Posts Tagged ‘Art Association’
Jenny Dowd sends the following information on classes and updates over at the Art Association:
Figure Drawing Class meets between Christmas and New Year’s, on December 28th. If you bring some tasty holiday goodies, class will be that much more festive!
The Art Association’s winter/spring class schedule will be available soon; be sure to check the website often for updates. Dowd is excited about classes coming in the New Year—she lists such offerings as Sketchbook & Journaling for Beginners; a new class devoted to trying out oil paints, acrylics, and learn about brushes, surfaces, mediums and color charts; study of human and animal anatomy with Dwayne Harty; Tammy Callens will teach a portrait workshop; Meredith Campbell will teach botanicals. And, there will be day-long printmaking workshops!
Who Am I? Portraits of Our Community remains on display at the Center for the Arts until January 2, 2012. The show includes work by several Portrait Drawing Class student artists. Check it out! www.artassociation.org
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Check out the National Museum of Wildlife Art’s Tumblr Blog post for December 20th, and read a little bit about one of the Museum’s most powerful works: Ron Kingswood’s large-scale oil painting “Thou Shall Not Reap the Corners
of Thy Field.” Its title “reminds tillers of the fields to leave “a sheaf” behind, so that those less fortunate may be nourished. Here, Kingswood is thinking of wildlife’s winter challenges.” Blue magic.
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“A sure sign that art enthusiasts are still looking to invest in quality works of art, we are pleased to report that the 2011 Jackson Hole Art Auction resulted in a record breaking sale in its fifth year,” says Auction Coordinator Lucy Grogan.
“The auction held on Saturday, September 15, 2011, realized $9.5 million in sales with over 90% of the 250 lots offered selling well into and above their estimates.”
The auction is currently accepting consignments for next year’s auction, to be held Saturday, September 15,2012. To learn more about consigning to the J.H. Art Auction (an auction of past and present Masters of the American West), phone 866-549-9278, or visit www.jacksonholeartauction.com. Everyone is also welcome to stop by the auction office, upstairs in Trailside Galleries at 130 East Broadway in Jackson.
And speaking of innovation, the National Museum of Wildlife Art’s (NMWA) new three-quarter mile sculpture trail, designed by Walter Hood, is due to open on schedule this month. The presence of the trail adds a whole new dimension to the museum. NMWA is literally merging the concept of wildlife art with the landscape wildlife inhabits. Not only will visitors be able to sit outside NMWA and take in those glorious Elk Refuge and Gros Ventre vistas, they will be able to walk the hillsides around NMWA. A new pathway links the Town of Jackson to NMWA–bike & walking paths lead you right to the Museum. Hood has been tweaking trail details; it sounds like those grid pattern surface boulders will be a part of the design. If you’ve had a chance to look at Hood’s design for the trail, you would have noticed those boulders bracing and anchoring the trail’s fluid design. Good news!
Visiting the trail is free, and open to the public. “Pathway stones and the trail’s Hood-designed Douglas fir benches also are being engraved with names from museum donors, with a number of stones and several benches still available for ‘naming,’ ” NMWA says. “It’s a great way to recognize a loved one in a beautiful outdoor place.”
The trail’s official opening is scheduled for September 2012, when all sculptures are installed and completed. If you’d like to adopt and dedicate a piece of the trail, contact NMWA’s Ponteir Sackrey at 307.732.5444. www.wildlifeart.org
PS: Thinking about the Museum caused me to wonder about Jackson’s lodging statistics for September, 2011 Fall Arts Festival month. Downtown Jackson was 85% full, up 1% from 2010; Outlying Jackson lodging was 86%, up a whole 7% from 2010′s 79%. 2010′s lodging stats for Fall Arts set records, so 2011 looks like a new record! Still awaiting September 2011 sales tax stats.
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Here’s that plus sign again! It’s the new arts text symbol.
Literary + Visual Art, a collaboration between Heather James Fine Art and the Teton County Library’s Page to Podium Series, offers a chance to attend an in-person conversation
with writer Michael Cunningham, author of “The Hours.” Local artist Pamela Gibson will interview Cunningham about his latest book, set in New York’s art scene; other topics include the status of art in America and the “art of living a writing life.”
(Hint: Get up early. Brush teeth. Make coffee. If you write in your jammies, lock front door! Sit down, and do it the Anne Lamott way: bird by bird.)
Cunningham’s talk begins at Heather James at 6:00 pm, on Friday, October 21. Tickets are $125 if purchased at the library; a little bit more if you use PayPal. www.tclib.org/authorchat.
From 3:30-6:00 pm on October 21, peruse the scary scarecrows up for auction at the Center for the Arts. The auction is silent until 5:30 pm, then goes live. Food, drink, live performances–it’s free to attend! Arts educator Jane Lavino is building a scarecrow. “At various times during construction my cat scarecrow resembled a kangaroo, a squirrel and a large rat,” Lavino says. “I hope the balance is tipping more towards ‘cat’ right now! After wrestling over 100 square feet of chicken wire into some semblance of an animal, my hands look like they were attacked by all of the above!”
Buy a scarecrow–all one of a kind and made by local artists–and raise funds for the Center and JH Public Art Initiative.
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The Art Association presents arts industry consultant Bruce Baker, conducting a two-day workshop: Thrive, Not Merely Survive, As a Studio Professional. Baker teaches the workshop November 5 & 6, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm both days. If you have great ideas, why be starving, artists? Baker will talk about how to effectively sell your art, particularly if you work the art fair circuit. Booth design, sales and customer service, tips on slides for juried shows and trends and product development will be discussed.
Many of Jackson’s artists are, by now, practiced art fair veterans–but maybe there’s much more to being successful than meets the eye. One gal who always hits it out of the park: Michelle Miller, of Magpie (Driggs, Idaho) fame. Miller nabs that corner booth, she can be found in the same space every year, her displays are chock full of goodies, she’s whimsically fun and makes jewelry on the spot. Merchandise it, baby!
Cost for Baker’s two-day workshop: $165 for A.A. members, $175 for non-members. www.artassociation.org
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For Annie on Her 39th Birthday
Before I slept I asked
Where do we go when we leave?
Like Annie left,
She rode away one day.
A mountain lion came for her
And up the stairs they went.
Here’s what happened:
Sarah and I are on a plane
We fly over shimmering water
We fly over emerald grasses
Waving at us.
Sacred views, magic earth.
We fly into night sky,
Through stars.
My plane is a spaceship-
Now I am alone.
A Heavenly spirit,
Round, starry and warm
Floating in space
Asks, “How do I speak
To my friends on Earth?
They cannot hear me
And I have something to tell them.”
I say,
“Just be You.
Nothing fancy,
Just You,
And You will be heard.”
He smiles
And I fly
Further into the sky,
Higher.
I see Annie’s house in the stars.
A tiny log cabin,
Windows aglow,
Wrapped round by tall firs
And twinkling lights.
That is where Annie
Is living, I know.
Thump! I land in a field
Boundless countryside
Rolling hills, sunshine,
Birds singing.
Annie’s flower,
Hydrangea,
Over and under me
In branches, spilling
Over fences
A periwinkle carpet.
A pony pulls his farmer
And wooden cart piled deep
With hydrangeas
High as the sky.
“Sarah, look! She is Everywhere!”
The Jackson Hole Art Association kicks off its Summer Exhibitions this week, when artists Mark Newport, Jean Laughton and Taylor Glenn present their work. A reception for all three shows takes place Friday, June 3, 5:30 pm at the Center for the Arts. The shows remain up through July 29, 2011.
Mark Newport’s Sweatermen are giant, knit superhero costumes. Hand made knit goods are especially memory-provoking and connective. My own mother still knits, and a few Christmases ago she created a series of knit snakes. She gave them little black yarn smiles and tiny hats, lined them with panty hose and filled them with birdseed. She’d make a fortune turning them out by the dozen, but she indulged her vision. The snakes are a limited series.
That kind of tactile sensory stimulation, along with every child’s adoration of superheroes, combine to make these intriguing life-size costumes. An empty, dangling superhero suit begs to be filled out; we imagine ourselves inside each one, or a faceless, perfect somebody beneath the hoods. As I write, I realize we adults—particularly baby boomers, the first generation to make anti-aging a daily pursuit—are still drawn to comic book idols. We flock to the movies to see Ironman, Superman, the Green Hornet, Spiderman, Batman.
Artist and educator Mark Newport is the Artist-in-Residence and Head of Fiber at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He will give an artist’s talk that day, June 11, at 12:00 p.m. in the Art Association’s Main Gallery.
Taylor Glenn’s touching and beautiful images of China’s Mandarin Green Plastics Company capture assembly workers in an artificial flower factory. That fact does not minimize the poetry in these photographs.
Far Chang humanizes a product Americans buy en masse; these flowers are somebody’s daily art. “We rarely give thought to how these products are made and the individuals who are responsible. These images are a personal and quiet observation of daily life at this factory,” says the Art Association.
Glenn will give a gallery talk on Thursday, June 7, at 7:00 pm.
Jean Laughton’s My Ranching Life caps off the summer shows with dynamic images of Western South Dakota ranching life; this American life. Laughton took these photographs in the Badlands of Interior, South Dakota. Laughton studied photography, simultaneously adapting to the hard tack of daily cowboy life. These are large-scale panoramic photographs, capturing the West’s superhero ranching lifestyle.
http://www.artassociation.org/exhibitions/index.html
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An esteemed colleague, a friend with an interest in urban planning and who works in the real estate industry on a global level, has sent me a list of books written by his own “urban planning heroes,” with synopses:
Design with Nature by Ian McHarg – McHarg taught that buildings and landscapes must respect the natural environment and the ecosystem.
Death and Life of American Cities by Jane Jacobs – Jacobs wrote that “eyes and feet on the street” leading to direct human interaction is the key to successful neighborhoods. Auto-centric, civil-engineering-driven approaches kill neighborhoods.
City in History by Lewis Mumford – Mumford wrote that cities represent the best that civilization has to offer. Most of the advancements in the long history of humankind came from the exchange of ideas and commerce in cities. He valued the historic legacy of cities over the post-modernist destruction of the reminders of who we are and where we came from.
Triumph of the City by Ed Glaeser – Glaeser is a young Harvard economist who just appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He writes that cities are one of the best inventions in humankind and that they are the key to living efficiently on the planet. He is a bit of an anti-planner in that he says planners often get it wrong (sprawl zoning from the 50s was built on bad assumptions that everyone wants a half-acre lot and a two-car garage and no sidewalks). But his ideas about how people express their desires in the real estate marketplace are really intriguing. And he does think that the marketplace would demand higher density, which is also more efficient, if sprawl zoning could be changed.
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Coming to a gallery near you:
Altamira Fine Art welcomes Montana artist Ted Waddell and contemporary landscape painter Louisa McElwain, at an opening reception Thursday, June 2, 6-8:00 pm. Their joint show, Good Country, remains up through June 19. www.altamiraart.com
The Diehl Gallery celebrates its 10th Anniversary on Thursday, June 30. The 10th Anniversay Fête happens 5-9:00 pm at the Gallery. This summer, Diehl features artists Hung Liu, Ashley Collins and Sheila Norgate. The gallery will also travel to Art in San Diego September 1-4th. Cool! www.diehlgallery.com
Trio Fine Art begins summer hours on June 1. The gallery–which features the work of Lee Carlman Riddell, September Vhay, Kathryn Mapes Turner and Jennifer Hoffman–will be open Wednesday through Saturday, noon-6:00 pm. Stop by for tea. Shows throughout the summer! www.triofineart.com
The Jackson Hole Art Auction closes its 2011 Auction consignment period June 1. If you want to consign and you are reading this post May 31, 2011, you’ve got 24 hours to contact Lucy P. Grogan by phoning 866.549.9278. www.jacksonholeartauction.com
A gloved hand grasping a warm gun. The gloved hand, avec pistol, pushes its way through the back of a steeple-shaped enclosure, and the gun is pointed at…..? The gun barrel is wrapped with what appears to be a barbershop pole spiral; all are framed inside a fire-engine red border.
Hold on, that tiny steeple is flanked by feral, sharp wing formations. Chubby jet propulsion feet set the base.
Hmm. Blows my theory about what this little sculpture may be about…..
It’s all subjective! And that’s the fun.
Found objects are the media of choice for artist John Thompson. His show, Accumulation, is on display in the Artspace Theater Gallery at the Center for the Arts through May 26.
Thompson says he sometimes conjures full works out of thin air. He wakes up and “there they are.” The Art Association describes Thompson’s work as experiments in color, pattern and finishes that come together in artistic statements—perhaps queries, perhaps pure observations–about universal themes: good and evil, positive and negative, decay and belief.
Also on display, in the Artspace Main Gallery through the end of April, is the Art Association’s 2010 Members Only Exhibition. The show is a grass roots, community inspired exhibition of artworks by all Art Association members. Hundreds of works are on display, representing all manner of medium. Come and see what Jackson’s creative community dishes out. It’s great dish!
If you have an idea for a show, submit your proposal to the Art Association by May 2010, to be considered for exhibition space in the Artspace Galleries in 2011. The Art Association’s policy and practice “….considers exhibition proposals on an ongoing basis as part of its mission to encourage a vital, creative community. The free contemporary art exhibition programs presented in the Artspace Main, Loft, Theatre and Lobby Galleries enhance the creative and educational environment of the organization and showcase a balance of local, regional and national artists. The Exhibition Committee of the Art Association considers complete exhibition proposals on a periodic basis.”
Not long ago, on New York’s Lower East Side, the world’s first Art Handlers Olympics took place. An article appeared in the New York Times. Here’s an excerpt:
“The event, the first-ever Art Handling Olympics - a combination roast, “Jackass”-style stunt extravaganza and excuse to drink a lot – drew about 200 people at its height who came to the Ramiken Crucible gallery to watch a dozen four-man teams (art handlers are, by and large, male, and, by and large, large) go head-to-head, demonstrating their skills with a lot of fake art and untold amounts of Bubble Wrap.
“We kind of thought maybe this was the wrong time for this, because everyone who works in this field was worn out from working the Armory Show and everything that goes on around that, but it turned out it was the perfect time, because everybody needed to vent,” Ted Riederer, an artist, former art handler and one of the event’s organizers, said. For some of the events, Mr. Riederer took on the role of a cruel German curator, wearing a tight houndstooth suit and sunglasses, shouting abuse at the handlers like “Nein! Nein!” and “Hold it higher, higher, a little higher!” and “I pay you people to do this?”
dot, dot, dot……..
“Called “The Eliminator,” the final punishing round involved a kind of Nascar-pit-crew competition for the remaining two teams – one named the 
Kings of Cleats and one whose name was a slightly racy double-entendre. The teams had to take pieces of art out of a wooden crate and, with the clock ticking, assemble them into an installation with no instructions or curatorial guidance. (The “art installation” kit consisted of a blanket, a tambourine, streamers, two rattraps and other things that resembled street trash – in other words, the kinds of things many art handlers have actually had to try to assemble by themselves on the job.)
If the time constraints weren’t tough enough, the art handlers were often heckled during this round by onlookers; one shouted “Derivative!” as the artwork was thrown together. Asked if he and his friends had practiced for the event, Paul Outlaw, a member of the team that went home with the silver, said: “Other than doing this all day, anyway, and sometimes all night? No.”
At the end of the day the Kings of Cleats, in an upset, won the gold, a “lovely handcrafted medal,” as the organizers described it, embossed with an image of a hand holding up a majestic flaming tape dispenser. “Plus, of course, they win enduring fame,” said Shane Caffrey, an art handler for the Marianne Boesky Gallery (daughter of Ivan Boesky!) and the event’s lead organizer.
No money?
Mr. Caffrey laughed. “In this business?”
Shhhhh. It’s a silent auction.
The 15th Annual Out of the Woods Silent Art Auction, an Art Association favorite, takes place Friday, November 20th, 6-8 pm at the Center for the Arts Theater Lobby.
We don’t have Todd around, but we still have his “shhh!” A sort of an in-house ‘palates and palettes’ arts event, the evening promises a throng of art-lover clamoring for food, wine and….local art. Artists donate works, and the public bids on art of all kinds, via a silent auction. It’s loads of fun, and all proceeds raise money for the Art Association’s Educational Programming.
On your mark, get set…..start shopping! For information, contact Amy Fradley at 307.733.8792 or email amyf@artassociation.org.
Also at the Art Association – specifically upstairs in the Artspace Loft Gallery – check out “Little Cayman,” on display November 13 – December 31, 2009.
Drool and live vicariously through News & Guide grand dame Liz McCabe, who has been visiting Little Cayman. The exhibit is billed as a collection of visions of the south seas idyll by McCabe, Jon Stuart, Laura McWethy, Tom Montgomery and others.
If they need someone to carry their bags, they should give me a call. www.artassociation.org.
Item #2: Thal Glass
Glass blower Laurie Thal blows and fires her magic goblets, vases and vessels in her Teton Village Road studio. Every fall -or early winter, depending on how you experience November - she hosts a holiday open house, and this year’s holiday event takes place Saturday, November 21, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm. This is a free event, and a fun excursion for the whole family.
Thal will be there, giving demonstrations and answering questions–the studio is typically stocked with a variety of glass items, in a variety of sizes and price points and a veritable rainbow of colors.
Thal has not supplied a contact phone number, but click on her website–linked above–for more information and a good look at her wares.
