Jackson Hole Art Blog

Diehl Gallery features works by artist Angie Renfro now through March 6.   As they’ve been doing, Diehl is offering collectors a chance to deduct 10% of the cost of any art work towards a particular non-profit.   This show benefits WomensTrust, an organization providing outreach to Ghana, via microfinancing, education and healthcare.

So who is Angie Renfro?   Why are her works simultaneously so melancholy and strikingly beautiful?   Looking at press images, I’m struck by Renfro’s split subjects.  The birds, bees and spring’s new budding branches are here; so are abandoned industrial landscapes depicting rusted piles of pipeline, muddy fields, flat gray skies and blackened telephone poles.

Blackened telephone poles, crying rivers of red.  Dripping red.

A Texas native now living in California, Renfro says she’s haunted by the vast landscapes of her home state.  There’s overlooked beauty in desolate lots, deserted factories.  She’s yet to be carried off by California’s blue tides, its sunshine, undulating mountains and deserts.

Renfro takes long drives across Texas, a state the size of a small planet.  She believes placing the natural world on the same podium with broken down palaces of  industry and farming will help viewers appreciate a shared “quiet, unassuming beauty.”

Along the lonesome Texas highway, there’s little obvious distraction, says Renfro.  But, if you stop and sense the quiet, you’ll find quiet makes its own noise.  Like Pompeii’s ruins, these Texas subjects are frozen in time.

Renfro’s landscapes are works one could live with for a long time.

Diehl Gallery phone:  307.733.0905.

Item #2:

Word has it that Center Street Gallery is closing.  Timeline is unclear.

As long as I’ve lived in Jackson, Center Street Gallery has been there on Town Square’s east side, lighting up the boardwalk with its eclectic collection of contemporary art.

The gallery carries some very noted artists.   That list includes: Thomas Batista, Lynn Berryhill, Kathy Bonnema-Leslie, Bruce Dean, Bill Drum, Robert Deurloo, Jeffrey Jon Gluck, Siri Hollander, E.H. Klink, Marshall Noice, Raymond Nordwall, Andrew Parent, Francine & Neil Prince, Stephen Rolfe Powell, Jean Richardson, Dennis Sohocki, Sari Staggs, Kay Stratman, Louis Von Koelnau, Joy Watson, Don Webster and Elizabeth Wright.

Center Street and the former Martin-Harris Gallery broke the contemporary art ice in Jackson Hole. Center Street’s art references in regional beauty interpreted by new, as well as practiced, modern day artists.    Works are intimate, grand in scale, colorful, tonal, two and three-dimensional.  A couple of decades ago, it was a brave act to open a contemporary gallery space in a traditionally representational Western culture.   As Western art scholar Peter Hassrick has noted, we’ve yet to fully address the impact of humans on the remarkable landscapes and wilderness we inhabit.   Without the continued health of contemporary arts in Jackson, we’ve less of a chance of approaching that still sensitive subject; it’s unmentionable, marketing-wise, to create content pointedly addressing human effect on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

The hope is that a good percentage of these artists will find alternate local gallery venues.   Center Street Gallery, thank you for playing an important role in our arts history.

February 5, it’s all happening at the Art Association.

Really!  Sounds like a happening, 1960’s style, with symbolism and emotions and poetry readings and exploration of the human body’s nuances (Our Bodies, Ourselves, a ground breaking book about sexuality and women’s bodies, still available and updated, btw…), power and faith, Arlo Guthrie and Aristotle.

Arlo, Aristotle, Art Association: Triple “A” alliteration.

These shows represent a quantum leap forward for Jackson’s art community.  Don’t miss it. A joint opening reception happens at the Center for the Arts on Friday, February 5th, at 5:30 pm.

Show #1:

Nekkid, a group figure exhibition, includes a noon Brown Bag Lunch Art Talk with participating artists. In our “democratic”, post-industrial, high-tech country  we still struggle with being cool with nudity (unless you are John Edwards).  This show offers a chance to probe that resistance.   Works in various media alternately explore and celebrate the human body.  As part of the evening’s festivities the spirit of the Beat Poets will resurrect, with live poetry readings.

Participating artists include, but may not be limited to: Eliot Goss, Sue Sommers, Shannon Troxler, Suzanne Morlock, Susan Thulin, Bobbi Miller, Amy Larkin, Barbara Trentham, Mark Nowlin, Jenny Dowd and Valerie Seaberg.

Writers/poets to date include: Sarah Kariko, Marcia Casey, Valley Peters Bradley and Nicole Burdick.

(Bressler, where are you in this?  You write great poetry about nudes!   Get going, don’t make me bring out the poem  you wrote a few years back…..yes, I still have it, it’s bookmarking my souffle recipe.)

Show #2:

Power & Faith: The Photography of Paul Adams will be on display in the Artspace Loft Gallery.    Here, I defer to Paul Adams’ quotation describing the inspirations for his work.

“Through most of my professional photographic career I have tried to make beautiful photographs simply for the sake of beauty. Recently though I find myself motivated more by the same challenges the American folk singer Arlo Guthrie faced when he said, “For me it is not enough to write a song that is good. I want to write a song that is good for something.” The stimulating and exciting challenge for me as a photographic artist is to try and seduce the viewer into thinking as deeply as they feel. As we look into the faces of these Spiritual Leaders I hope to accomplish Aristotle’s goal for art when he said, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”

Show #3:

The Scotch and Watercolor Society, comprised of painters Barbara Barella, Holly Bishop, Barbara C. Kuxhausen, Skip Larcom, Michele McDonald and Joan Melius, deliver their creative messages solely in watercolor.

Watercolors are considered by many to be the most difficult paint medium to master.  Artists in this show offer up a variety of impressions, interpretations and subjects in their paintings.  The exhibition will be on display in the Artspace Theater Gallery.    Perhaps a fine single malt will be served.

Show #4:

Art Association Ceramics Director Sam Dowd is, in my opinion, a great ceramicist.  His space-inspired clay compositions are sheer intergalactic fantasy.

It’s exciting that Dowd’s collaboration and guidance of Jackson Hole High School students has resulted in this new art project and show, Blast from the Cast.

On display in the Artspace Lobby Gallery, students from Shannon Borrego’s art classes will mount their sculptures and vessels.  Students have learned the slip cast mold process, and created works depicting, or speaking to, objects “chosen from life,….making a plaster mold… to produce several reproductions. The students then created clay projects that incorporated, repeated, and altered the mold pieces.”

And that’s quite a process.  Results are colorful, well-designed and fanciful.  Art created by youth is the most free; with Dowd teaching them, these students may hang on to that creative joie de vivre.

The Art Association may be contacted via their website, or you may phone 307.733.6379.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two things tend to happen when I’m away from Jackson and checking out cultural venues in other cities: I compare our arts scene to those of the places I’m visiting, and I talk a lot about our arts scene to the people I’m with.

I talk a lot about Jackson’s arts because my friends and family ask me about them.   Many of them have never been to Jackson Hole or either of our neighboring parks, and they want to understand more about what an arts culture in a town our size, in a magnificent and relatively remote region is like.   It’s not easy to describe, but when I finish trying to paint a picture (as it were) of all Jackson’s energy, initiatives, venues and artists, listeners seem impressed Jackson’s art scene is as vibrant as it is.

I’ve just returned from St. Louis. I attended my high school’s reunion, and we had a blast.  I and my friends spent an afternoon exploring the Best of Missouri Art Fair, at the St. Louis Botanical Gardens. Nori Obata, a classmate and a member of one of St. Louis’ most prominent arts and architecture family legacies, had a booth.   St. Louis has a bit of a stodgy rep, but let me tell you:  that city’s arts scene is ripping.  Over the past couple of decades millions of dollars have been poured into building the city’s public arts and gardens. And the city’s public has responded enthusiastically. They are engaged, and the Best of Missouri was mobbed.  It was such a big venue, we literally could not find the end of the thing.  And people weren’t just milling, they were spending.   Money was changing hands all over the place.

We weren’t just happy to see a successful art fair, though.  We were all enchanted by the setting, the Botanical Gardens, a bit of Paris in the heart of the Midwest.  Acres of landscaped gardens are made even more magical with the addition of Dale Chihuly glass sculpture installations.  Rather than detract from the traditional and contemporary gardens and plantings, these bubbly, fantastic sculptures enhance.  They are unforgettable.   We didn’t want to leave.

Just thought I’d mention it.

So what happened here in Jackson?  Good stuff!

Results came in from the third annual Jackson Hole Art Auction, for one.  Because I was asked about the auction so much (its reputation is growing, growing!), I’m posting that info.  Seventy-six percent of the 235 lots sold, and the auction–which features Western Art and is jointly hosted by Trailside and Gerald Peters galleries–realized just under $6,000,000 total.   The auction says collectors represented more than 30 states and several foreign countries.  Highlight sale: Bob Kuhn’s painting, “Like the Down of a Thistle,” estimated at $75 - $100K, sold for $299,000.

You can view all the results on the J.H. Art Auction website, www.jacksonholeartauction.com.

Lynday McCandless SLAM update: More artists needed!  Send the word out to your peeps, she says.  Use the Facebook, use the email, Twitter.   Time slot will change to afternoons, 1-5 pm. Additionally, LMC gallery will host artfilm screenings every weekend this month.    PBS’s Art 21 series has a new season, and LMC will screen them Fridays at 6 pm, and Saturdays at 2 and 4 pm.   The series features interviews with contemporary artists working in all mediums. Themes include: compassion, fantasy, transformation and systems.

And, artists, you have homework:  Watch at least one of the videos, then create a work in response.  Next month’s First Friday will feature your creations.   For information, email lyndsay@lmcontemporary.com.

Onion Skins…

National Museum of Wildlife Art Chief Preparator Ron Gessler sends this arts related spoof from “The Onion.” Anything to jump start the arts economy…now, it’s o.k. to touch, scratch and smell the art at the Met.  Read the article here.

The Jackson Hole Art Association gets fall going with a cool, free, “three-for” opening tonight, 5:30 - 7:30 pm at the Center for the Arts.

Local wide-eyed n’ spunky textile artist Abbie Miller curates Larger than Life, a show examining clothing as a sculptural medium, and how clothing helps us, as Cathy Wikoff notes, “inhabit the world.”   We are what we wear.  The show features works by artists Alissa Davies, Annica Cuppetelli, Rod Klingelhofer, Amy Larkin (did ya see her stuff at Shades?), Carin Rodenborn and Jennifer Williams.    Quothe the Art Association, “….in this realm garments become exoskeletons and sculptural shelters that offer protection, exuberance and a new way to inhabit our evolving environments.”

Miller’s fabric creations are wonders.  They’re alive. They morph in front of your eyes, they tell stories.   Her show is up through November 23.

Sharon Thomas: Studies from Life Drawing, explores the artist’s study of the human form. Thomas, a long-time Art Association staffer, artist and teacher, will soon leave us—and that is very sad. Thomas has a touch we will miss-detail full of delicacy, gentle musings and nature-inspired collages. She’s loving in each and every endeavor—honest. A lightness of being. A master of color.

“Studies” remains on display through November 6.

Photographer Zachary Allen’s Roseland: A Field Guide to New Urbanism is a timely exhibition. Allen’s photographs of a Virginia region facing potentially dangerous levels of growth presents a theme we’ve long been considering here.

How will this new suburban development evolve? Will it be sustainable for the landscape as well as its inhabitants? Allen says Roseland is an important case study; it will present “…the future of designing sustainable communities through a system of strict design principles and policies guided by the charter of new urbanism.” Allen plans to photograph construction of the project from beginning to end.

Check the Art Association’s website for more info. 307.733.6379.

This all brings to mind Jackson’s own growth issues; which brings to mind articles and ads recently run in the Jackson Hole News & Guide. They concern Jackson resident and business owner Kevin Gilday’s drive to initiate the unseating of Jackson’s mayor, Mark Barron. Gilday is proposing early organization of an effort to find a candidate who can run against, and beat, Barron. That is, if Barron runs.

That’s the very basic scenario. Organizing well-conceived political campaigns, campaigns of foresight, is admirable. Right off the bat, however, this campaign has shot itself in the foot. Gilday’s rallying speeches are peppered with negative characterizations. Such hyperbole does not reflect favorably on him. And such usage puts the characterization’s target in plumb position; Mark Barron is (publicly) reacting to Gilday’s slurs in a non-reactive and considered manner. And guess what that does? It presents Mr. Barron as the wiser of the two characters in this local production. Gilday comes off as amateurish and (characterization alert!) dumb. It’s not savvy rhetoric. As a citizen, I’m not compelled to align myself with him. He’s mudslinging, and mudslinging often signals hidden agendas. Toxic agendas.

Lately, Jackson has raised mudslinging to new levels.  Let’s class up, shall we?   I’ll add that defensive, non-accountable, pointing-the-finger-at-someone-else language reveals as much, if not more, of the same sort of malfeasance  it is often meant to conceal.   If we’re not accountable, we’re not trustworthy.

So dump your comparisons to Napoleon, Mr. Gilday.  Expunge use of such phrases as “complicit cronies,” (Who do you mean? Better be ready to call them out, and back up any accusations with fact.) and talk about the ISSUES. Where do you want to go and how will you get there? Tell us. Present an alternative plan for the town, if you are able.

Because right now, you’re doin’ the Limbaugh.

If it seems to you as if a certain subject matter is visibly missing from Jackson Hole’s art scene, you’re correct.   Life drawing, the practice of drawing the nude figure, is art’s longest tradition.   Many consider it to be art’s purest subject, and the most difficult practice.

Even so, with all the superior artistic talent in and around Jackson Hole, nude portraiture is rarely publicly displayed.  That’s changing.

Body & Soul II, a group exhibit displaying life drawings by 13 local artists, opens at Galleries West on August 20, running through September 3.    A reception will be held Aug. 20,  5-8:00 pm.

Thirteen participating artists are:  Eliza Chrystie, Eliot Goss, Thais Graham, Lane Griffin, Alissa Hartmann, Jennifer L. Hoffman, Greg McHuron, Susan Nowlin, Lee Carlman Riddell, Shannon Troxler, Kathryn Mapes Turner, September Vhay, and A. A. “Sandy” Zvegintzov.

Gallery owner Debbie Bunch provides context for the history of nude drawing.

“The story of this drawing group has its beginnings in the long tradition of life drawing through the ages,” she says.   “The skill of drawing, and specifically drawing the human form, was considered a prerequisite for all art students in the 19th and early 20th Century academies. By the mid-20th Century, less emphasis was being placed on the craft and mechanics of art study in favor of expressionism and conceptual issues.  As the priorities of the academies changed, life drawing was no longer required study for students.  And less and less artists pursued the practice.”

Participating artist September Vhay notes that, “The intent of this show is to share our artwork with the public and to create an understanding and discussion about the roll that drawing skills play in fine art.”

Valley artist Greg McHuron quietly began holding group drawing sessions at his studio about eight years ago, taking a break while he dealt with a serious cancer threat. (McHuron, if possible, is even more productive post-treatment.)  As Bunch says, most of these artists are not professionally known for figurative work but they share “…a desire to hone their observational skills while studying the light, form, perspective, and proportion that the human body offers, and a belief that the basic skill of drawing is a vital foundation that is too often skipped over by artists today.”

Artists will be in attendance for August 20th’s reception. For more information, contact Galleries West Fine Art at 307-733-4412 or visit www.gallerieswestjacksonhole.com.

Item #2

R. Haworth at Full Circle Frameworks!

Ryan Haworth–whose last name is pronounced “Hayworth,” but who never starred in “Gilda,” or married Orson Welles–(Sorry Ryan, I’m in a strange mood this morning! Must be because it’s my day off.) opens a new group show at Full Circle Frameworks this Friday, Aug. 21.

“Us,” as described by Rocky Vertone, is “… a window into his thoughts during the most active time in his life..at least for now. It touches on fears, belief, humor, beauty, and the urge to do what we love.”    The show remains up through September 9.

For info, give a call to 307.733.0770, or email Vertone at: rockyfour4@gmail.com.

Jeff Ham and Malcolm Furlow open a new show, “The West – Expressions in Color,” August 1 - 15, at Mountain Trails Gallery. An artists’ reception takes place  Thursday,  August 6,  5-8 p.m.  Mountain Trails is ensconced in its new space, on the northeast corner of Jackson Town Square.  Haven’t been in?  Now’s your chance–both artists will be on hand.

Is it me, or does this gentleman look angry? Ham portraits have conveyed pride, spirituality…check his earlier  big, brightly painted, delineated portraits.  They’re thinking, “I’m huge.  I’m beautiful.  I’m iconic.”   Now, paint is thrown in the face of confidence, a bloodied history is realized, and Ham’s “Blue Indian” is tear tracked, a devastating accusation in his eyes.

This evolved perspective is a good reason to check out Ham’s new works.    His color and composition spring from a background in illustration — Ham is a Disney veteran.

“I do my best to translate emotion and feelings into color and communicate my individual interpretation of each subject,” he explained. ”My goal is to capture spontaneity. As an artist I am learning to express myself in an honest and straightforward manner.”

Malcolm Furlow wears a coat of many painting colors; his vivid canvases reflect a love of the outdoors, landscape, Western history, cowboys and wildlife.

Furlow lives and works primarily at his northern New Mexico ranch. Sitting under the pinion trees provides  peace and solitude that feed his creative soul.   I remember a story about a bull, Ferdinand, who sat under a cork tree smelling flowers, away from all the other sparring, fighting bulls.   It’s a story of peace.  307.734.8150.

Item #2:

Lyndsay McCandless plans on pulling out another First Friday this month.  She’s got rocker Charlotte Potter and Friends set to play at Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary on Friday, August 7.

That’s great music.   Drove by the gallery the other day, and McCandless still has works up; she’s not done.   Perhaps she should just turn it all into a nightclub?   A coffee house?   We don’t have a coffee house. The kind with beatnik poets and red checked table cloths.  Maybe Mike Bressler would show up and do a reading.  Pay for his food.  We don’t have a university town bookstore/bistro kind of place, where ensembles play cellos in the corner, and there are shelves and shelves of things to read, book-related items to buy, newspapers from around the world, AND art on the wall…ALL IN ONE PLACE.   Breakfast would be nice, too.

Give 10% to the Art Blog, please.   (nod, nod, wink, wink!)

PS:  Lyndsay McCandless is promoting her new venture, SLAM, a farmer’s market for artists taking place on Saturdays, at 10:00 am - 5:00 pm, at the gallery.  Finish up at the Town Square Farmer’s Market, then head on over to Jackson Street.   734.0649.

Item #3

CIAO Gallery’s deadline for entry to Nocturnes: Art Inspired by the Night was July 31, but give gallery director Michelle Walters a call if you missed it.  Walters tells me that anyone applying for CIAO exhibitions can do so online, via the gallery’s website.  “Nocturnes” opening reception is scheduled for Saturday, August 22.

CIAO’s next deadline, for its 2nd Annual Call of the Wild is August 7th.  The show will run during Fall Arts Festival week.  Check the website’s “Call to Artists” tab.   For more information contact Walters, or visit www.ciaogallery.com.

BOING!

Buoyancy.  Bounce.  Balloon. Toy photographer Brian McCarty revives all the fun, imaginative “B” words related to toys and childhood in his exuberant photos. This came to mind as my friend (NYC artist Ricki Arno, grandma with an urban art fetish) and I recently took in a show of McCarty’s work.

What a pleasure to laugh giddily, laugh out loud, at art.  And to know it’s okay.   It’s okay because with truly great toy art photography, one laughs with the toys.  Toy art photography lightly and blithely takes shooting’s potentially voyeuristic aspects to a new level.     

I didn’t get it until I saw this show.  And I’m still not certain how toy art photography came into being, but it’s very big.  And McCarty,– step-son of local arts enthusiast and philanthropist Mickey Babcock– is one of the art form’s masters.   He’s in love with art toys, creating images that “…blur the lines between art and commerce.”  McCarty brings designer toys to life, placing them in fantasy situations and photographing them. Think back to the days of playing in the sand with those miniature olive green army men.  We set them up in sand dunes, my siblings and I, making believe we commanded our tiny camouflaged troops, tossing dirt bombs, creating mini ambushes, tiny rescue missions.   The little figures took on a life of their own, and today’s toy photography movement riffs on that era of play.

Today’s toys are made of plastic, vinyl, plush fabrics and other materials.  They’re highly graphic and cartoon-like and have been in production since the 1990’s.  McCarty’s work connects to many enterprises such as advertising, music, publishing, and toy manufacturing.  Toy manufacturers often send McCarty prototypes; the toys allow him to push boundaries while creating on multiple levels. McCarty works with a variety of artists who have also chosen to view plastic and plush as a means of artistic expression.

What got him started on the tiny toy picture path?

“About the time I was supposed to grow up and stop playing with toys, they transitioned into subjects for my early, fumbling experiments with photography,” says McCarty.  “It felt natural to communicate through these objects that carried so much emotional and cultural weight. Toys are not just fun, they are how every child begins to find his or her place in the world. Through play, reality is deconstructed and recreated in smaller, safer bites. With this in mind, toys for me became a purposeful mechanism for perspective and artistic exploration. They have remained at the core of my vision.”

Each photograph tells a tiny story that is really a commentary on humanity, pairing up seemingly unrelated objects and place.  Even as we laugh at McCarty’s work, we wonder if we should be amused at certain messages.   Should we laugh at the plush, smiling Kaiser-Nutcracker-faced hand grenade being tossed into the air by a guy dressed in army fatigues?  We do laugh, but we get the intimation.   I laughed at the vinyl tree frog’s near escape from becoming road kill,  I laughed at the happy-go-lucky, candy-colored toys raining down on a sun-baked earth, engaging in a happy little invasion of their own.

McCarty is making fun of us, of our deepest foibles, our inconsistencies, our self-stereotyping.  We’re ridiculously silly, like really good toys.   We’re white rabbits on a lonely planet, we’re kinda ugly grunge musicians making music in the subways, we’re snaggy-toothed aliens landing–”kersplat!”–in chocolate cake.

How did we get here?    And where will we go?

Item #2:

Mark Nowlin, The Master’s Studio proprietor, opens his first solo show of recent drawings, paintings and “constructions” at the Artspace Theater Lobby tonight, at the Center for the Arts.

I haven’t seen his work, and I can’t match Nowlin’s own description of his art, so I paraphrase his summary here:

“The heads of Barbie dolls are replaced by weather elk vertebra for a macabre but humorous juxtaposition of the socially complex and naturally simple. A work of 18th-century music is seen through a rack of glass test tubes…. The rack of a deer is attached to a beautiful antique sewing machine, a provocative mounted specimen. Old and new, nature and science, the mundane and the sublime converse within Nowlin’s glass cases…”

The opening reception runs 5:30-8:00 pm tonight, at the Center’s Artspace Gallery.    For information, phone 307.733.6379

A number of Jackson Hole area artists are experienced in working for our two parks, Grand Teton and Yellowstone.  Ed Riddell, Greg McHuron,  and Dan Burgette are three examples.   Riddell and McHuron conduct workshops, often taking their students into the wilderness or abroad.

This month and next, sculptor Dan Burgette is the National Museum of Wildlife Art’s Lanford Monroe Memorial Artist-in-Residence.   Burgette will be on hand in Johnson Hall on Tuesday - Saturday, 10:00 am - 3:00 pm through August 1.   Demonstrations are free and open to the public.

Burgette’s artistry springs from his three decades as a Grand Teton National Park backcountry ranger.   He is a sculptor inspired by wildlife, particularly by birds and the aerodynamics of flight.  Burgette creates dynamic works depicting indigenous birds in flight; he visualizes spiraling air currents of beating wings, dissolving any separation of a bird and the air around it.   In some instances, Burgette’s birds become the air.   Burgette works primarily with wood, metal and stone–materials seemingly too weighty to produce a sense of flight.  Seemingly.  Burgette smashes barriers, suggesting speed, grace and space with every work.     For information, visit www.wildlifeart.org.

Item #2:  A New WSJ Culture Section?

Columnist Laura Collins-Hughes reports that the Wall Street Journal is working on a new NYC-only culture section.   The new section would compete with the New York Times’ predominant arts coverage.    Collins-Hughes reports that a budget is being worked up and the new section could debut as early as 2011.   She quotes one WSJ staffer as saying that the new section will be “…arts-and-culture-oriented…The ad side thought they could sell ads on a local New York basis, given the Broadway scene and the arts scene overall.”

Arts sell ads, baby.  By the way, did I tell you about the J.H. Art Blog’s incredible visitation stats?

Item #3  Altamira Fine Art Bends It

Altamira Fine Art has moved into its new, 172 Center Street (Suite 100) space.  And it’s pretty cool.   Altamira opened its doors with a Nieto ( check out the fancy dancer canvases, they are spectacular ) exhibit and now Amy Ringholz’s Storytellers is the gallery’s focus, through July 28.   Ringholz’s opening reception night was pretty rockin; music on 172’s street front plaza brought the crowds in.    Ringholz’s artwork kept them there, and Altamira’s relatively dark-hued interior creates a clubby atmosphere.   Check it out.

Next up at Altamira:  Mary Roberson’s “Nature is Life in the Dream” opens August 5.   Info:  307.739.4700 & connect@altamiraart.com.

Item #4:

Artist Ashley Collins is the focus at the Diehl Gallery this week.  See previous posts about her work, exhibit and resume.   Wednesday evening a special opening benefitting the Community School takes place,  6-9:00 pm.   20% of all purchases go to the school, supporting educational initiatives for children.   Call Karen Hodges at 307.733.5427 for more information on this special preview event.