Posts from ‘Smart Growth’
Has Jackson’s first business incubator arrived on the scene?
It may have, but do the artists and activists involved know it?
Not long ago, Travis Walker’s Teton Art Lab up and left their Center for the Arts space. The group loaded up its truck and moved to Greg-o-ry.
Lane, that is. 6,500 square feet in the facility formerly home to Huckleberry Mountain Candy Company. Teton Art Lab is the new landlord. The group is reportedly sub-renting space to MADE’s John Frechette, who will use the space as his studio (he’s not moving out of his retail shop in Gaslight Alley); to artist Ben Roth, who will also use his corner as studio space, and to blogger/filmmaker/photographer/activist David Gonzales—word has it that Gonzales plans to capture artists creating and composing, and post it to his site. Abbie Miller has been down there, sewing her heart out; and a musical group emulating the Greatful Dead has set up rehearsal space.
That’s a factory! A huge Warhol fan, Walker may have subconsciously (or consciously) established his own arts assembly line. “The Incubator.” ”The Assembly.” The new location is certainly not a great foot traffic/retail space, but that could change. And maybe Jackson’s town leaders will take notice. If ArtLab and its tenants succeed in their mission, they will nurture new artists, new business and talent. And product.
Business incubators often get established because communities donate empty, excessive space. Business incubators can be industrial, high-tech, medical, artistic, even food growers. The idea, says one expert, is to set up a commercial building capable of housing different operations and industries at low cost. Incubators supply in-house office help to all tenants—copy machines, answering phones, teaching technology skills. Assistance continues until fledgling businesses are developed enough to move out of the space on their own. Cost of doing business is lowered. The vacated incubator space is filled by a new, young enterprise.
ChubbyBrain, a tool resource for business entrepreneurs, posted a United States map that in 2009, highlighted states with incubators. Maps measure total number, distribution and “scalability.” ChubbyBrain’s totals map is
shown here. The site also graphs 2009′s top ten incubators. Healthcare offers the most, followed by technology and internet companies.
Incubators are measured several ways, but Wyoming, as of 2009, had zero incubator presence.
“We funded an incubator with a USDA grant which purchased the building,” says my expert. ”We then set up a non profit corporation with the board being half private and half government. The government board members were mayors and commissioners. It is important to get real business expertise on this board. Activists have the vision but not often the practical skills to make it happen.”
Well, we need business experts. We’re loaded with activists in Jackson, so what we need are business strategists acting in the interest of diversifying (lessening risk) Jackson’s economy. Leaders should look to establish tax breaks for properties that can’t, in the immediate future, realize full value for their space.
Risk happens not only when you carry potentially volatile investments; it exists when you invest in mainstream, blue-chip sectors—if that’s your only portfolio presence, you are carrying great risk. Ask anyone loaded with BP stock or too much empty, expensive commercial and residential real estate in Teton County.
My expert councils that the best way to start is to visit established, successful incubators. Many aren’t viable because they are not grounded in solid business basics.To provide a job, a business (or any enterprise) must be successful enough to generate plenty of worthwhile income.
Item #2
CIAO Gallery has put out a call for entries for “Autumn Leaves – Works Inspired by the Fall.” Deadline is October 29, 2010. Artists are invited to submit their entries to the gallery by visiting CIAO’s website and clicking on the “Call to Artists” page. There, you will find instructions. www.ciaogallery.com. Good luck!
Jennifer, we hardly knew you.
I did not have a chance to meet outgoing Art Association Executive Director Jennifer Crawford.
Today, those of us signed up for the Community Foundation’s List Serve read the news that Crawford has resigned her position. Former Art Association Executive Director Karen Stewart will fill in as Interim Director while the Art Association looks for a replacement for Crawford.
“I will continue to enjoy the adventures that Jackson offers, on visits back to friends and family in this beautiful valley. I have an opportunity in Denver that I cannot refuse,” says Crawford. “I plan to continue my work with the Arts and Cultural District of Denver, Colorado as well my research in Arts Education. It was important to notify the Art Association’s Board of Directors of this change as quickly as possible in order to make a transition happen in a seamless manner. I have enjoyed my experience at the Art Association and will miss being a key contributor to this organization, which plays an important role to the community of Jackson Hole.”
Other changes at the Art Association include the departure of former Education Director Amy Larkin and Teton Art Lab’s relocation to new digs in Jackson.
“We will miss Jennifer, her energy and her creativity. She has made significant contributions to the Art Association during her tenure. Our up and coming exhibits, finances, and education programs are stronger because of her,” said Art Association Chair Sally Byrne.
Art Association Vice Chairman John Wright is the contact for more information. email: john@portisgroup.com / phone: 307.733.3939. www.artassociation.org
Contact:
John Wright, Vice Chairman, Art Association of Jackson Hole
john@portisgroup.com
307.733.3939
Item #2
Governor Freudenthal says that “the Cowboy State is also an arts state.”
According to the Wyoming Arts Council Blog, Governor Dave, in conjunction with the Council, will release the Wyoming Creative Vitality Index at a press conference on Wednesday, October 6, at 9 a.m. in front of the sculpture at the Wyoming Governor’s Residence, located at 5001 Central Ave. in Cheyenne.
Straight from the Blog: The Wyoming Creative Vitality Index was conducted by the Western States Arts Federation and shows that the Cowboy State is also an Arts State, and that the Arts contribute substantially to Wyoming’s economy. The report will be available at the press conference. Rita Basom, manager of the Wyoming Arts Council, said the CVI, which tracks change over time, provides information that will help to diversify the Wyoming economy and improve community vitality.
“The presence of a strong creative community in Wyoming positively impacts Cultural Tourism in the state, and reinforces the importance of Arts Education in our schools,” Basom said. “We’re excited to share this information with the public,” she added.
The full text of the Wyoming Creative Vitality Index will be up on the Wyoming Arts Council web site on Oct. 6.
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, values
and 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.
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.
