Posts Tagged ‘Jackson Hole’
What’s Our Economy?; Rocks Art
Recently, a Jackson economics summit/conference/brainstorming session took place. I’ve now had a chance to read some reviews of that gathering–how accurate they are I can’t say, because I didn’t attend. From time to time, I have my own little economic tutorials with friends and mentors.
Jackson Hole has always been a seasonal economy. We’re a tourist destination because our region is so astoundingly beautiful, is adjacent to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, is “Western,” has a great and growing arts sector, and when the snow falls skiers go nuts to come here. Until a few years ago, the lion’s share of full time jobs in Jackson were related to the construction and real estate industries. One of my mentors points out that real estate and construction don’t really create economic growth or wealth; they are the residuals of wealth creation. And yes, those are good jobs for Jackson, and it feels like the market will re-shape and rebound to a certain extent (see the Hole Report)—but smart money won’t rely on construction to sustain Jackson’s future. It’s millionaires and billionaires with fortunes built elsewhere who have erected big houses, supplying jobs for architects, landscapers, construction companies and real estate agents. And, we’re a tax shelter. They’ve also supported many of our critical non-profits.
Not What I am Doing, How I am Feeling, a show of new works by Alissa Davies, opens Wednesday, November 16, 6-9:00 pm, at Elevated Grounds, Wilson, Wyoming. “Come enjoy drinks and nibbles and Alissa’s new artwork,” says Davies’ Facebook page. The munchies will no doubt be yummy, but the real treat will be Davies’ art.
I know, because I have some of her paintings. Though Davies is most often identified as Dancers’ Workshop’s communications director, she’s been painting for years. Think back, and you’ll recall
Davies’ amorphous, abstract paintings hanging from tree branches, fastened with clothespins, floating on a gentle breeze in DW’s Executive Director Babs Case’s back yard. Ah, those were the days….our first pop-up art shows (pssst: that link to Chicago’s Pop Up Art Loop was inadvertent, but ain’t it cool? Store windows, people! Store windows!) happened at Harpo’s Art Fair, a summertime event Case generously hosted at her home. My little Alissa paintings are pretty tiny—maybe 4 x 8″, the size of a postcard. Davies is also an Art Fair alumni. I’ve bought from her there, too. Her little paintings make great gifts, but it’s damn hard to give them away.
The title of this show,” says Davies, “is an overall mantra for my life. I want to feel myself moving through the days, the months, the years. Simply, I am striving to be more present to experiences that make me happy, expose me to beauty, challenge me and make me assertive. I want my artistic process to be the same, a discovery.”
Davies’ paintings are organic, and they’re really collages. Bleached corrugated paper, colored strips, paint and graphite pencil are arranged like pebbles in a little tidal pool, or a child’s collection of special objects. It feels like invisible river currents nudge Davies’ shapes around, and once those shapes and objects are perfectly placed, the water is still. It gives me great joy to look at my Alissa paintings.
Have you heard of USA Artists? Or Pipeline to Miami?
I hadn’t, until I stumbled upon Pipeline’s home page. Pipeline is a Wyoming arts philanthropy project, the first of its kind in our Big Square State, and a sub-project of USA Artists. Pipeline’s goal is to send three Wyoming artists—David Klarén, Sue Sommers and JB Bond—to Florida’s Red Dot Art Fair. Red Dot, a Miami Art Week venue, takes place early December. Rather than paraphrase Pipeline’s mission, I’ll provide an excerpt:
“The Pipeline Art Project started with a handful of Wyoming contemporary visual artists realizing they all wanted the same thing: to live in the place they love, and to have viable art careers. But art opportunities are usually found in higher-population areas. We knew that to market our work outside the state, we needed to pool our ideas and resources. So we created the Pipeline Art Project: “Pumping Art from the Energy State of Wyoming.” Wyoming is better known for exporting coal, oil and gas than for its dedicated and talented contemporary artists. It’s the perfect place to make art, but a very tough place to build an art career. Pipeline wants to change that. We are trying to create a conduit to an international audience and better opportunities for ourselves and others.”
Providing techniques that move artists’ work to larger U.S. art market venues takes Wyoming arts support to new levels. It gets us thinking beyond sharing our great talents with each other. Intramural art missions will always be essential, but most Wyoming artists don’t have the means to get to art show venues outside the state. I hope Pipeline’s model earns its wings. Pipeline’s web page gets updated; at this writing the project has raised $3,750 of its $8,000 goal. Forty days left to help out! http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/project/pipeline_to_miami
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Jackson artists Jennifer Hoffman and Kathryn Mapes Turner entered an elite juried art show—the 12th Annual American Impressionist Society Exhibition in Carmel, California— and came back with big ribbons. Turner’s winning, “Best of Show” oil painting Siena
depicts a Italian church courtyard in Tuscany. Hoffman’s pastel, Allegory, won Plein Air Magazine’s “Award of Excellence.” Both artists are represented locally by Trio Fine Art.
Hoffman’s award includes ad placement in Plein Air Magazine. “I loved meeting so many incredible artists whose work I really admire,” says Hoffman. “I also was able to participate in the AIS paint-out the following day on Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey, surrounded by beautiful scenery, talented AIS artists from all over the country, and enthusiastic tourists who seemed to really enjoy the event. All in all, the whole trip was energizing, inspiring, and really, really special.”
“I felt honored just to be accepted into such an important exhibition” says Turner. “Once I saw the high level of talent displayed, I was humbled and thrilled to receive their highest honor.” Turner says she was intrigued by the scale of human figures as set against massive marble church walls. Monochromatic colors lent a sense of harmony, and the setting was a great chance to explore composition and reflecting light.
“It’s an honor just to get into the American Impressionist Society show, one of the best juried shows I’ve taken part in,” adds Hoffman.
Scott L. Christensen was this year’s exhibition judge; he bestowed both awards. “Knowledge is a catalyst to completing a painting,” says Christensen. “But it must have a force behind it, a certain ‘seeing’ that is distinctly your own and developed through time.” www.americanimpressionsitsociety.org
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Ralph Mossman and Mary Mullaney—known collectively as Heron Glass—are happy to say they’re back in the creative, glass-blowing mode. The shop has announced two holiday bazaars: Saturday, December 3, 2011 visit Heron Glass at the Art Association’s 2011 Christmas Bazaar. Saturday, December 10, visit Heron Glass at their Driggs, Idaho studio from 10 am – 5pm. Address: 240 Nth 5th Street, Driggs. 208-354-2759 www.heronglass.com
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Etcetera—-Mountain Trails Gallery has renamed itself. The gallery will now be known as Mountain Trails Gallery Jackson Hole…..Cayuse Western Americana has a great new website!……David Brookover has a great new website!
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.
British-American Natalie Clark, an artist who divides her time between Washington D.C. and the beautiful, mountainous region that includes Wyoming’s Teton Mountains, opens a new solo exhibition, Crystalline, at Skew Gallery this month. Skew, a Calgary, Alberta gallery, debuts Clark’s show October 13, 2011 with an artist’s reception from 6-8:00 pm. Clark’s work remains on exhibit through November 12, 2011.
A familiar figure around Jackson Hole’s art scene, I first met Clark when she worked at the former J.H. Muse Gallery (now the Tayloe Piggott Gallery). A world traveler, Clark is influenced by every country she visits; she has a talent for capturing the core of a culture. Works are a fusion of contemporary design elements, ethnology and nature’s organic forms and vivid colors. Be it Rio, Johannesburg, or the Australian Outback, Clark searches out distinct, but universal cultural threads.
Clark’s sculptures are, these days, constructed from steel and informed by a visit to South Africa’s diamond mines. Polyhedrons (three dimensional geometric solids with straight lines–yes, I had to look that up!) and crystalline-like forms culminate in large scale installations. Individual shapes are “clustered together to resemble something totemic, [a] forest, iceberg or other geological formations. Crystalline also includes works infused with the colors of Bhutan’s prayer flags: fire red, blue air and green water.
The artist’s education and experience includes a Masters in Fine Art from the Art Institute of Chicago. She was a finalist in a 9/11 design competition and has received international media coverage.
Skew Gallery’s address is 1615 10th Avenue WS, Calgary, Alberta. www.skewgallery.com Information: 403.244.4445.
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There’s always something new going on with Jackson Hole artist Ben Roth, the artist who keeps life simple so he can do his work. Roth accomplishes quite a bit, yet he’s EVERYWHERE, I see him everywhere! 
Roth’s Council of Pronghorn,a collaboration with Terry Tempest Williams and Felicia Resor, has been on exhibit New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. At one time on exhibit at Jackson’s Center of the Arts courtyard, the installation is part of a group show entitled The Value of Water and remains up through March, 2012. Americans for the Arts recognized Roth for last summer’s Vail, Colorado installation sculpture, and he’s anticipating a new installation project that will be installed near Colorado Springs. Another project, a metal screen chameleon, will be shown in Boulder, Colorado in December.
Finally, Roth has been chosen to create a permanent sculpture for a new public building at Cheyenne’s Warren Air Force Base. Three sandhill crane sculptures—composed of metal screen and bronze—will soar across an atrium’s ceiling space. The piece will be installed next January.
“I’m also building a scarecrow for the public art fundraiser,” says Roth. “And getting ready to deliver a large, cast bronze outdoor sculpture to California in early November.”
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And now for that story on Wyoming’s wind farms. Looking for something educational to read on a long flight between D.C. and Denver, I noticed Fortune Magazine’s article on Wyoming’s wind energy projects. Grabbed it.
The Power Struggle for Wyoming’s Wind brings home the point that no matter how much wind blows across Wyoming, no matter how many wind towers are built, their success depends on transmission infrastructure.
Journalist Ken Otterbourg writes: “Along the highways around Cheyenne and Casper, plenty of turbines rise out of the sagebrush and scrublands. Wind energy here is already generating about 1,400 megawatts of power, but that’s perhaps a tenth of the state’s potential. And in the past year the industry has come to a dead halt. There are political obstacles, but the main problem is this: Wyoming has run out of power lines connecting it to the rest of the country. And until it gets more, that epic wind is just moving dust and dirt eastward, one gust at a time.”
The article describes the different ways wind power is transmitted, and lists the many political, regulatory, monetary and logistical roadblocks to successfully building enough interstate power lines. California is Wyoming’s biggest potential wind energy customer. But before the state’s largest energy companies can build, they need to secure purchase agreements with California. “None now exist,” Otterburg says. Bill Miller, president of Anschutz Exploration, says he’s hugely optimistic about success. Otterburg quotes Miller: ”The project will stand on its economic merit. I’m confident that our purchase price — should we get to a point sooner or later with a power purchase agreement — will be competitive with anybody.”
The Power Struggle for Wyoming’s Wind provided an expansive, easy-to-understand overview of Wyoming’s wind energy goals. We need interstate commerce; let’s hope California and Wyoming can work it out.