Jackson Hole Art Blog

Just the other day I stumbled on a comment on the meaning of public art by none other than German poet Rainer Maria Rilke: “….even for our grandparents, a house, a well, a familiar tower, were infinitely more intimate. (In these) the hope and meditation of our forefathers once entered.  The animated things with which we share our lives are coming to an end.”

As Ronald Lee Fleming noted, Rilke’s words are pretty pessimistic.  But they are truthful, as not a day goes by when we aren’t reminded of gargantuan urban sprawls, the de-humanization of cities, horrific oil spills, and  even technology’s hold over our daily lives.  We plow forward, not minding—in fact not realizing—that the corpulent and complicated systems we build can ruin everyone and everything at any moment.  Most of the time, we can’t fix what we broke.

These days, I’m lost in memories, often recalling my family’s years in Southern California.  In the 60’s, Los Angeles was still funky and open and fluid.  We camped and hiked in Yosemite, going full day without encountering other people, let alone traffic jams.  Along Pacific Coast Highway, beaches were clear.   We swam with the seals, rode bareback through L.A.’s canyons.

Here in the east, my family’s land is marked by stone walls unlike any I or anyone else has ever seen.   This country is open, flowing and calming.   But it is the stone walls my great-grandfather built, marking the boundaries of “Tranquillity Farm,” at once anchored and rippling, that landmark this place.

“It is the intimacy of memory that people cherish,” says Fleming.

It is a joy to see the public art movement taking hold in Jackson, thanks to the dreaming and writing and work and vision of our creative community.  Executed correctly, our public art initiatives will enrich what is already so special.

The National Museum of Wildlife Art’s new Sculpture Trail will connect the public and the Museum to the valley in a new way.  Children and adults will gain valuable adventure and memories as they explore its surprises and messages.

The new ArtSpot, premiering June 21 at 650 West Broadway’s intersection with Highway 89, provides space for local artists–generation to generation—to share their “sense of community by depicting shared themes, valuesand experiences.”  (There’s a party/fundraiser that day;  glass panels will be for sale and refreshments served on JH Whitewater’s deck.)

A call for artists to submit proposals for public art that will become a part of the Home Ranch Building on North Cache.  The work will establish a new dynamic on the north side of Jackson.   www.jhpublicart.org

Artist Wendell Field (call me, Wendell, for crying out loud!  Or at least email…don’t get shy on me!) is resuming work on what promises to be a magical mural; Field is painting his mural on the Brew Pub’s exterior wall.

Go learn about the  preservation of Teton County’s historic barns at “Barn Again!”, a lecture at Teton County Library on Monday, June 21, at 6:00 pm.

Congratulations, Jackson!  As we look for ways to salvage and re-energize our community and valley, Jackson’s arts community can be very proud.  In this recession, what other  local sector can say they’re responding to circumstances as well as Jackson’s arts?

This summer visitors to the National Museum of Wildlife Art (NMWA) can reacquaint themselves with a group of works from the museum’s collection that have been on the road.  Wild at Heart: Highlights from the National Museum of Wildlife Art, returned May 22 and is on display through August 15, 2010.

More than 70 works make up the collection, an homage to America’s wild places. Paintings and sculptures are grouped by region (North, South, East and West of America) rather than chronologically.  Significant European and American artists are represented, including  Albert Bierstadt, William H. Dunton, Bob Kuhn, John Woodhouse Audubon, George Catlin, Charles Russell, Ken Bunn and Carl Rungius.

Artists heralded the power and magnificence of America’s wildlife and wilderness.

“Beginning with explorer-artists and continuing with the best contemporary painters and sculptors working today, wildlife has been a consistent subject in American art,” says National Museum of Wildlife Art Curator of Art Adam Duncan Harris. “We hope that this exhibit helps viewers see the connections between wildlife and art in new ways and prompts further appreciation for the wilderness that remains at the heart of what makes North America exceptional.”

Harris is the author of the recently published book, Wildlife in American Art, which includes many images from the Wild at Heart exhibition.

NMWA’s strong ties with the city of Pittsburgh may have played a role in the exhibition’s premiere at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in the summer of 2006.  The exhibit subsequently “toured”  the Rockwell Museum in Corning, N.Y., the Vero Beach Museum of Art in Vero Beach, Fla., and the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi.

For information on NMWA’s exhibitions and schedules log onto the Museum’s website, www.wildlifeart.org.

Item #2:

“Artists in the Park” was, I’m told, originally known as “Artists in the Environment.”  I’ve known it under the former identity; they are one and the same, however and here is this summer’s (2010) schedule of participating artists:

This coming Saturday, June 12, painter Eliot Goss will be painting from 9am – noon on the shore of String Lake near the main String Lake parking lot, in Grand Teton National Park, weather permitting.  The public is invited to view Goss as he works; bring your chairs, water, snacks, sketch books, paints, questions, cameras, whatever strikes your fancy for this summer’s first plein air painting demonstration.

The rest of this summer’s schedule is as follows:

July 10 – Shannon Troxler – Cottonwood Turnout, 9am – noon (first turnout on the right after Taggart/Bradley Lake)

August 14 – Joslyn Slack – Oxbow Bend Turnout, 9am – noon

September 11 – Kathy Wipfler – Chapel of the Transfiguration, 9am – noon

“Artists in the Park” is a great tradition of sharing the plein air process, as well as the special places in GTNP, with the public.   Make sure you catch at least one of these exceptional painters this summer.   For information, contact Liza Millet at
 
917-864-9395.

We now return to American Idle……

Now, I must say something—go a little outside my comfort zone—about Jackson’s green marketing blitz.

We’re over- market-greening, risking the individualism we Jackson Holers hold so dear.  An overall energy policy for Teton County would set a great standard for counties residing in such special territory.  Set standards, legislate for the environment.  Just don’t bury me in “green” emails and overtures and solicitations.  I know you are green.  We’re the green choir, we are.  My email box is crammed with solicitations for donations because the asker is “green.”    I’m asked to contribute to one green event after another.  Everyone seems to be finding ways to weave a green thread through their marketing.

I am pretty green myself.  I’m not perfect, but I try.  Our marketing is homogenizing, and I cannot tell the difference between recycling centers and hotels and retail stores and restaurants and  ANYTHING!!!……I’m often chastised because I still read news printed on paper, and I enjoy reading real books–not flat, tiny iridescent slabs costing hundreds of dollars apiece, soon to be outdated.   We’re an army of iPadding, iPodding, crackberry droids.  We look silly!

There is, actually, evidence that books are much greener than electronic readers.   Every big event promoting initiative costs money and creates a large carbon footprint.

“How Green is my iPad?”

When will one of our leaders take a leap and begin campaigning for JOBS in Jackson?   That’s the elephant in our room.  We know how to ask one another for money.  Can we please confer on how to create jobs that will provide long-term salaried positions in Teton County?   Our real estate prices remain among the highest in the country;  as sales statistics show only the most expensive properties are seeing some movement.  As for the rest of the inventory, it’s reasonable to expect a rebound lagging behind most of the rest of the country, because we are not showing any inclination to nudge asking prices down to an acceptable level in this recession.   That means all the real estate based jobs we’ve lost in Teton County will be slow to recoup.  And that sector is where a high proportion of salaried jobs have been.

The technology sector is widely viewed as the sector most likely to create jobs for the future.   How can we attract that sector to Jackson?   There are ways, but I fear that the same single vision for Teton County–a rich county basing income on expensive real estate and tourism–is remaining intact with our political and civic “deciders.”

We’re ever more elitist and controlling; this is the same sort of restraint one finds in country clubs where rules are rigid and there is real trouble if you’re

caught wearing anything but white on the tennis court.   PLEASE, Jackson Hole — consider our visitors.  Only the wealthiest of the wealthy will be able to afford (and for that matter be attracted to) a destination that has plastered over every sign with green paint.

I don’t want to go for “green drinks.”

We are GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK.  We are YELLOWSTONE.  We are JACKSON HOLE.  We’re losing the ability and will to stand out amongst ourselves, and if it gets blurry for us, it gets blurry for the public at large.   I don’t idle my engine, but I hate the idea of a see-all community eye gauging my every errand and measuring my idle index.  If I park my car outside in sub-zero Jackson winter weather, it’s going to idle for a while after I get it started before I drive it.  Particularly if I don’t have a block heater.

We need JOBS.

I’ll say this too:  The Virginian got a raw deal.   Talk about stealing a last toehold from the original population of Teton County. The Virginian is one establishment, one eatery and bar, for God’s sake!!  We’re arrogant in our persecution of its smoking policy.  If you hate smoke, don’t frequent the Virginian.   People I know and admire very much support cutting the Virginian off, but their judgement is in error here; a line was crossed. Eventually, possibly as soon as the next generation, the Virginian’s status will evolve because the good people frequenting it will no longer be with us.  But leave the Virginian, a vintage (one of the last un-monkeyed with vestiges of Jackson) and salty Western holdout of Jackson Hole, to its own devices.  We’re squeezing out the “undesirables.”  When will we see the first harassing graffitis sprayed on the doors of those we deem “non-green-compliant?”

We’re an army of drones. Be conscious, but know, too, when your marketing and driving “greenego” © requires an intervention.

Yikes! This mass marketing is so pervasive it’s redundant and …vain.   Lead by example, not persecution and retort.  Our agendas are proved not by what we proclaim or explain, but by what we do.  The action is the measure.

I’m talking here about marketing outside the realm of scientific conservation;  NOT about the mission of orgs like the J.H. Conservation Alliance and their sister science and research-based groups. We need to support such organizations in every way we can, keep the pressure on full blast lest we lose the wilderness we’ve managed to save thus far.

I’m a registered Democrat and an independent thinker.

Item #3:

The Art Association holds its Free Art Class Sampler on Thursday, June 10.    From 5-6:30 pm the public is invited to the Center for the Arts to get a taste of the many classes offered by the Art Association this summer.   Head on up to the third floor studios for an opportunity to get to know a bit more about the large variety of classes offered.  Meet the teachers, tours the studios; it’s all FREE.   Sign up for a class that night and get a discount–10% off your class cost.   For more information, call (307) 733-6379, or log onto www.artassociation.org.

Eighty-six artists make up Heather James Gallery’s Post-War and Contemporary roster alone; the gallery specializes in six other art categories: American, Design, Impressionist & Modern, Latin American, Old Masters and Photography.

In Jackson Hole, that’s some mighty glittery gallery fireworks.   The Heather James Gallery’s mix of past and present art periods is unique in this art market.   The gallery’s presence on re-shuffled, re-designed Center Street buttons up what feels like a newly defined “arts capsule” in Jackson. Center Street’s “Gallery Row” is creating new identity for the Town of Jackson; the block establishes a dynamic focal point, positioned as it is across from a large tourist staging and parking area.

Center Street is its own “draw,” a block mixing regional and international art.

Heather James owners Jim Carona and Heather Sacre plan an opening celebration in June; a grand opening takes place later this summer, on August 21, with the blockbuster show Wyeth, featuring the works of N.C., Andrew and Jamie Wyeth.

Gallery director Lyndsay Rowan McCandless is at the fore.  This is also a good thing. She’s joined by long-time local Molly Hawks.   The gallery’s collection is curated by Los Angeles based curator Chip Tom, and renowned architect Dianna Wong designed the space.

Notes McCandless, “Heather James Fine Art has been created to complement their current two galleries located in Palm Desert, CA and to honor and support their love for Jackson, WY. We are looking forward to the merging of our creative ideas and visions in order to bring you the most vibrant and diverse art experience that you can imagine in the Tetons.”

Jackson photographer David Swift opines that Tom’s curatorial skills are original and vital.   None of that “undisciplined angst-splatter…that most people think of when they think modern art.”

Swift already has a favorite Heather James artist, Carlos Mérida. “I’ve never heard of him.  Turns out he was one of the cool guys hanging with the Cubists from the 20’s, on.  He’s as good as his old pals, and there is a piece hanging in the gallery I want really, really, really bad.”

Swift and others familiar with Jackson’s arts agree that having McCandless back at the fore of a contemporary gallery is beyond happy.  She’s the valley’s “art angel,” says the photographer, and understands the “art-swoon gland kicks into overdrive once when we get around works created at the dawn of the 20th Century, on.”

How to find and reach Heather James Gallery:

P.O. Box 3580, 172 Center Street – Suite 101, Jackson, WY 83001     Phone: 307.200.6090

Item #2:

Sotheby’s May 19, 2010 American Paintings, Drawings and Sculptures Auction brought these results:  

Thomas Moran’s “Coconino Pines and Cliff, Arizona” :  $746,500 with Buyer’s Premium

Winslow Homer’s “Return of the Gleaner,” :  $2,210,000 with Buyer’s Premium (estimate was $400-$600,000)

Frederic Remington’s “The Mountain Man”:  $1,082,500 with Buyer’s Premium (estimate was $700-$900,000)

Childe Hassam’s “Harney Desert”:  $446,500  with Buyer’s Premium (estimate was $200-$300,000)

Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Inside Clam Shell”:  $3,442,500 with Buyer’s Premium

Marsden Hartley’s “Berlin Series, No. 1″:  $1,762,500.

For full auction results, click here.

The National Museum of Wildlife Art (NMWA) will build its new sculpture trail, designed by Oakland, California landscape wizard Walter Hood.  In the planning process for several years, funding for completion of the project was secured via a $3.5 million gift from NMWA trustee Debbie Petersen.   The trail will be named for her late husband, Jim Petersen.  Ms. Petersen’s gift funds the trail and supports “future projects.”

Last year, the Jackson Hole Art Blog presented a three-part series on Walter Hood and his vision for the NMWA sculpture trail, and his prophesies and recommendations for future sustainable, artful landscaping in Jackson and Teton County. Those articles are available to read on this site.

The Museum says the trail will provide new ways for visitors to view wildlife art within a landscape; sculptor Richard Loffler’s Buffalo Trail will be part of the project.  An amphitheater will replace the current drive at NMWA’s entrance and an “edge trail” will run along the east ledge of the current visitor’s parking area.   Hood’s hope has always been to meld NMWA’s vantage point and contoured landscapes with views of the Elk Refuge, creating a greater visceral connection between the two sites.

The museum’s new sculpture trail will directly connect to the North Highway 89 Pathway Project, a new branch of the Pathways system planned to lead from the north end of Jackson to Grand Teton National Park.  An underground tunnel will provide access to the museum, creating an inviting opportunity to mix culture and outdoor activity for bicyclers.      www.wildlifeart.org.

Item #2:

The Cultural Council of Jackson Hole, with a mission to “ bring the arts and cultural organizations in our community together for the purpose of communication, collaboration, coordination and promotion of cultural life in Jackson Hole,”  has opened nominations for this year’s “Award for Creativity.” The honorarium

acknowledges those whose contributions to the arts—visual, musical, written and performing—have impact and meaning to Jackson’s cultural base.  2009’s winners were Dancer’s Workshop Executive Director Babs Case and Center for the Arts major patron John Tozzi.   Other past winners include Lyndsay McCandless, Joffa & Bill Kerr, Evie Lewis, Ken Thomasma, David Kornblum and more.

Submit your nominations by Monday, June 21st, to the Cultural Council.  Nominations may be mailed to the Council at P.O. Box 3706, Jackson, Wyoming 83001.   Or, email your choice to:  culturalcouncil@gmail.com. The Council’s Alissa Davies notes that submissions must include “ your name, address, phone number and/or email, 500 words about the individual and their impact on the cultural fabric of our community, and two additional references with contact information. Consider the significant achievements of the individual; the broad and lasting impact of their work; and qualities that contribute to their artistic excellence.”

May I add that there are a number of folks whose contributions to the arts, though highly significant, are grass roots and community-oriented in nature. Often subtle, they are no less crucial.  Please nominate anyone you believe helps support the arts;  supporting the arts can mean a nominee provides significant financial support and boosterism, or it may mean that a shop owner dedicates continuous space and time to young artists.  A person can be artistically innovative, build diversity, provide a service, teach, or actualize physical venues for the arts.   The sky is the limit!

Each year winners are celebrated at a festive gathering, usually at the Center for the Arts.  This year’s party and will be held Wednesday, September 8, 2010, a great kick-off to Jackson Hole’s Fall Arts Festival season.

For more information contact Alissa Davies at 307.690.4757 or email culturalcounciljh@gmail.com.

Item #2:

No details yet, but here’s a handy list of shows scheduled to take place this Summer and Fall, at Mountain Trails Gallery in glorious Jackson Hole, Wyoming! If a detail you need isn’t here, it’s because that info is TBA.

Show #1 :

Western Artists of America – Western Heritage Show - July 2 – July 10 Opening Reception:  Saturday, July 3.

Show #2:

Jeff Ham – One Man Show -  July 15 – July 22 Opening Reception:  Saturday,  July 17

Show #3:

Edward Aldrich – One Man Show -  Aug.6 – Aug. 13 Opening Reception: Sat. Aug. 7

Show #4:

Landscape Show (Andrzej Skorut / Shanna Kunz) – Aug. 19 – Aug. 26 Opening Reception:  Sat. Aug.21

Show #5:

Robert Hagan – One Man Show  - Sept. 2 – Sept. 9 Opening Reception:  Sat. Sept. 4

Show #6:

Ty Barhaug & Tom Saubert – Sept. 15 – Sept. 22 Opening Reception:  Wed. Sept.15

Show #7:

Oil Painters of America Regional Show -  Oct. 9 – Nov. 10 Opening Reception:  Sat. Oct. 9

Information: 307.734.8150.

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.   Working to connect with a father he has no conscious memory of,  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.   Memories, in pictorial and written forms, sift their way through the ages.   Abel is a highly conscious artist, taking history seriously.   This is the true road.

(Picasso!)  Pablo Picasso’s ”Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,” which had a pre-sale estimate of between $70 million and $90 million, sold the evening of May 4 for  $106.5 million, a new world record for any artwork sold at auction.  New York Auction house Christie’s hammered the sale to an as yet unidentified buyer.   Christie’s auction house on Tuesday evening to an unidentified telephone bidder.

The Washington Post reports that “There were nine minutes of bidding involving eight clients in the sale room and on the phone, Christie’s said. At $88 million, two bidders remained. The final bid was $95 million, but the buyer’s premium took the sale price to $106.5 million.

Conor Jordan, head of impressionist and modern art for Christie’s New York, said he was “ecstatic with the results.”

“Tonight’s spectacular results showed the great confidence in the marketplace and the enthusiasm with which it welcomes top quality works,” he said.

The striking work of Picasso’s muse and mistress Marie-Therese Walter has been exhibited in the United States only once, in 1961 in Los Angeles to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Picasso’s birth. The painting, which measures more than 5 feet by 4 feet, shows a reclining nude figure with an image of Picasso in the background looking over her.”

This is really special. Writer/Conservationist/Activist/Friend Cate Cabot has sent word that world renowned biologist artist Patricia Johanson will speak at the Jackson Hole Community School on Tuesday, May 4, 2010 at 5:30 pm.    The event is free and open to the public.

This is a talk everyone who feels the Town of Jackson should evolve with consideration to new urbanism, and as a sustainable and cultural reflection of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, need attend.   These are the ideas and concepts crucial to how Jackson, now an urban entity, can become a model of sustainable, artful urban existence in the midst of protected land.  Jackson leaders mandate must be  this: to consider all indigenous and cultural qualities of our region in their civic planning.

A wonderful story:  Johanson used her time with her young children wandering the woods and open spaces.  As her children explored, she created biological, artful field sketches of the places they visited.   According to Cabot,  Johnson’s “small artistically stunning studies became what her earlier vision had anticipated, massive functional interactive installations which incorporate sculpture with local natural history and the cultural story line of an area with the intent to resolve a problem…”

A problem, in Johanson’s case, is defined as  polluted water and heavily polluted land sites.   Johanson has worked to design passive natural filters for dirtied waters, and restore it as potable.  She also creates systems that reclaim crucial habitat shared by mankind and myriad species.

“Her work is jaw dropping in scale, composition, effectiveness, beauty and comprehensive synthesis,” says Cabot.  “These installations have regenerated environments all over the world with many works completed, many more under development. I think of Thomas Berry’s perspective, that “we humans are genetically coded for beauty” when I consider Patricia Johanson’s work.”

Descriptions of Johanson’s book, Art and Survival: Patricia Johanson’s Environmental Projects , published in association with the Islands Institute, praise her environmental solutions expanding, healing and softening sites ranging from congested waterfronts to urban wastelands.  Johanson’s designs are accepted as important new models for the reclamation of gardens and parks eroded by neglect, lighting the way for new sustainable, integrative landscapes.

Johanson’s book is available at the Teton County Library.

For more information about May 4th’s event, contact Sarah Drake at 307.733.5427.

To read other posts relating to landscape and planning, an invitation is extended to search this site using any of these key words: Urban Planning, Landscape, Placemaking or Walter Hood.

Item #2:

The Jackson Hole Art Auction is back, returning to the J.H. Center for the Arts Theater, on Saturday, September 18, 2010.   I believe the Auction is still open for consignments–last year’s cut off date was June 1.    The Jackson Hole Art Auction is its own entity and is produced by the partnership of Trailside and Gerald Peters Galleries. It is a pinnacle event of the Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival.

As anyone who has attended this auction knows, it is the real thing.  The Auction features “Past and Present Masters of the American West,” focusing on historically recognized artists, according to the Auction’s Emma Zanetti.   Lots auctioned in past sales include works by the Taos Society of Artists, and deceased Masters.  Artists you may recognize include, but are not limited to  C.M. Russell, Albert Bierstadt, Maynard Dixon, Charlie Dye, Frederic Remington, John Clymer, Bob Kuhn, Carl Rungius, Donald Teague, Olaf Wieghorst, and more. Top contemporary artists include William Acheff, Clyde Aspevig, Ken Carlson, Martin Grelle, Clark Hulings, Z.S. Liang, Bill Owen, Jim Norton, Kenneth Riley, Mian Situ, Howard Terpning, Jie Wei Zhou and others.

Last year’s solid auction sales totaled just under $6 million.   To talk with the Auction about consignments, stop by Trailside Galleries in Jackson (130 East Broadway) or email Emma Zanetti at registrar@jacksonholeartauction.com.

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.