Posts Tagged ‘Jackson Hole Art’
Tuesday, May 14th, I attended the Town and County funding appeals session at the Teton County Commissioners chamber. Civic process is fascinating. That day the Cultural Council of Jackson Hole defended its appeal to both bodies for greater arts funding. I think it went well!  With our ever-changing leadership, it’s difficult for new civic leaders to be up to speed on the Arts Council’s function. On Tuesday that role was clarified, I hope to the group’s benefit.
Many grant applicants receive funding from other sources. For the Arts Council, that’s not so. Town and County funding is their sole support. Cynthia Huyffer and Lisa Samford made oral presentations to the panel, making several points: Funding for the Arts Council has sunk 40% in recent years; “Americans for the Arts” comprehensive study of the economic impact of the arts here in Teton County stresses art’s key role in our community’s health; tourism is bolstered by a strong arts presence (true in EVERY city!); arts are not “icing on the cake”–they foster new ideas, keep cities exciting and dynamic, reflect history and new arts initiatives, are language tools, build self-esteem, create memorable high-impact experiences; and that the Cultural Council is a “re-granting” group. They use monies provided by Town and County to fund grant requests.
The Arts Council had, by far, the greatest number of supporters in the room. That sends a strong message in itself, doesn’t it? In addition to the speakers named above, these individuals were present: Cathy Wikoff, Alissa Davies, Emy diGrappa, Gary Silberberg, Carrie Geraci, Amanda Flosbach, Pontier Sackrey, Rachel Pettingill and Mary Lee White. Apologies if I’ve left any names out.
The Arts Council requested $50,000 from the County and $20,000 from the Town. Last year, total funding was approximately $34,000. As the group pointed out, that money has to be distributed, most often, to 20-25 arts groups approved for funding by the Arts Council.
Now that the Arts Council has made its appeal, it’s time for Jackson’s artists to send in their applications. These grants are available to arts and culture organizations as well as individual artists. Your project should be creative, dynamic and beneficial to a broad portion of the community. Ask yourself this: Would I feel confident presenting my request directly to the Town Council or Teton County Commissioners? How would they respond?Â
This is a two-way street, so read your application out loud to yourself. How does it sound? It’s a gift to have the Council go to bat for artists that may not wish to be in chambers; and our civic leaders, overwhelmed with agendas, recognize that the Cultural Council does a huge service by working with arts organizations directly.
Grants are now available on the Cultural Council of Jackson Hole website. Here are guidelines: The program distributes social service tax dollars from the Town of Jackson and Teton County for arts education, producing and presenting opportunities, and public projects by individual artists that have strong community benefit. Requests may be up to $6,000, and must be cash-matched at least 1:1 by each applicant. Applications are due June 1, 2013. Â No support will be provided to any entity already receiving public support from Town or County funds.Â
You can find Arts for All application forms, guidelines and budget at www.culturalcounciljh.org. Contact Alissa Davies at culturalcounciljh@gmail.com. And Alissa: Thank you for your years of balanced, constant, thoughtful and energetic work on behalf of “Arts for All!” Â You are one of Jackson’s finest arts representatives.Â
Today’s post is a Jackson art quote quiz…..Fun! Leo d.V. ( NOT from Jackson) might have a quote here, but everyone else is anonymous. Enjoy!Â
“I guess I feel wildflowers are worthy of sainthood.”
“process, engagement, collaboration, instigation~~This year is marked by unique collaborations which engage me on ambiguous terrain and with conceptual duality. I exploit the magical/practical, which brims with repetition and surprise. And I continue to work as a bricoleur!”
“Art is not being recycled from one house to the other. There’s a place for all of it, but it’s nice to see more confidence in people about buying art, other than what they think they should be buying because they live in Jackson.”Â
“The colt sketch is so loose, but you know what it is; it’s more ethereal.”Â
“The only good art is post-referential art!”
“To know what you’re painting, everyone can pick up a tube of paint and squeeze. But to know what you’re squeezing, that takes book learning.”
“If someone innocently pulls into town and parks in the parking lot, needs to use the public facilities, they find my art wrapped
around the building!”Â
“If I avoid painting the Tetons for fear of their being trite, it would be dishonest.”
“Castellazzo got a piece of all the french roast coffee trucked into town, and he is the main supplier of nudes for life drawing classes.”
“The West is industrialized, it’s not perfect and beautiful…but what is tragic, or could be tragic, you weave that into a beautiful pattern of the landscapes.”Â
“Very few people know that those flowers were not there the day that painting was done. I know they weren’t there, and I know the reason Bob painted them in. But I can’t tell you, it’s a secret.”Â
The Poetry Box’s Meg Daly writes she is very excited that The Poetry Box is now stocked with poems by Pulitzer Prize winning Poet Gary Snyder. The Poetry Box, a free source of poetry for locals, by locals and otherwise noted poets, stands outside Jackson’s Valley Bookstore, in Gaslight Alley.
Snyder is this year’s Teton County Library “Page to Podium” speaker; Snyder will give a poetry reading at Jackson’s Center for the Arts Theater on Tuesday, March 13, 6-8:00 pm. His reading will be followed by an interview with local author, Exum mountain guide and Zen practitioner, Jack Turner. At the evening’s end, Snyder will preside over a book signing. Daly notes that the library has produced collectible bookmarks featuring four of Snyder’s poems.
“This is a dream come true for The Poetry Box – that the work of local and regional poets would intermingle with poetry greats like Snyder, Nye and Pinsky,” says Daly. “Thanks to our collaborators and sponsors: Teton County Library, Jackson Hole Review, JH Writer’s Conference, pARTners, and the amazing JH Public Art Initiative. Thanks, also, to you readers! And please send me your poems!”
The Poetry Box is designed and built by John Frechette (www.strappedglass.com). Email Meg Daly at meg@megdaly.com. To learn more about Snyder’s Jackson appearance, visit this link.
The National Museum of Wildlife Art (NMWA)Â holds an Open House at the Teton County Library for its new Sculpture Trail on Thursday, February 24, 4-6:00 pm. Â Free and open to the public, it is a chance to test your public art chops; and feel involved with creating Jackson’s first permanent, landscaped outdoor sculpture garden designed by urban landscape and site architect Walter Hood. Drawings, overview plans and various schematics will be available to view. Special laptops will be provided so that attendees can participate in a survey about the garden’s design. Museum representatives will be on hand.
In a May, 2009 post we wrote that “…the Museum says the trail will provide new ways for visitors to view wildlife art within a landscape; sculptor Richard Loffler’s Buffalo Trail will be part of the project. An amphitheater will replace the current drive at NMWA’s entrance and an “edge trail” will run along the east ledge of the current visitor’s parking area. Hood’s hope has always been to meld NMWA’s vantage point and contoured landscapes with views of the Elk Refuge, creating a greater visceral connection between the two sites.”
In a three-part Jackson Hole Art Blog interview with Hood, the Oakland-based landscape designer expressed high hopes for the project. ”If the landscape itself was powerful enough it could move people in fantastic ways,” said Hood. “That is what I am interested in. Standing out on NMWA’s hill, is there a way to allow a visitor to be in the Refuge? It is possible. NMWA’s architecture builds on the idea that it is “with the landscape,” and ironically that is one of the issues they are dealing with.” He added that he felt he could “….scale and shift existing landscape, so that art as well as the landscape is legible.”
“Attempt to eliminate design dichotomy, the experience of being either here, or there – either at the museum or in the landscape; either in Jackson or in the landscape,” Hood advised.
NMWA’s Sugden Curator of Education Jane Lavino worked closely with Hood on the project. “The museum’s new sculpture trail will directly connect to the North Highway 89 Pathway Project, a new branch of the Pathways system planned to lead from the north end of Jackson to Grand Teton National Park,” she says. “An underground tunnel will provide access to the museum, creating an inviting opportunity to mix culture and outdoor activity for bicyclers.”
Contact Jane Lavino or call (307) 732-5417 for more information.
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Friday, March 4, artist Kathryn Mapes Turner will lead 2011′s Federal Junior Duck Stamp program at the National Museum of Wildlife Art. Â A valued annual arts and conservation tradition, the program provides opportunity for youth to learn more about duck species and their habitats through art. Â Students will begin creating their entries for the 2011 contest, hosted by NMWA. Â Workshops are organized by age and take place in the Chrystie and Esperti Classrooms.
9:30AM – 12:00PM: Â K – 5th grade students.
1:00 – 3:30PM: Â 6 – 12th grade students.
Pre-registration is required. Call (307) 732-5435 to register. Â Museum Members $20, non-members $25.
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;Â 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.
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.
