Posts from ‘Sustaining Humanity’
Interior, a site-specific installation by Jackson Hole artist Suzanne Morlock, is part of “Project Space”, an exhibition at Queens College Art Center in Flushing, New York. On exhibit through June 30, 2011, the work is Morlock’s interpretation of what a “terrestrial landscape formed of spheres of newspaper-yarn might look like.”
Knitted newspaper curtains cover ‘Project Space’ windows, and Interior “compels viewers to press their noses against the room’s windowpanes in order to better see the interior of the room.” It’s all part of Morlock’s quest to engage viewers and elicit questions about space and its properties.
Morlock’s glittery gold knit Sweater is set for installation at California’s Charles Schulz Museum. For more information about Suzanne Morlock and her work, visit www.suzannemorlock.com.
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Just weeks after a massive earthquake and tsunami obliterated lives, livlihoods and landscapes in Japan, a group of international photographers has initiated the 3/11 Tsunami Photo Project. Established to aid the people of Japan, the project is available in an iPad
application platform.
A statement from journalistic photographer Ryo Kameyama, taken from 3/11′s website:
“When the earthquake struck Japan, I was in the mountains in Mexico, and many villagers asked me, “Is your family all right?”
When I returned to town and saw the nuclear power plant exploding with white smoke on TV, I felt that it was time to return to Japan.
Spring had not yet arrived in the devastated areas, and when it snowed I was freezing cold. The tsunami ripped apart families and memories, and changed human behavior in the blink of an eye.
People who lost everything were trying to move forward, but at the same time were suffering unimaginably from an extreme sense of loss in the ravaged landscape. They were afraid that they might be forgotten as time passed.
A month after the disaster, people still have not found the bodies of their missing family members. Villages are still buried in the debris.
The nuclear power plant, promoted as an environmentally friendly way of generating power, has exploded several times.
It is time to fundamentally re-think the way Japanese society functions.”
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.
Are you a Friend of Jeff Newsom? If you are, you are lucky indeed. And you are probably aware that he has been diagnosed with ALS, aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Jeff is a musician, a beloved brother, partner and friend. He’s our neighbor. He’s a musician. He’s also a master Dobsonian telescope builder.
A benefit to raise money and mojo for Jeff happens Saturday, April 17, 2010 at The Wildwood Room-Bill Boney’s, in Victor, Idaho. Time: 7:00-11:00 pm. Ben Winship will lead a long, illustrious line-up of musical guests. Plan to donate and have a ball — there will be plenty of great food, drink AND a private Auction.
Facebook’s “Jeff Newsom Lives!” page says that “spontaneous participation events include:”
Best Song Dedicated To Jeff Newsom Contest (the more ridiculous the better)
Top Ten Conspiracy Theories by Jeff That Turned Out To Be True Contest
Top Ten Conspiracy Theories Jeff Will Offer In 2010
IF YOU CAN’T MAKE THE EVENT: Donations can be made online at: http://jeffreynewsombenefit.chipin.com/jeffrey-newsom-lives
I met the Newsom clan years back, at an opening for Jeff’s brother David’s photography exhibit and book release, both entitled “Skip.” Skip is another Newsom brother, seemingly physically impaired, but incredibly magic. David photographed Skip against Idaho’s snaggly, raw landscapes and the results were beautiful. That show remains one of my all time favorites in my long memory of Jackson Hole art 
happenings. Jeff was there and so was sister Ginny Newsom. It was a great party, held at in the barn-like structure on West Broadway that housed the former J.H. Muse Gallery.
Jeff told me about his telescopes. He drew me some sketches on cocktail napkins, and I started taking notes. It was the beginning of a friendship with Jeff and the remarkable Newsom clan. (Ginny Newsom is working her tail off on this benefit. What a woman!) A few weeks later I found myself spending an adventurous afternoon with Jeff and his telescopes, and I wrote a newspaper story about the day.
What follows is an edited version of that original that ran in Planet Jackson Hole’s April 12, 2006 edition. I want you to know him. Here’s to you, Jeff! I love the stars in your eyes. Party on! ~ Tammy
“Idahoan Enjoins Masses to ‘Come See the Moon!’”
“So there we were. We had one of these telescopes with a four-inch mirror in it, and Mars was going to make its closest pass in many years, and that’s what got it all started. You start looking through one of those things, and are blown away by what you can see! I thought, imagine what you could see with a bigger scope!”
So said Jeff Newsom of Driggs, Idaho, describing how he got interested in making telescopes. I thought that would be the subject of this story – I mean, is anyone else around here making telescopes? – no. Five minutes into my research and the full “scope” of what Newsom is doing and exploring began to crystallize and this little article became more of a humble introduction to a host of concepts and players, including, but not limited to:
Hydrogen, mirror-shaping classes, time, space, black holes, a re-examination of Big Bang theory, (which, according to www.bigbangneverhappened.org, could not have occurred), red shifts, wavelengths demonstrating a celestial object’s distance from earth; and John Dobson, renowned physicist, chemist, astronomer, “Star Monk,” and visionary who has turned empirical evidence into philosophy. Oh, and assists humans in seeing beyond their genetic programming.
“These are clouds, these are cats, these are bees, but when you see the moon through a scope you shut up,” Dobson has said. Dobson founded Sidewalk Astronomers, a tribe of knowledgeable star gazers with a public service mission to introduce all citizens to space. Dobson began the movement by setting up his homemade telescopes on San Francisco street corners and inviting passers-by to “come see the moon.”
Jeff Newsom was attracted to Dobson’s complete altruism. Newsom learned how to build Dobsonian telescopes, made from precise, lightweight mirrors (Newsom carved his own), long focal ratios and extra wide apertures. Newsom is also drawn to Dobson’s mix of Eastern philosophy and Western physics. Because of Dobson, says Newsom, millions of people have “gone celestial.”
Newsom founded his own chapter of Sidewalk Astronomers, joining the mission to educate as many as he can on the secrets of the stars, planets, space, time, cosmic dust and, 
well, the origins of everything. Spend a few hours with Newsom looking through his telescopes, and you may well become a convert, too. Jeff Newsom has made it possible for all of us in Jackson, Driggs and the region to look into deep space if we want to. Newsom engineered a visit by Dobson to Jackson Hole just a few years ago.
Peering through a giant telescope pointed towards the heavens, says Newsom, is like “walking into the Winds for the first time or seeing the Grand Canyon. Your perspective is forever impacted.”
Jeff Newsom keeps giving and giving. Give back. We have his back, right? I cannot attend this weekend’s festivities because I’m in New England; however I’m thrilled to make a contribution that I hope will help raise funds, and my wish is that you will too. As a friend of mine likes to end letters, “touching palms.”
“Planning in the West,” the second annual conference on the topic of Intermountain West development, takes place in Boise, Idaho, June 2-3, 2010. The conference is billed as featuring “leading planners, policy-makers, architects, developers, and landscape architects from around the Rockies….to track planning and development trends, showcase best practices, and understand how thoughtful and place-inspired planning can help us shape our region in the most positive possible ways.”
Planning in the West’s keynote speaker is Mark Muro, of the Brookings Institution, a Washington D.C. based public policy think tank with a mission to “conduct high-quality, independent research and, based on that research, to provide innovative, practical recommendations that advance three broad goals:
- Strengthen American democracy;
- Foster the economic and social welfare, security and opportunity of all Americans and
- Secure a more open, safe, prosperous and cooperative international system.”
Muro studies intermountain economic trends; you can find “Mountain Monitor – Tracking Economic Recession and Recovery in the Intermountain West’s Metropolitan Areas” when you do a search on the Brookings Institute website. The study tracks trends through the fourth quarter of 2009. It looks at large metropolitan regions (Denver, Boise, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque), and smaller areas (Reno, Fort Collins, Las Cruces, Boulder); but transpose Muro’s larger points on intermountain real estate booms, education, and diversity of economic base to Jackson’s profile, and you will get a pretty good idea of the pace of economic recovery Teton County might expect, and why.
Soft Opening for Heather James Gallery
Heather James Fine Art opens its doors at 172 Center Street, Suite 200, next door to Altamira Fine Art, in April. This month’s opening is soft. Lyndsay McCandless has been hired as the gallery’s director.
“We welcome our new neighbors, Heather James Fine Art, to the Center Street art district,” says Altamira Executive Director Mark Tarrant. “This is an important addition to the Jackson art market, providing the quality of fine art that people expect when visiting Jackson. We are working with the gallery’s director, Lyndsay McCandless, and planning cooperative events that will set the pace for the Jackson experience.”
Based in Palm Desert, California, the gallery “represents a world-class spectrum of art-bridging genres including Impressionist and Modern, Classical Post-War and Contemporary, American and Latin American, Old Masters, design, cutting-edge contemporary and photography.”
A partial list of artists the gallery represents includes American artists Marion Kavanagh Wachtel, Oscar Bluemner and Irving Norman; Latin American artists Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, Francisco Zuniga, Naum Knop and Marta Minujin; and Impressionist/Modern masters Berthe Morisot and Alberto Giacometti.
A friend passed along a recent local art “review” —perhaps “commentary” is a better word — concerning the closing of the Oswald Gallery.
I’ve been criticized for some of my own commentary, and I know the sting of having someone in our close Jackson community express strong negative feelings about what I’ve written. I also believe that the First Amendment is one of our most precious charges. Thou shalt not shoot the messenger.
The piece I’m referring to was particularly bizarre. Is the writer trying to be facetious? If so, the effort fails. (Sign up for Satire:101) Here’s why: The writer, an artist, should know better than to characterize all art galleries as a whorl of “…musicians, models, artists, writers, homosexuals, and wealthy patrons milling around in unbearable hipness…….”
(Dude. You have a show about rap artists interpreted as holy gospel singers. Which isn’t such a stretch, but it’s certainly hip-hoppity.)
If, in fact, he’s pretending not to know about the gallery business, he did a good job. If he really knew, and his writing was up to par (not saying mine is, I know my limits) we’d read his piece and think, “What a great skewering of the art scene! Brilliant!”
That didn’t happen, so I’m going forward with this post taking the position he really doesn’t know. If he does know, he should build himself a much, MUCH bigger platform before venturing out into such territory. Think Woody Allen. Or Colbert. Or Tracy Morgan. Or Mike Bressler! Catch the Shouts & Murmurs “Cursing Mommy” column sometime.
The writer goes on: “There would always be plenty of blow and smack at hand and somehow the entire enterprise makes money and garners international acclaim.”
Are you a kid? Or are you just brain dead from your early days spent snorting and writhing around on the floor at Studio 54? Stuff happens, but this ain’t the 80′s. I understand Leya is fond of you, and she may share some of your views, and you are lucky to have someone as professional and savvy as Leya in your corner. But for those not in on your “inside” stuff, what you write is not cutting it.
“If any of you vultures reading this article want to save 25 to 50 percent on some really nice picture frames, now is the time.”
How much will your art be worth in a few years? If your stuff doesn’t sell, by what method will you toss the carrion into the yard? Maybe you’ll go “Ebay.”
We are in a Great Recession. Not a mild recession, a GREAT RECESSION. Picassos are selling. Big stuff. Because people with that kind of money can buy as much as they like, and are. Many galleries are having their artists size down their work, to make it more affordable. And we’re talking about all levels of artists, all genres. Travis Walker does a great job of coming up with innovative ways for his artists to sell, and new collectors to collect.
There’s quite a bit of information on the art market out there. Why don’t you read some of it?
I won’t touch the Wilson/butlers in the basement bit.
“Leya looks great in black, and I did not imagine anything beyond that was necessary for success in the art world.”
Perhaps you should apply for a gallery intern job this summer. You will be lucky to get hired, even for free, but give it a shot.
“We are still surrounded by landscape paintings, of moose in front of the Tetons or Indians painted by white people. So obviously Americans prefer art that does not make us think but rather reinforces stereotypes and clichés.”
By that logic, people would be buying landscapes and wildlife art in SoHo.
Why are YOU here in Jackson Hole? It can’t be because of intense city energy, urban infrastructure and sounds, interstate highways and their traffic, or cultural diversity.
Maybe you’re here to snowboard? On big mountains, surrounded by wildlife?
Can you name the photographers Oswald has carried since the day they opened? Lots of landscape shooters……and damn, they’re hip! One of Leya’s favorite photographers, Nine Francois, is largely about portraits of animals from the wild. They aren’t in the wild, I don’t believe, when Francois takes her photos, but they are, at their core, wildlife. I mean, this is the West. If we were in Key West, what would you see? Santa Fe? Cape Cod? San Antonio? Art is a reflection of place.
What do you imagine people visiting Jackson Hole and the Parks want to think about while they are here? What do you think they want to take back with them, and why? I don’t have statistics, but my experience tells me that wealthy locals, many with several homes and access to all art markets, buy much of Jackson’s contemporary art. We certainly need our contemporary arts in order to thrive. I adore them. I even like your work, but I’ve deleted my story about it because I feel what you are writing for your newspaper is toxic, bitter and scary; it may even foreshadow some violent act. I hope your newspaper takes heed.
Most visitors buy art here for reasons having to do with the unmatched experiences they have in Wyoming. And many collectors buy representational and abstract or contemporary art. Because it all has value.
Pop quiz: Who was Edward Curtis?
A huge benefit of Facebook is reconnecting with friends you thought you’d never see or hear from again.
I want to tell you about Elizabeth Galindo and her sister Pam. Elizabeth was my earliest, best childhood friend. I knew her as Beth Wright; she now 
goes by Elizabeth, or Liz. We became friends in the ’60′s. We went to elementary school together, up in the hills of Santa Monica, California. She had long, dark, tendrils and olive skin; I was a squinty blond with blotchy pale skin and a bowl cut. We both loved Barbie. We loved the Mamas and the Papas, the Beatles, Nancy Sinatra, the Beach Boys, boys, swimming in the pool, riding, her mom’s hot dogs, granny gowns, 45′s, cool cars, lying on the beach, gym class, sleep overs, summer camp, Yardley lipsticks, Marco Polo. We were inseparable.
That’s me on the far right, Beth next to me. I and my brothers are hangin’ at the Wright’s pool.
I had two baby sisters, Sarah and Annie. Beth had an older sister, Pam. We idolized her, of course. We never thought we’d grow up, but if we did it would be very hip to look and act like Pam. She was a loving big sister. She watched over us when she was asked to, she chuckled at our little girls games, she was very protective of Beth. And, as you can see from the photo top left, she was gorgeous.
About a year ago, out of the blue and after decades of not having a clue what had become of my childhood friend, Liz found me through Facebook. A miracle! Liz–I will refer to her as Liz from here on–had very recently lost Pam to lung cancer. If ever a broken heart jumped through a website it was Liz’s as she spoke of her loss and emotions. 
Pam would have been just 61 a few weeks ago. These sisters had a powerful connection; they were best friends, continuously supporting one another.
People come together for a reason. We are sent to one another to learn and exchange energies and passion and lessons. And hopefully love. When Liz contacted me, she had no idea that I too had lost a sister to cancer. Annie, the baby in our family, had died five years earlier, a victim of metastatic colon cancer. She was 35.
Pam’s birthday is February 15. Annie’s is February 18.
Liz is a couture designer and researcher. She designs remarkable period costumes and gowns for the film industry. She has two sons she loves with fervor. And Liz has created a remarkable way to commemorate Pam and to raise funds for cancer research. Here is her story, a story that began in the Fall of 2008:
“While taking care of my best friend and sister Pamela during her battle with lung cancer, I began doodling on my clothing. I doodled on jeans, skirts and blouses—whatever I had on, as I waited outside Pam’s treatment rooms. I doodled as I watched her sleep. Writing in a journal was not personal enough at that time; I wanted to create something I could physically feel as well as write down my thoughts and prayers. Drawing was my way of keeping in touch with my passion for art, fabrics and my “couture sister.”
After more than a year of mourning I finally approached my dear friend, pattern-maker Colleen. She helped me create garments I call Journal Skirts. I wore them to various functions 
and my classes (Liz is pursuing a PhD). I used the journals for taking class notes, doodling, autographs, recording memories…. all sorts of record-keeping! After a while, people began asking me where they could purchase a skirt or journal; and that is when I knew Pamela was guiding me towards an idea that would help raise funds for cancer research.
20% of every journal skirt purchase price will be donated to the American Cancer Society. This link will bring you to my Journal Skirt Website: http://web.me.com/journalskirt/Journal_Skirts/Welcome.html . These skirts are wearable art, they’re performance art, and they are art from my heart to yours. Go forth and create. And thank you.”
Sincerely, Elizabeth P. Galindo
