Posts from ‘Workshops’
Art of Writing in the Environment
The Grand Teton Association’s summer writing program, “Writers in the Environment,” produced by Jackson author Tina Welling, is a superlative venue for writers looking for a workshop that takes place outdoors, under the canopy of the Park’s crazy blue summer skies, under the sheltering pines. The 2012 list of workshops has been announced.
June 9, 2012:Â Writer, musician and former Wyoming Poet Laureate David Romtvedt’s workshop will focus on ancient Chinese poetry. These writers ventured out in small boats and chanted poems to the full moon. “Sometimes they drank too much wine and fell out of their boats,” notes Welling. The Chinese poems and the way they integrated the life of the individual with the natural world will be explored.
July 14, 2012:Jackson, Wyoming writer Jayme Feary specializes in narrative nonfiction and is a frequent magazine contributor. The Wyoming Arts Council awarded him a 2011 Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction. He earned an MFA from the University of Montana, where he taught composition and creative nonfiction. His workshop, ”Storytelling–The Secret Behind ‘Show, Don’t Tell,”  How can we shift our writing from telling to showing? Practice writing a really great scene.
August 11, 2012: “Write From the River,” Hannah Hinchman’s writing workshop, explores side-channels, gathers interesting debris, cuts through layers and finds its way around obstacles. Outdoor time to reflect, respond and “read the currents.” Hinchman has taught field journal workshops across the country for 25 years. Her second book, A Trail Through Leaves: the Journal as a Path to Place is used as a text in several environmental studies programs.
September 8, 2012: Matt Daly is the author of Wild Nature and the Human Spirit: a Field Guide to Journal Writing in Nature. His writing appears in numerous publications, including To Everything On Earth, Stories of the Wild and Ahead of Their Time: Wyoming Voices for Wilderness. He teaches creative writing workshops in Wyoming for teens and adults. During Daly’s three-hour workshop participants will complete a series of writing exercises to be used as compost for short poems. Participants will have the opportunity to hone descriptive and poetic language as they record sensory experience, to practice the use of honest voice as they make connections between experience and personal beliefs, to adapt journal entries into poems and to share writing with peers.
Workshop attendees meet at 9:00am at the flagpole in front of the Moose Visitor Center, then drive to the Lucas/Fabian cabins to sit on the porch, beside Cottonwood Creek, to write.
Contact Tina Welling for more information. Tina@TinaWelling.com   http://www.grandtetonpark.org/
Get a “Sneak Peek” at the National Museum of Wildlife Art’s (NMWA) upcoming exhibition, Rugged Impressionism: The Masterful Field Studies of Carl Rungius, on Monday, April 30, at 11:30 am. Adam Duncan Harris, NMWA’s Curator of Art, will be on hand for a special preview of this show that takes an in-depth look at Rungius’ intriguing artistic process. The talk takes place in the Museum’s Kuhn Gallery, and participants will get a first, special look at Rungius’ spectacular landscapes before the show opens to the public. NMWA is home to this country’s largest public collection of Rungius’ work.
The Museum’s artist biography tells us that “Rungius’ ability to capture the heart-stopping chance encounter between man and animal sets him apart from many of his talented colleagues. Equally accomplished as a painter of wildlife and landscapes, Rungius quickly developed an enthusiastic following among fellow artists and patrons.” Â The talk is free for members, or with Museum admission. www.wildlifeart.org
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Visiting artist Ricki Arno wants kids and parents to know that she will be teaching a special class at the Art Association this summer. Â June 25 – 28, join Arno as she takes you on an artistic, humorous creative journey: Cirque Des Tetons Workshop! Â The class is for kids in grades 6 and up, and parents, aunts, uncles, even grandparents are encouraged to sign up along with the kids.
The class will create a “dazzling mixed media CIRQUE DES TETONS, complete with weird side show characters, daring high wire and trapeze artists, a handsome or beautiful Ring Master, ferocious wild animals, amazing jugglers, a supernatural magician, colorful clowns, and whatever else tickles and delights our fancies,” says Arno. “A collaborative, ongoing “Circus Street Art Wall” will capture the excitement.”
To find out more, and to sign up, contact the Art Association at (307) 733-6379. Those interested in the class are also welcome to contact Arno at rarno@nyc.rr.com, or phone (917) 741-4834. Â Â http://www.artassociation.org/education/childrens/s12-69-Cirque.html
Andrew Bird, 2007 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival
Will it be “The premier outdoor summer event in Jackson Hole??”
It just may be. So, mark your calendars. Travis Walker’s Teton Art Lab, with support from the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole, The Kemmerer Foundation, and Old Bill’s Fun Run, presents the Caldera Festival: Andrew Bird and Sharon Van Etten on Saturday, August 18, 2012. The festival runs 6-11:00 pm, centered at the Center for the Arts. Says the Community Foundation’s website:
“While there are a number of arts and conservation organizations in Jackson, these communities rarely come together to highlight issues in new ways. The Caldera Festival will do just that by encouraging learning for all ages with creative and innovative exhibitions, films, presentations and performances such as a hike with Treefight founder David Gonzalez and an art class using all found and local materials. Grant funding from the Community Foundation will help kick start this new event.”
That last sentence suggests this summer’s Caldera may be the first of many. The music will be incredible. Andrew Bird and Sharon Van Etten are scheduled to appear; exact show times are TBA. Their music is transcendant, joyful and peaceful. And fun to listen to, you will NOT nod off.  Listen to their music:  www.andrewbird.net and www.sharonvanetten.com.  www.tetonartlab.com
Spring. It’s sort of gray, sort of promising, wet, windy, soft—-and Spring suggests we use this time of year for contemplation.
When presented with the image of “Curved Horizon Hogosho with blue and gold” by Japanese artist Kyoko Ibe, I melted like snow in 50 degree weather. And imagined the sun.
Heather James Fine Art currently has Ibe’s artwork, constructed with washi—traditional Japanese paper—on display. A recent show of her works at the gallery’s Palm Desert location was reportedly a great success.
“The ancient Japanese believed divine spirits resided in the paper and Ibe maintains such veneration,” the gallery writes. “The functional role of paper has diminished, the aesthetic role of paper as a spiritual medium is more apparent and has succeeded today in reemerging as an art media. Appropriating old handmade paper and handwritten documents, Ibe recycles them into new forms of washi. The ink of the original sources remains embedded in the fibers of the paper, such that the new paper is uniquely variegated with shades of gray and intrinsically connected to the past.”
Mari Andrews’ Like a Language and Rakudo Naito’s Nature Constructed share an opening reception at the Tayloe Piggott Gallery on Friday, February 10, 5-8:00 pm. The white light in the work conveys winter’s soft delicacy, its silence and ability to allow us to see new the shy details of bare branches, spores, and the simple lines of a leaf. Fluid femininity and structural systems wrought from nature are explored. The show remains up through March 27, 2012.
I’m going for it here: Andrews’ constructions of wire, pine needles, delicate branches and what looks, in press materials, like lichen, are certainly–at least in part—meditations on women’s reproductive organs. Nature as feminine. Tubular constructs terminate in mossy, circular portals. Flattened ovary and fallopian-shaped sculptures are heavily textured and the color of shells mixed with seaweed; expanded hearts. White, lacy blossoms float airily. Beaker-shaped pods and vessels intertwine—the fairest of mermaid necklaces. Indeed, Andrews’ work is highly intimate. Continue Reading
