Posts from ‘Smart Growth’
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. Â 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. Â 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. Â 2009′s winners were Dancer’s Workshop Executive Director Babs Case and Center for the Arts major patron John Tozzi. Â 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. Â Nominations may be mailed to the Council at P.O. Box 3706, Jackson, Wyoming 83001. Â Or, email your choice to: Â culturalcouncil@gmail.com. The Council’s Alissa Davies notes that submissions must include “Â 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. Â Please nominate anyone you believe helps support the arts; Â 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. Â A person can be artistically innovative, build diversity, provide a service, teach, or actualize physical venues for the arts. Â The sky is the limit!
Each year winners are celebrated at a festive gathering, usually at the Center for the Arts. Â 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:Â 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 -Â Aug.6 – Aug. 13 Opening Reception: Sat. Aug. 7
Show #4:
Landscape Show (Andrzej Skorut / Shanna Kunz) – Aug. 19 – Aug. 26 Opening 
Reception:Â 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:Â Wed. Sept.15
Show #7:
Oil Painters of America Regional Show -Â Oct. 9 – Nov. 10 Opening Reception:Â 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. Â Working to connect with a father he has no conscious memory of, Â Abel incubates his native landscapes, giving them new life that exists in binary-colored melancholy.
“In a time when oral history is diminishing I cling to the histories passed on to me by family members. My interpretation of those memories exist between the unconscious and the conscious mind. Through my work I explore the common ground that I feel I share with my father whom I never consciously knew. I utilize the rural landscape (where I grew up and still feel the most at home) in juxtaposition with integrated personal archetypes. The images exist as a dialogue between memories of the old family farm, photographs my father took, and my own personal narratives.”
Through his printing process, Abel is building what he calls a “dialog of history.”
“Wyoming” connotes thoughts of vast, wind blown space. Â Memories, in pictorial and written forms, sift their way through the ages. Â Abel is a highly conscious artist, taking history seriously. Â This is the true road.
(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;Â weekends, I get it delivered.
Sitting in bed with the Sunday Times at 7:30 am, watching yet another raging New England gale blast the landscape, is one of life’s great pleasures.  Sorry, I’m still a hold-the-paper-in-your-hand kind of girl. When I can be.  It’s civilized. And so much more interesting in a sensory way.
I do recycle. And my rabbits, Minnie & Pearl, make good use of old newspaper for certain projects of theirs. We’re efficient with our newspapers, o.k.?
Getting to the point, I want to make a point about the deep devotion the N.Y. Times has towards the arts. It’s HUGE. Of course, it is huge because New York is swimming in arts. You could spend a solid month viewing art in NYC and not come close to seeing everything.  More arts there than there are grains of salt in the ocean.
The arts are struggling, but for those cities and towns committed to their arts, they are a giant economic engine. Stop and think. How interesting is any city or town without its arts? Without expression of environment and culture?  What would Jackson Hole be without its galleries, without Dancers Workshop, Grand Teton Music Festival, NMWA, the Art Association, the Center? Without pARTNERS? Without Nicole Madison? Without Candra Day? Tina Close? 
Without Rocky Vertone? Without David Swift and Tom Mangelsen and Jon Stuart and the Riddells? Teton Art Lab? Off Square and Jackson Community Theatres? Without venues like the Brew Pub and Pearl St. Bagels and Koshu and Elevated Grounds? Charlie Craighead? Without Missy Falcey, our fabulous Library and its programs and exhibits? Without our movie and playhouses?
We’re already finding out what it’s like without McCandless; we’ve found out what it’s like without other galleries that didn’t make it, and we’ll find out what it is like without a few more.
Well?
I wouldn’t live here. Who’d want to? We’re not exactly ethnically diverse, so there’s no interest there. If town didn’t exist and we were a park only, that would be one thing. But we’re not. We’re an urban center, we’re Wyoming’s equivalent of Connecticut’s Fairfield County. (Hey, I’m a hugely boring WASP…self-deprication here! And actually, Fairfield Co. is now much more ethnically diverse than Jackson…) What can keep us from being just another snow village country club? Art, for one thing. All kinds of art.
This weekend, the New York Times has four sections devoted to the arts. A reflection of a reflection of commitment. Here are a few items from those pages–along with one item from the Travel Section, often packed with arts news from around the globe. (Because when people travel, they usually enjoy visiting regional art and architecture!):
The Whole Earth Catalog: The Prequel. The article reviews “Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe,” on view at the Rubin Museum of Art. Pull quote: “Western science and Eastern religion imagine the beyond.”
Time, the Infinite Storyteller. The article discusses the many ways that great institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, takes a visitor through time’s linked histories.
Growing Up Biracial Before Obama: Years of Pain and Eventual Progress. A theater review of a one-woman show at the Roy Arias Theater Center.
Nothing about “NINE.”
A 1965 film, Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster, is on view at MOMA.
George Orwell was born in…India? A small article about restoring the author’s birthplace.
A music review of the band Soulive, on the occasion of the band’s 10th anniversary.
Small Museum Captures a Rare Chagall. London’s Jewish Museum of Art has acquired a rare depiction of the Holocaust, by Chagall. The work is entitled “Apocalypse in Lilac: Capriccio.” The work is perhaps the most “brutal and disturbing ever created by an artist primarily known for his brightly colored folkloric visions.”
A review of the show “Struttin’ With Some Barbeque,” featuring musicians Henry Butler and Donald Harrison.
36 Hours in Mountainous, Multicultural Tucson includes a mention of a great collection of American Photography, the Center for Creative Photography. You can also check out “Jet Age Graveyards” and the Titan Missile Museum—a largely underground nuclear silo not demolished, where you can get a quick view of a warhead “700 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.”
Degas Work Stolen from French Museum. Swiped while on loan from the 
Musee d’Orsay. (By the way, did Jackson’s police ever solve the mystery of the artworks stolen from galleries this past summer?)
Struggling Actor Tweaks Script, Buddy and Bodies. A review of the movie “Film With Me In It,” a “…slender, supple comedy graced with appealing performers and laced with agreeable poison.”
So, Jackson Holers–next time you bump into one of our town’s creative souls, give them an extra big “Thankyou.”  And contribute what you can. Maybe we can expand our arts coverage, and I and my rabbits will like that.
