Jackson Hole Art Blog

The Wyoming State Parks & Cultural Resources website has posted information on Cultural Trust Fund (WCTF) applications, currently available to download.

The deadline for completed applications is May 1, 2010; a postmark deadline.  Hand-delivery date deadline is April 30.   Draft proposals may be submitted no later than April 16.  Projects applying for funds must be “projects/events/activities that commence by July 1, 2010.”   Recipients must also complete a final report, due 60 days after project completion.

I clicked through the site to find out what kinds of projects are currently being funded with grant monies.  It’s a wonderful grouping:

“Learn by Using Museums,” a program developed by UW Art Museum Director and Chief Curator Susan Moldenhauer, covers the importance of museum-supported education.  Specifically, the Museum has created a Master Teacher program that helps students understand their place in history–and history itself—through art projects.  Arts curriculum are enhanced through teachers and venues wanting to collaborate.  Art is used to enrich all curriculum: math, history, language…any topic that does NOT include art can be enriched through art.

You can watch a short video on the project here.

Another project, the Paul Smith Children’s Village at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens has opened. It includes a Secret Garden Wall and Puppet Theater. Laramie County School District #1 will benefit from future programs as well.

The Washakie Museum & Cultural Center, located in Worland, Wyoming, is not yet completed, but its schematics are complete and the facility should be opening very soon.   WCTF grants are helping fund interior museum equipment.   The museum’s director, Cheryl Reichelt, is happy to schedule tours of the almost-finished building.

To learn more about the Wyoming State Parks and Cultural grants program, contact Renee Bovee by phoning 307.777.6312.  Good luck!

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The community then dies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first part of this series (planned as two parts, it is now a three-part) touched upon landscape designer Walter Hood’s cursory views on Jackson’s approach to its own landscape. This second installment addresses Hood’s vision for a new NMWA sculpture garden and connective earth design.

“It is not the stuff you have. It is the stuff you no longer have. A lot of planning is too much about “what we need” v.s. “what we have.” In a reciprocal way, planning should be about the things that connect us-how to connect us. That makes us special.” - Walter Hood

Walter Hood has travelled to Jackson Hole to consult with the National Museum of Wildlife Art (NMWA). In a recent edition of NMWA’s member publication Call of the Wild, Hood described the beginnings of his collaboration with NMWA that will, ideally, result in a new museum sculpture garden.

It’s not as if Hood’s work to date has included an ongoing interest in wildlife museums, but the environment and how people use it drive his work on the project. Process and progress, inspiration ignited by how people choose to make “place.” On a certain level, he says, it’s all the same, whether one is talking about a sculpture garden or an entire community.

“The museum is interesting in that there are these cultural artifices, pieces of art, that are trying to represent nature,” says Hood. It’s a bit ironic that bronze elk are stationed at the base of the Museum’s driveway right across from the Elk Refuge; the installation seems an attempt to convince the public that there is a connection between NMWA and the Refuge.

“If the landscape itself was powerful enough it could move people in fantastic ways. That is what I am interested in. Standing out on NMWA’s hill, is there a way to allow a visitor to be in the Refuge? It is possible. NMWA’s architecture builds on the idea that it is “with the landscape,” and ironically that is one of the issues they are dealing with.”

Hood believes he could scale and shift existing landscape, so that art as well as the landscape is legible. “Attempt to eliminate design dichotomy, the experience of being either here, or there - either at the museum or in the landscape; either in Jackson or in the landscape.”

Check out parking lot ratios to the buildings they serve, suggests Hood. Looking at the Museum’s site, the parking lot stretches incredibly far, perhaps taking more space than the building itself. Part of the lot might be converted to trail, and a pervious surface is healthier for surrounding growth than asphalt, an oil-based material.

Rarely filled, and within a couple of miles of town, a reduced parking lot would be no problem if more mass transit options existed. “You don’t even want to know what asphalt is doing the environment; pervious surfaces would change our world drastically.”

Will NMWA pursue traditional design for its sculpture garden? Hood thinks both representational and contemporary design will be utilized.

“As a designer I have my own preferences, but when I do work I accept that scope,” he affirms. “What they are interested is figurative art with a long tradition, pre-Renaissance. But they had a show last year with Picasso and other contemporary artists rendering wildlife. Fantastic! Jane (Jane Lavino, NMWA’s Sugden Family Curator of Education) talked about the possibility of having contemporary installation in the landscape that would talk about wildlife in very different ways. I think then the project becomes broader in scope.

It is not about placing things; it is about creating more of a visitor experience where you can have permanent and temporary pieces co-interacting in the setting. Helping people make discoveries without bringing in the artificial. We have some strong ideas on how that might be achieved. It is my job to provoke. NMWA has the ability to create amazing indoor and outdoor experiences, and those are what museums are about today. It could be fabulous!”

It’s all already there. It’s only a question of how to make it visible.

(This is the first of a two-part story.)

San Francisco landscape architecture Professor (U.C. Berkeley) Walter Hood has been hailed by  KQED San Francisco Public Television and Public Radio as a leader in urban refurbishment.  His resuscitation of local parks in Oakland and San Francisco, has “….integrated architectural features such as playgrounds, plazas and squares into city sites whose pasts are vibrant but forgotten. By reflecting the shifting cultural composition and respecting the evolving nature of neighborhoods….,[Hood] has created an oasis in these areas, and through his close involvement with the local communities, he developed tailored solutions for Bay Area based parks while retaining a cohesive artistic vision.”

Hood is principal of Hood Design; his reputation and projects span the globe.  He’s at work on a new book, “Urban Landscapes: American Landscape Typologies.”

Last summer I had the pleasure of sitting down with Hood, and I asked him his impressions of Jackson’s landscapes–natural and man-made.

The first thing he told me was that green community plans are a relatively new thing.

Some years ago Hood met with Center for the Arts staff and officials to propose a project around the Center; that project didn’t happen, but Hood has had multiple chances to observe our town’s practices and choices about public art and landscaping.

“It was a great experience to come here… because I met so many people and I love this landscape. As a place, it is unique….I am much more interested in the landscape here and how we can live in a place and somehow bring the accoutrements from other places…. I was just out in Teton Village, and you could be anywhere! I could be in some California town, some hillside town,” says Hood.

Hood imagines a trail system connecting all valley communities; on the flip side, he’s surprised to find that, in a place as unique as this, people are living much like people do in most other places: with a car out front, standard roofs, excessive traffic.  In a place like Jackson, we should be forcing ourselves to change the footprint we leave upon the earth.

In a place like Jackson, public spaces should be about scaling and shifting the existing landscape, to enmesh people in a landscape experience so that art and landscape are “legible.”

Pointing to a cluster of aspens and evergreens on a Jackson street corner, Hood says he’d never plant such species on that spot.

“With Snow King there–it’s all about Snow King.  The trees block it.  If I am working in a neighborhood of small scale, that’s one thing.  But this is huge, the glacier on that mountain is EVIDENT.”

Indeed, when I retrieve my mail on Pearl Avenue, cross over to Betty Rock, and look up, I now see big, bulky condos.  Snow King is wiped from view.  As Franz Camenzind has said, if people look up and can’t see the mountains, how can they be connected to the space?  The rim is gone.  Landscape lost.

The only people who will be able to see the mountain from that vantage point are the new condo owners.

“How can you not work in another way?” asks Hood. “I’m being completely conceptual, I know. But that’s one of the things that’s really important. Every time we do a drawing, we always show Snow King in the background. Because everything you do is in reference to this thing. How you make decisions. Take this corner of town we’re talking about, with the trees, along this major street, Pearl Avenue, it would not be a hard thing to protect that view. You need to say that when you are on this street that ridge line view should be protected.”

Hood notes that our process is typical of what rural communities started doing in the 70’s.

“Before you know it, what you value is gone. You forget the place because you are so immersed in it. When you live there. It happens to a lot of communities over time because you stop seeing it. It becomes so familiar. Then one day you look around and wonder what happened. How did we get this way?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How big was this summit’s carbon footprint?

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

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

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

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

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

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

A nice family arts activity came over the ListServe wires:  Take part in the Community Mural Project this Sunday, July 19, 1-4:00 pm.   Head over to the newest Community Pathways tunnel under Highway 22, near the Teton Science School Jackson Campus entrance.   Sponsored by the NeWest Community, this tunnel mural project is an easy “paint by numbers” effort.

The mural’s design is completed, and all that’s required is your inner artist and a penchant for sharing conversation and creativity.   Once the mural is done, come back time after time to take pride in your contribution to our arts and pathways.

All paints and materials will be supplied.  This is a free and open family event.  And certainly, come on your own.

For more information email Kelli & Kasey Jones at highfivectrs@gmail.com.  Kelli is a Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist at Teton Adventure Camp.  Phone:  307.690.0571.

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.

As a friend once said to me, “Looks like I’m somewhere I don’t like being–out of the loop!”

Though I’ve known Lyndsay McCandless’ gallery might close, it wasn’t confirmed for me until I checked out Henry Sweets’ article in today’s Planet Jackson Hole. (Nice new format, Planet! I didn’t recognize you.)

As Henry points out, Lyndsay’s First Fridays are Jackson’s own “first” tradition; having a “first” day of the month art celebration is becoming a popular venue around arts-oriented communities.   Selfish me.  When Lynsday began her First Fridays, I talked to her about her vision.   I told her to keep what was hers, to own her great concept for community art happenings, that it was hers and she should be clear and proud about it.

Imitation might not be the most sincere form of flattery, but it is certainly flattery.  Now, First Fridays are a Jackson phenom. In Jackson, we’re all competing for limited turf, in a variety of venues.  There are posers, there are the real deals.    Ironically, with so many galleries jumping on the First Friday bus, crowds are sometimes a bit diluted.

Openings are wonderful; they’re not the best venue for thoughtful perusal of art.  So my request to all of you who attend these parties is, please go back and spend time in your favorite galleries REALLY LOOKING at the art.  Think about what you are viewing.  Write something about it, even if just for yourself.

Developers:  Do something to save Jackson’s arts.  You need them.  The arts have powerful marketing value for you and to ignore them, to pay lip service only, isn’t enough.   It’s also not very smart, very current, or very prescient.

Lyndsay, you are a town treasure.  That’s why I nominated you for last year’s Award for Creativity, and that’s why you won, baby.   You are not a poser.  You are the real deal, an original, and you are all heart.   See you soon.

Love, Tammy

First Lady Michelle Obama’s remarks at ribbon cutting ceremony for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American Wing are stirring indeed.  The Jackson Hole Art Blog takes this opportunity to remind its readers of art’s crucial role in our education, cultural life and economy by reprinting her speech here.  The “…intersection of creativity and commerce…” The text of Mrs. Obama’s speech is supplied by the White House Press Office.   The ceremony took place at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 18, 2009.

MRS. OBAMA: Thank you.  (Applause.)  Thank you so much.  Please, rest.  (Laughter.)  Good afternoon and thank you, Emily, for that introduction, and thank you for reminding me.  You know, after 20-some-odd years of knowing a guy, you forget that your first date was at a museum.  (Laughter.)   But it was, and it was obviously wonderful; it worked.

So I am delighted to be here with you to celebrate American history through the arts.  From the beginning of our nation, the inspired works of our artists and artisans have reflected the ingenuity, creativity, independence and beauty of this nation.  It is the painter, the potter, the weaver, the silver smith, the architect, the designer whose work continues to create an identity for America that is respected and recognized around the world as distinctive and new.

The American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art captures this spirit in presenting a variety of American art forms and providing a link to history for us to learn from, appreciate and be inspired by.

Our future as an innovative country depends on ensuring that everyone has access to the arts and to cultural opportunity.  Nearly 6 million people make their living in the non-profit arts industry, and arts and cultural activities contribute more than $160 billion to our economy every year.  And trust me, I tried to do my part to add to that number.

The President included an additional $50 million in funding to the NEA in the stimulus package to preserve jobs in state arts agencies and regional arts organizations in order to keep them up and running during the economic downturn.  (Applause.)

But the intersection of creativity and commerce is about more than economic stimulus, it’s also about who we are as people.  The President and I want to ensure that all children have access to great works of art at museums like the one here.  We want them to have access to great poets and musicians in theaters around the country, to arts education in their schools and community workshops.

We want all children who believe in their talent to see a way to create a future for themselves in the arts community, be it as a hobby or as a profession.

The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it.  Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.

The President recently nominated renowned theater producer Rocco Landesman to chair the National Endowment for the Arts.  Rocco’s entrepreneurial spirit and his commitment to being a bridge between the philanthropic, non-profit and commercial arts community will ensure that all types of art and creative expression are provided fertile ground to live and to grow.

And that’s what we hope to do at the White House, that’s what we’ve been trying to do at the White House.  We’ve been trying to break down barriers that too often exist between major cultural establishments and the people in their immediate communities; to invite kids who are living inches away from the power and prestige and fortune and fame, we want to let those kids know that they belong here, too.

I want to applaud the Metropolitan Museum of Art for all the outreach that you do, for having kids like these here today to be involved in this and to experience this and to share this with us, because this is your place, too.  So we’re very proud of the Met for the work that they’ve done.

So we are excited.  Thank you for including me.  And now we can get to the — we’re going to cut the ribbon now.  (Laughter.)  Thank you so much.  (Applause.)

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3:21 P.M. EDT