a camera atop a semi-submerged tripod “…made the water seem glassy, except for the rippled reflection of strobe light off a paper moon suspended in the background.”

The Tetons can provide a lot of interference if they want to.   McCarty was challenged by nature a few times.

“Things started getting a little edgy with the growing army of leeches seen attaching themselves to my waders. A too-close-for-comfort moose followed in close succession, at first looking confused at the humans walking around his lake at midnight, then a bit annoyed. I’d like to think that we scared him off with our flashlights and noisemaking, but it may have been what followed next. Through the mist, something that sounded much larger than the moose was splashing around. Unable to see, I’m going to wager it was a grizzly bear or perhaps a sasquatch. Hard to say,” says McCarty.

I saw McCarty’s show with my (dear) artist friend Ricki Arno--who I haven’t heard from in like, two months.  Ricki, where are you?   Please call.   Have you gone back to Planet New York?

From Planet Laramie: Nationally known, Colorado-based artist James Surls will give a talk at the University of Wyoming’s Coe Library on Saturday, Oct. 24, beginning at 1:00 pm.  The University’s Art Museum blog says a reception will follow; all will celebrate the installation of Surls’ new work, “Rolling Flowers.”

What a great title!

UW’s blog says Surls is noted for his work with emerging artists–he’s a mentor.  He also works quite a bit with non-profits and he and his wife, Charmaine Locke, (Her website cover page shows a gorgeous shot of her large scale bronze, “Open Book.”  Please look.)  have large-scale pieces in that wonderful venue, “Sculpture: A Wyoming Invitational.” Check the above U.W. Art Museum link for more information.

From the Wyoming Arts Council:  Art Aid

Wyoming Entrepreneur, at the University of Wyoming, offers free web marketing counseling for small businesses, and the Wyoming Arts Council has an Individual Artists Professional Development (IAPD) grant program.   Grants provide funds for artists to hire web designers ( wow!!!! artists lose lots of precious creativity time working on websites.), pay for hosting and other needs.  A one-to-one match is required, and up to $500 can be awarded.

For info: Email mshay@state.wy.us.