Posts Tagged ‘Contemporary Art’
Reading is fundamental, creates discourse, and builds creative energy.
Beginning in February, the Teton County Library, in conjunction with the Wyoming Humanities Council, begins a statewide Reading Wyoming Civil War reading series; the project will circulate to and include other Wyoming communities as well.
On January 2, the program opens for sign ups. Let’s Talk About It: Making Sense of the American Civil War commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and emancipation. The Wyoming Humanities Council notes: “Max Ludington will lead five conversations, from 6-7 p.m. on Mondays: February 13 and 27, March 12 and 26, and April 9. The series was designed by Ed Ayers from National Public Radio’s History Guys program and will introduce readers to a large cast of characters, explore a range of perspectives, and help participants gain a deeper understanding of America’s Civil War.
For a list of readings, visit www.tclib.org/bookclubs. For more information, contact Teton County Library.
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Friday, January 6, 2012, join the Factory Studios gang as they celebrate Anniversary Numero Uno! Starting early (for those guys!) the party happens 6:30-8:30 pm. Billed as an evening
of art and music, all comers can enjoy exploring the Factory’s maze of studio spaces and meet resident artists. There will be music by the Deadlocks, and you can expect to hang with Factory Founder Travis Walker and these cool folks: Abbie Miller, Aaron Wallis, Tony Birkholz, Peggy Prugh, Anomaly Farm, Camille Davis, XOWYO, Alissa Davies, Rob Hollis, and John Frechette/Strapped Glass.
Work by Jenny Meyer and resident artists will be on exhibit. And there’s more “Wimbledon-style” ping pong planned. This program might be a bit fluid, so check in with the Factory at www.factorystudios.org/index.html
Sometimes it all boils down to the boat.
Now on exhibition at the Tayloe Piggott Gallery, artist Kathryn Lynch’s River Tugs is an opus to the painter’s surroundings, and her naive, folk-like painting style is refreshing. It’s cool to have these paintings of tugboats and other vessels in Jackson, because they’re subject matter not often offered up in our mountain town. Lynch leaves out nautical details and concentrates on each boat’s essence—for her, these tugs are “symbols of the ongoing solitary traveler in each of us.” The theme is one we’ve picked up on in the most recent Piggott gallery shows, and these works encourage us to give pause—and that’s a good thing. No rushing. Lynch’s tonal, broad strokes, rendered in grays, greens, orange and blues, suggest play even as they suggest a certain somber observation of our collective psyche.
As children, pushing our Fisher Price tugboats around and around in the bath made the prospect of approaching bedtime much more welcome. Splashing play, followed by a dive under the blankets and dream time.
Showing concurrently at Tayloe Piggott is Nicole Charbonnet’s body of new works, Wild Things. Charbonnet’s layered, fresco-like works “serve as a metaphor for the phenomenon of recollection,” and portray animals found in the wild and iconic wild West horses and cowboy themes. Charbonnet also explores our own perceptions of self through non-human imagery; her work expresses a longing—and also a reverence—for days gone by.
She sees in her process of “erasing” the paint and overlaying additional layers something that both celebrates and criticizes the values portrayed by her subjects. “I’m raising questions about their current viability in a changed world. I make them look old and tired, though still beautiful, to ask if it’s time to relegate them to memory.”
A New Orleans native, Charbonnet says her home city greatly influences her work. “If you watch New Orleans, you see everywhere the effects of the process of time on surfaces,” she says. adding “That’s true of every place, every person.” The artist builds up her paintings with layers of textures, images, words, fabrics and collaged papers from all manner of sources. Says Charbonnet,“Nothing is ever completely gone, so even if you don’t hold a conscious memory of something, it forms the fabric and texture of who you are. I try to re-create the process your mind goes through in becoming what it is. You see something, and it reminds you of something else, another context, another feeling, even while the original image remains.”
River Tugs and Wild Things remain on exhbition through February 7, 2012. www.tayloepiggottgallery.com
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Trailside Galleries annual Holiday Miniatures Show opens with a gallery reception on Thursday, December 29, 5-8:00 pm. The gallery is excited to début “exquisite” new miniature paintings from most of the gallery’s roster of
artists. The gallery will feature new works by such noted Western artists as Kyle Sims, Dan Smith, Adam Smith, Joseph Sulkowski, Guy Coheleach, Robert Duncan, Nicholas Coleman, David Mayer, and many others.
The show’s opening takes place in conjunction with that evening’s downtown Jackson Holiday ArtWalk. While you are there, venture upstairs to see what’s new at the Jackson Hole Art Auction offices; Trailside produces the annual Fall Arts Festival event in conjunction with the Gerald Peters Gallery. For more information, phone 307-733-3186. www.trailsidegalleries.com …
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Thursday, December 22, wildlife artist Mary Roberson gives an artist’s demonstration at Altamira Fine Art, 3-5:00 pm. An artist’s conversation, “My Sketch Book,” will be presented by Roberson at 6:00 pm.
Altamira takes its name from Spain’s famous Upper Paleolithic cave paintings of wild beasts. Of all Altamira’s artists, Roberson is most connected to that wild spirit, and inner knowledge that animals inform us.
Shattering news for the Art Association that its most recent executive director, Nick Van Hevelingen, has walked. When an organization of the size and complexity of the Art Association—still the Center for the Arts’ most significant tenant in terms of square footage—loses two new executive directors in such short order, it’s safe to assume internal conflict exists. Unfortunately, the Art Association isn’t the only local non-profit grappling with leadership and staffing issues.
My first impression of Van Hevelingen was that he was a natty dresser. Pressed and sharp, his business experience and pedigrees surely impressed board members. I was impressed. My first conversation with Van Hevelingen was surprising, because he openly discussed his frustrations. Pacing the room, he fiddled with connections and hook-ups on his computer. He produced a folder thick as a New York City phone book; that folder was full of research and plans to restore Glenwood Street’s Western Motel. The idea was to renovate the hotel’s single floor annex, clean up the hotel rooms and facilities and turn the building into artists
studios. I and a friend had come to talk about the Art Association becoming the anchor group for a public-art-in-store-windows initiative. He liked the idea, and said that insuring such a project would be relatively easy, but that he and staff would not be able to do the footwork of canvassing Town Square commercial real estate owners. Fair enough.
Travis Walker compiled the research in that folder. The Western Hotel project never happened, for the reason most projects-in-waiting don’t happen. No money. It seems Van Hevelingen hoped funding would come from a source other than the Art Association; the emperor had no clothes. Walker’s group backed off. Too bad, because reviving that space and bringing artists back downtown would help connect the Center for the Arts to Jackson’s Town Center. Visitors would be able to see artists as they worked. And those visitors would walk across the street to the Center and experience the Art Association’s superb gallery space and exhibitions.
It’s curious that despite strong suggestions from Jackson’s most prominent industry consultants that local non-profits consider consolidating, almost nobody has done it. Why?
The answer can only be ego. And it’s so past time to get over that.
Until our economy improves, non-profits should actively look for ways to hook up to solve common issues. Walker’s Factory Studios now provides affordable space for a large number of Jackson’s contemporary artists. But there is high demand for more space. Wouldn’t the ideal be to have those artists back downtown, making art that could be displayed in town? We should think of Jackson’s cultural health as a whole, not as individual entities fighting for dominance. The Art Association has traditionally been Jackson’s power contemporary arts hub. Many young artists got their start there. That’s changing, much as the world’s economic balance has changed.
Let’s think globally, locally. Our non-profits are countries whose fortunes are changing; creative groups barely on the map a few years ago now provide sustainable solutions and venues. Until recently, Germany‘s economy was troubled. Now the country is an economic model and much of the world would love to use its credit cards.
At September’s United Nations General Assembly, driven by national political agendas, the United States attempted to block a Palestine bid to gain U.N. membership. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, an underdog on the world stage, forcefully broke with the Obama administration and proposed a compromise: enhance Palestine’s status to that of an observer state.
“This would be an important step forward,” Sarkozy said. “Most important, it would mean emerging from a state of immobility that favors only the extremists.”
It’s not the size of your sign anymore; it’s innovation that counts. You may be an activist non-profit; you may be a “get it on the ground” organization. If you share a “big picture” cause with other groups, don’t isolate; seek strength by finding ways to come together.
Summer, season of the sagebrush, presents a fine opportunity to visit Trailside Galleries’ annual show Salute to Summer.
Salute to Summer is considered by many in Jackson’s arts community to be summer’s official arts scene opener. Opening June 6, the show runs through June 26; an artists’ reception will be held at Trailside on Thursday, June 23, 5-8:00 pm. Known for its exceptional roster of historical and contemporary Western artists, the gallery is also the Jackson home of the Fall Arts Festival season’s Jackson Hole Art Auction.
2011′s Salute to Summer showcases diverse new work by all gallery artists. A partial list of participating artists includes Bonnie Marris, Ralph Oberg, Robert 
Moore, Matt Smith, Dan Mieduch, Bill Anton, Kyle Sims, Jim Norton, Howard Rogers, Nicholas Coleman, Brent Cotton, and Z.S. Liang, among many others.
Trailside’s Managing Partner Maryvonne Leshe is featured in Southwest Art’s May 2011 issue, 40 Prominent People in the Western Art World. Leshe says that her proudest achievements include weathering tough economic times and developing successful careers for new artists, such as Kyle Sims. The biggest changes she’s seen in the art world are “the number of museums entering the market,” competing with galleries for artists’ work, and a growing group of younger collectors interested in buying more contemporary Western art.
For information, contact Dawn Meckem. 307.733.3186. www.trailsidegalleries.com
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“I begin with a realistic focus—the photograph—and use this as a vehicle to express a mood or an aspect of the human condition. Then, by extending the colors and the textures found in the photograph, I can create a world from my own imagination, the results bordering on the surreal.” – Robin Winfield
I recently visited the storybook town of Carmel, California. The town has so many galleries that, in 2004, its council passed an ordinance dictating that no new galleries may open. The ratio of galleries to residents then was 1:34; Carmel has over 120 art galleries.
One artist whose work stands out is Robin Winfield. Her sunny gallery, just off Ocean Avenue and tucked down a whitewashed pathway, beckons. I’d estimate her shop is 200 square feet, and chock full of her architecture-inspired photograph/paintings. Winfield’s love of photography and archictecture meet in her portraits of buildings, doorways, signage, and interpretations of other works of art. A St. Louis native, Winfield has traveled the world and the U.S., documenting cities across
Europe and Mexico. Her work does connote the surreal; Surrealism uses images from the subconcscious to create works depicting everyday objects in ways that challenge our sense of reality. Winfield’s manipulated paintings of city details and doorways remind me most of Giorgio de Chirico’s Metaphysical Town Squares series. Winfield’s works do not interpret the human form; she prefers transforming city buildings and streets.
Enigmatic and mystical, these paintings pay homage to the arches, doorways, paved streets, buildings and storehouses Winfield encounters. Palaces, porticos, power lines, Buddhas and trolley tracks are all re-imagined via the artist’s unique process.
From photographic slides Winfield makes “full frame, archival, laminated prints,” and adheres them to board. She treats the surrounding surfaces with a spackle-like material, preparing them for paint. “Usually I do not paint on the photograph, although there are exceptions,” notes Winfield. ”I paint out from the 
photograph, creating a surreal or different reality [that surrounds] the photo, the focal point.”
Winfield’s works are evocative, beautiful, meditative.
Contact Robin Winfield by phoning 831.601.0725 or emailing robinwinfield@hotmail.com. Log on to her website: www.robinwinfield.com
“How do I paint what energy looks like? How do I paint the moment when a form is actually forming, and what happens before and after energies collide?”
Enormous questions, problems Einstein or Hawking might be able to actually solve. Jackson artist Alison Brush ponders them every time she paints. Brush’s fluid, abstract paintings are gestures to the universe. Her acrylic works (recently on display, with a large percentage sold, at Elevated Grounds in Wilson, Wyoming) are celestial, cosmic, nebular. They also bring to mind an ocean’s swirling, pulsing depths.
“It’s fascinating and beautiful to me, to think about what happens after storm fronts explode against one another. I love to consider what is common to all of us, things that connect us, whether we
can see them or not, or are even aware of their existence,” says Brush. “Many people refer to my paintings as “Rorschachs” because they are so open to interpretation. The more you look at them, the more you see. That’s what I want—people taking time to discover what they do see in my paintings.”
Brush does not use black pigment, but her works suggest deep space. One has to incorporate stillness to offset “an event that is taking place” in a work. She works in “gestures,” swooping and curving her brushstrokes, adding curves and twists. She’s long had a passion for the simple formations of rocks and wood, and dissolves their physical essence in her paintings. Even in the darkest spaces, activity thrives.
Brush paints with intent, but favors acrylics for their malleable quality. She can be bold, make mistakes; and mistakes often turn into wondrous artistic conclusions.
“I envision my paintings as windows on a world largely mysterious to all of us. I use large and small canvases, because smaller fields can pose great artistic challenge–how do you fit the energy of a universe inside such a space? These paintings are totally different from the animal portraits I also love to do. Those represent my rational side; the atmospheric works come from my intuition.”
Though Brush had an arts background , she worked in the corporate world, a Wall Street fixture. She left the Street in 1988, but stayed in the corporate world until 2001. Five years ago she returned to painting full time.
“I’ve found a new voice,” she says. “I’m so happy to be getting such positive response to my work. People tell me they don’t understand abstraction in art, but they find my paintings beautiful.”