Jackson Hole Art Blog

Through July 31, Trailside Galleries will present a showcase of works by artist Mike Malm —  new paintings will be available for viewing the latter part of the month.

Though he often paints landscapes, Malm is an avid romantic portraitist.  His softest, most sensitive works often recall Renoir’s reverence for the feminine.  Against rural backgrounds Malm portrays what he feels is one of God’s great creations:  the human figure.   To  Malm, a tilt of the head or tiny hand gesture can communicate universal thought and emotion.

In other words, painting is a calling for this artist, a testimony.   With every work, Malm strives to move his viewers by capturing the infinite subtleties of human nature.

A new showcase of paintings by artist Chris Owen follows, August 1-31 at Trailside.  The gallery says up to ten new works will be on display by the artist, whose work hangs in such collections as the Pearce Western Art Collection in Corsicana, Texas, the National Western Museum in Denver, Colorado, and the Old West Museum in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Owen has moved to working with oils full time, and his passion is chronicling cowboy life.  In speaking about his art Owen falls into detailed descriptions of his observations of horses and ranches.

“There is nothing more satisfying to me than to bring a green colt up into a real nice saddle horse that knows how to handle himself and is a pleasure to be around. From the halter breaking and ground work right on up to all of the roping and getting gates and other ranch chores, each step presents its own challenges and the way it’s handled can vary quite a bit depending on the individual horse’s personality,” says the artist.

For information on both shows, contact Trailside’s Dawn Meckam by emailing dawn@trailsidegalleries.com, or phoning  307.733.3186.

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At Heather James Fine Art, Masters of Impressionism and Modern Art brings together exquisite examples of art by Berthe Morisot, Édouard Léon Cortès, Fernand Léger, René Magritte, Claude Monet, and Jackson Pollock among many others.

A highlight of the show, Monet’s Water Lily (c. 1915-1919), gives Jackson art lovers a chance to see one of Monet’s signature works; part of a series that defined the artist’s career.   ”Monet’s distinctive late palette and all of the pictorial tensions unique to the achievements of the artist’s final decades are on display with this prime example from the master Impressionist’s oeuvre,” says the gallery’s James Corona.

Specific works on exhibit include Pablo Picasso’s Buste de Femme Souriante (1901) and Fernand Léger’s La racine noire et fragments d’objets (1943-1950).  

For information: lyndsay@heatherjames.com.

As this is the Jackson Hole Art Blog, and not the Irish Artists Look at America Blog, I should probably begin this post with my “Art for Dummies” discovery that Thomas Moran, famed portraitist of Yellowstone, was not the only artist in his family.   In fact, most of his immediate family were noted artists, a bit of art history I recently discovered.

Instead I’m opening by turning you on to Irish painter Tom Molloy’s exhibit at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art.  Located in Ridgefield, Connecticut, the Aldrich is a gem, an “approachable” museum with great appeal.  A friend cautioned that the Aldrich was, at the time of our visit, “between exhibits.”  It was.  Most galleries were closed, but the exhibition we viewed was so powerful it was worth the time invested and more.

The show’s title, Tom Molloy, is as spare as this exhibit first appears. It is unusual because Molloy is an Irishman living in Ireland whose work is largely about American events and issues.  Akin to Pop Art, Molloy’s art utilizes real money, maps, other found objects and wordplay.  His “surgically precise” drawings and scale are magnetic.  Zoomed in, Molloy’s scathing opinions on global events, new world order and America’s role in global affairs reveal themselves.  Messages are punch-you-in-the-heart clear.

A self portrait depicts Molloy holding a newspaper featuring a photo of an Abu Ghraib detainee holding a photo depicting one of the detention facility’s nefarious prisoner abuses.  Map, one of Molloy’s best known works, is a cut dollar bill map of the world; not much larger than a dollar bill, we initially mistook the work for a wall doodle. Positioned at eye level, it is in fact a “….double-edged metaphor of American might and hegemony.”

Dead Texans, a series of fifty stamp sized portraits of death row prison inmates executed in that state during George W. Bush’s tenure as governor, captures each prisoner’s likeness, even providing glimpses of personality and fractured spirits. From a slight distance the portraits resemble inky thumbprints.  These men are simultaneously stripped of personal identity and confirmed as unique, individual beings. Each regards the viewer straight on.  Faintly visible penciled drawing grids further connote incarceration and the reality of fifty doomed destinies.

Standing in the gallery’s center, we realize that an exhibition as politically charged as this has yet to turn up in Jackson. With time, I believe we can open ourselves to exhibiting work with equal depth and commentary.

Tom Molloy remains on exhibit at the Aldrich until June 13 2010. Phone: 203.438.4519.

Item #2:

Went to dinner at my cousin’s house.  She’s a master artist in her own right, she needs to exhibit and show, show, show.

As we talked, she pointed out a substantially sized etching hanging over the sofa.  The work depicts a Pennsylvania open field, ringed by forest, and inhabited- Peaceable Kingdom style–by cows and other animals.  She pointed to the artist’s name:  Peter Moran (1841-1914).

My cousin found the etching at a flea market. She cleaned it up, and instantly spotted Moran’s signature.

Peter Moran, brother of Thomas Moran, favored Pennsylvania’s farmlands as subjects, but in 1890 he participated in the U.S. Indian census, and ventured into Yellowstone.  “Grand Tetons View” was, according to Grand Teton National Park, most likely painted while he was on that expedition.  A watercolor, this view captures the Tetons as they appeared from Idaho.  It is part of the permanent collection of the Roswell Museum and Art Center.

Peter Moran, the youngest brother in the Moran family, is said to have become his brother’s best art student.

Peter was three when his family arrived in America.  At age fifteen, he became a lithographer’s apprentice.  His interest in portraying animals was life long.  Moran’s efforts in this area are obvious;  the Teton painting seems an exercise compared to his animal scenes, which are rich in detailed devotion.

Greg Woodard’s “Native Americana,” an exhibition of his new sculptural works, opens with an artist’s reception at Altamira Fine Art on Thursday, September 17, 2-4:00 pm.   The show, currently on display, remains up through September 21.

Woodard is largely self-taught. I’ve chosen to share his portrayal of a wolf, “Last Stand,” carved from apricot wood, because the continued successful sustaining of our region’s wolf population is, currently, at the top of conservationist’s lists.  But Woodard is widely known for keenly specific bird sculptures.   A master falconer, Woodard has been a contender in the Ward World Competition in Ocean City, MD, recognized as the most prestigious bird carving competition in the world.   That is big stuff.

The arts overlap with with conservation and conscientious hunting.  We can all co-exist if we are mindful and creative.   As Woodard notes, understanding environment, habits and characteristics of wildlife is crucial to us, crucial to survival.  His love of the wild is present in his work.

For information, email connect@altamiraart.com.

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Chris Burch sends this headline:

“THESE ARE THE PEOPLE IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD: CENTER OF WONDER SHOW FOCUSES ON COMMUNITY DURING FALL ARTS FESTIVAL!”

Where: Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary, 130 South Jackson Street
When: September 11, 5-8 p.m.  (Palates & Palettes Night!)
Sponsors: Center of Wonder, LMC,  Art Association,  Community Foundation, Rocky Mountain Bank, Wyoming Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts.

Many locals have a hidden–or not so hidden–creative side.  You probably know some of them, but others come as a surprise.   This exhibit, curated by Christian Burch, consists of 30 wooden silhouettes of these secret creative people.

Maybe they can be placed around downtown Jackson?   Our version of NYC’s bronze, life-sized sculptures of businessmen and other citizens, sprinkled around that city.   A nice echo of last winter’s cut-out wildlife figures spread around Wilson and its environs.

Says Burch, ” The show, … in collaboration with Bland Hoke and The Center of Wonder, consists of thirty wooden silhouettes of Jackson Hole citizens painted by an equal number of Jackson’s own local artists. The free-standing figures have been painted so that one side represents what is known of the person, while the other side is painted to reveal something that might not be known. “  Works will be auctioned off to benefit non-profits chosen by the artists.

Information about public art programs will be on display and computers will be available for people to comment on the Teton County Comprehensive Plan review.

Item #3  (excuse the black text…hey, it stands out!)

Teton Artlab spotlights favorite local artist Craig Spankie, on September 11.  Jackson natives Mark and Wade Dunstan and Abbie Miller contribute, too.  Mark and Wade are the children of Kaidi Dunstan and grandkids of Art Association founder Georgie Morgan. (Abbie is making a huge inflatable dress!  Heck yes. – TW) The opening takes place during the FAF festivities that evening.   But don’t call Travis, he has a new baby.  Call Spankie, now an old hand with babies: 699-0687.

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Came across a headline the other day about Scottsdale, Arizona’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Its attendance “surged” and grew by more than 6,000 visitors since the economic bomb fell, and the museum has enjoyed more than 40,000 visitors in the past fiscal year.  That’s more than last year, but less than its 2005-2006 high, a 47,291 visitor count. The link to that article is here.

“I love the way my gallery looks right now; it looks like a New York gallery!” – Tayloe Piggot

J.H. Muse Gallery’s Tayloe Piggot made that comment a few years back; the gallery was then housed in its former West Broadway space.  But, far from moving away from aligning herself with NYC’s mega-arts culture, she continues to reach out, looking to translate that city’s contemporary energy to Jackson Hole’s art scene.

To that end, she and arts specialist  Camille Obering present “Influences of Nature on Abstraction,” opening at J.H. Muse on September 3.  Spotlighting contemporary masters Milton Avery, Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell, the show remains up through the Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival (power play!) all the way to October 14, 2009.  An opening reception takes place Friday, September 11, 5-8:00 pm.

Obviously, public access to works by internationally known contemporary artists is  rare in Jackson.  We’ll all feel as if we’re partaking in a MoMa field trip, and that will be thrilling.  Folks living full time in the inter-mountain west, as a rule, don’t visit significant contemporary museums as often as urban dwellers  This show, says its organizers, depicts work “unconstrained” by “representational” rules—a comment seeming to allude to a belief that here, constraint and representation are the norm.

Emerging art movements often claim to be throwing off restraints of earlier schools, and they are.  But no school of art emerges from a vacuum.

Artistic “constraint” is a misconception; artists decide for themselves what feels like constraint.  If Clyde Aspevig were asked to paint like Frankenthaler, he may feel some constraint.  Aspevig doesn’t interpret and experience nature the same way as Frankenthaler.   Poetry is highly structured and disciplined, but often seems less formally conceived than prose.

These artists–Frankenthaler, Avery, Mitchell and Diebenkorn–created something new for themselves and for art history.  In creating something new, another set of rules for achieving the effect the artist wants is established.   Another guide is written, another opinion.  Artists’ efforts to tell the world as they see it are  opinions set to canvas, photographic paper, in clay.

Artistic vision is highly personal, but principles invariably apply.

From the age of seven, Picasso received formal, academic artistic training.  From those building blocks, his brilliance exploded.  Over and over again Picasso studied the human form.  Without this deep knowledge, Picasso’s abstractions would lose their magic.

Obering puts the Muse show artists in context:

“Milton Avery (1885 – 1965), often thought of as America’s Matisse, is best known for his conflation of abstraction and representation using a rich and unusual palette.

Richard Diebenkorn’s (1922 – 1993) aerial landscapes of California illuminated the light and line of this area by marrying color field painting and geometric abstraction in a bold personal style.

Helen Frankenthaler (born 1928), known as a color field painter and an abstract expressionist, utilized a technique known as “soak stain,” in which oil paints were diluted and painted onto unprimed canvas or
paper, resulting in stunning and luminescent paintings.

Joan Mitchell’s (1925 – 1992) powerful and energetic brush stroke played out nature’s patterns, light, and depth, making her work some of the most spectacular of the
Abstract Expressionists.”

I’d kill for a Frankenthaler; when I look at her work I feel as if I’m beneath the ocean’s surface—a favorite place to be—floating over brilliant corals, translucent kelps.   My sister would like an Avery, please.

For information, visit www.jhmusegallery.com, phone 307.733.0555—or, contact Camille Obering through her website.

Item #2  -  Not Too Late For a Little Cayuse!

Cayuse favorite Jack Walker is back, bringing new designs and best sellers, on Friday, August 28th from 5 – 8pm. Meet Jack and view his pure silver and leather hand crafted work.  He’s joined for the second year by Jackson jeweler and silversmith Dawn Bryfogle, whose work combines contemporary gemstone styling with vintage sterling treasures.  She’ll also be showing her new handmade sterling pieces.

Margaritas may make an appearance at tonight’s opening.  For info, email  info@cayusewa.com.