Posts Tagged ‘Smithsonian’
Joe Riis is a wildlife photojournalist, a National Geographic Young Explorer and an iLCP photographer and biologist. And he will share his experiences when he appears at the Jackson Hole Community School on Tuesday, March 22, 2011. The talk begins at 6:00 pm.
Just a few weeks ago the Smithsonian’s new collection of wildlife photographs made the news. Their cameras were hidden, and referred to as “camera traps.” Here in Jackson Hole, and throughout the Yellowstone region, we’re awash in great photography; this place is a shutterbug’s dream. So it takes a special eye, a way with a lens, to catch our attention when it comes to wildlife photography. The Smithsonian’s shots were notable for their fish eye view of animals snared by camera traps–and Riis’ wildlife images remind me of those Smithsonian shots. And another photographer’s work fits into this style envelope: Michael Forsberg.
Like Forsberg, Riis is a midwesterner; hence, I checked out his Missouri shots. My short time living in the midwest—back in the late 60′s and early 70′s—included a few trips to the Ozarks. There’s a rustling hush to that
landscape. Sit quietly on a bed of dropped leaves, dangle your toes in the river, and through the silence you begin to suspect some kind of miracle to happen. Emerald blades peep through those mudflats; a giant polliwog slips away from the underside of your boat.
Riis’ Pronghorn Migragtion portfolio is stunning. It is not an easy task to track pronghorn–my one foray into the Gros Ventres with a tracking group taught me that (I hope to do it again). We were literally washed out of the Upper Slide Lake area by a series of thunderstorms—clay roads turned to slip and our four-wheel-drive vehicle did not hold much sway. We spotted only one family of pronghorn that day, and it took six people with high powered binoculars, spotting scopes and lots of patience to find them. Riis’ series of migrating pronghorn captures pronghorn on red mountained hillsides, negotiating barbed wire fences, fording rivers—-leading one another through the valleys and harsh conditions that make up their lives. It’s an incredible photographic journal.
Joe Riis’ presentation is free and open to the public. Contact Sarah at 307-733-5427 or email sdrake@jhcommunityschool.org for more info.
From the Buffalo Bill Historical Center comes this release:
According to Michelle Anne Delaney, Curator of the Photographic History Collection at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, New York photographer Gertrude Käsebier embarked on a deeply personal project in 1898.
“Her new undertaking was inspired by viewing the grand parade of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West troupe en route to New York City’s Madison Square Garden,” Delaney explains. “Within a matter of weeks, Käsebier began a unique and special project photographing the Sioux Indians traveling with the show, formally and informally, in her 5th Avenue studio.”
Delaney brings Käsebier’s work to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in an exhibition titled: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Warriors: Photographs by Gertrude Käsebier, on view in the John Bunker Sands Photography Gallery April 10 – August 8. On Friday, April 9, 5 – 7 p.m., a Patrons Preview for Historical Center members precedes the public opening April 10.
Delaney describes the collection as “original platinum and gum-bichromate photographs printed from original glass negatives, pictograph drawings made by the Sioux Indians while at Käsebier’s studio, historic camera and studio equipment, and select items representing Buffalo Bill’s Wild West from the Smithsonian and Historical Center collections.
“These prints rank among the most compelling of her celebrated body of work,” Delaney continues. “Eventually, she became the leading portraitist of her time and an extraordinary art photographer. Since 1969, more than one hundred of these photographs have been preserved in the Photographic History Collection at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC.”
Not many vistas are as powerful as Jackson Hole’s Teton Range. Only the Grand Canyon outranks our mountains. The art of capturing that great national park is touched upon in the Teton County Library’s April exhibition, Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography, on view in the library’s gallery April 16-July 16.
A Smithsonian traveling exhibition, the color photo collection reminds us of the Canyon’s siren call to photographers. See the Grand Canyon as some of our best photographers have experienced it, absorbing its grandeur and its intimacies. Images take in miles of canyon rim, waterfalls, lupin and pine needles, and every kind of light and shadow. 
The canyon is a landscape; it is an abstract composition blending nature’s perfect forms. The exhibition is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and the Grand Canyon Association. It is sponsored locally by Teton County Library Foundation. Cost: Free. Location: Library’s Exhibition Gallery. Contact: Adult Humanities Coordinator, 733-2164 ext. 135.
The envelope, please.
Several spring seasons ago, the Teton County Library hosted a most memorable show. That spring, one could visit the library’s gallery and get lost in a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibit, “Graceful Envelope.” It’s impossible for me, a person who values tradition (I feel about printed newspapers the way Charlton Heston did about guns; you’ll have to take it from my cold, dead hand!) to refrain from gushing over that show.
The contest’s website says “…Calligraphers and artists from around the world are invited to participate in the 15th annual Graceful Envelope Contest, conducted by the Washington (DC) Calligraphers Guild under the sponsorship of the National Association of Letter Carriers. The contest is open to all ages, with two separate categories for children.” This year’s theme is “Address the Environment.” Log on here to view the site.
You can still enter 2009′s Graceful Envelope Contest; entries must be postmarked by April 30.
A old friend recently asked for my mailing address, as she likes sending letters in lieu of email. She loves her writing paper. That request prompts this re-running of my original article on Graceful Envelope, below. Happy Easter!
“More than kisses, letters mingle souls; for, thus friends absent speak”.
John Dunne’s poetry embraces the tone of “Graceful Envelope”, a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibit now on display at Teton County Library. If you haven’t been to see these illuminating, exquisite envelopes, go. The artwork evokes longing sighs, remembrance, and a feeling that you’ve tripped along a mossy, hidden path to discover a secret garden.
A hundred painted envelopes are included in the Smithsonian exhibit, that originated in 1995. Artists create envelopes for the competition, their subject matter based on a stamp or a theme chosen by the National Association of Letter Carriers. Ah, if every letter were thus conceived! The show is heartrending in its beauty. It is nectar. Step softly along the library’s walls to find artwork that seems rendered by fairies; 
elegant, wispy, fables for a 4 x 6 inch tablet. You will choose your own favorites, but I mention a few of mine 
here: Cathy Chilton, of New Mexico, fancied “Water, Earth, Niagara Falls, Grand Canyon”, an envelope inspired by stamps portraying those locations. The envelope is creased like an accordion, with alternating slices of bottle green, baked canyon orange, and an indigenous lizard. This Crafts-styled piece stands in sturdy comparison to envelopes weighted with laced grapevines and golden pears hanging heavy on the branch. Humorous takes on the funny papers include a work picturing Popeye knocking the stuffing out of the mail, and a careening “Blondie and Dagwood” sketch. “Celebrating Nature” bears a regal butterfly, emerald on its envelope, wings and antennae dipping into lacey calligraphy addressing the work.
Rhapsodic, I realize, but this exhibit unleashed such images and memory. Days of Easter Egg hunts, overgrown gardens choked with wild roses, sprawling hillsides and ladies with parasols looking down from the top of sunny hillsides to a picnic in the meadow. And I remember writing on thick paper, pages and pages of summer letters sent and received as a child.
Save your letters and envelopes. As exhibition curator Ester Washington notes, “Letters were once precious possessions, tied in bundles with silk ribbon, and kept safe in scented drawer.” We can recreate that time. Let’s try.
