Posts Tagged ‘Teton County’
Excellent news that Teton County commissioners approved a contract with Wisconsin sculptor Don Rambadt to design and install a pathways public art project. The work will be part of the pathways system on North Highway 89, adjacent to the National Elk Refuge and National Museum of Wildlife Art. Local sculptor Ben Roth’s design for a series of bicycle racks will complement Rambadt’s installation.
Roth and Rambadt’s styles are similar and should mix extremely well. Both artists are minimalists, both use crisp geometric forms in their portrayals of wildlife and other creatures. Clean, contemporary and realistic enough to be recognizable by all, the art should be broadly appealing.
I visited Rambadt’s website and discovered another one of his projects: Magnetic Migration. Rambadt is placing a series of magnetic nuthatch sculptures on various steel structures he finds around the country. He’s asking the public to keep their eyes peeled for these little metal birds. If you find one, Rambadt asks you to move the sculpture to another steel building or site and take a photo. Post your photo, along with place, time and date. Â If Rambadt likes your site and story, he’ll send you your own little bird. Some folks decide to keep the birds they find–which would be tempting–and that’s o.k. with Rambadt. Check out the project here.
•
A batch of new works at Heather James Fine Art includes new sculptures by Diego Giacometti. The gallery is a little secretive with its art collection backstories; the Giacometti name is world
famous, but most people think of Diego’s brother Alberto. Diego and his brother were very close, and for much of his career Diego served as Alberto’s senior assistant. Diego’s artistry manifested as furniture and artful objects and he established himself as a noted artist in his own right. Diego designed the Picasso Museum’s interior, but did not live to see the museum open. It’s a privilege to have Diego Giacometti’s work in Jackson Hole.
•
The sub-headline in July 13th’s Jackson Hole News & Guide read: “Town mulls restrictions on ground-floor businesses as method to revitalize, generate revenue.”
“Restrictions” and “revitalize.” Opposites. See the problem? It’s not the paper’s fault. Town government thinks a prohibition strategy will help transform our economy. Targeting art galleries, in order to solve Jackson’s dearth of tax revenue is, to put it politely, very poor judgement.
Hello! How many non-profits do we have in Jackson?  Snow King Resort, financed by wealthy, shrewd business leaders, courted being bailed out by a non-profit; the owners have since rejected the non-profit’s offer. I don’t know the mountain’s chances of ever becoming a viable business, but the last thing we should do is bypass testing the market and hurtle towards providing non-profit status to what SHOULD be one of the biggest retail operations in the valley! How will we ever know what the market can bear? Instead of renovating its main facility, Snow King built too many spec units and failed. So put it up for sale. That’s what failed businesses do!  Snow King may sit on the block a long time, but it’s in good company.
Raise the Town’s sales tax. Continue to lobby for a real estate transfer tax. Use some of the revenue to help Wyomingites who are isolated, impoverished, abused, mentally ill, and/or hungry. Use the rest to boost town revenues.
I value and respect the missions of our non-profits, and I support (to the extent of my ability) those I feel are most crucial to the valley. We need them, and so many good people give their hearts 24/7 to causes that make our valley a better place. But we simply cannot figure out our unemployment and sales tax revenue issues in a pro-active way. We give the hospital $11,000,000 without reviewing their accounts! SPET tax rules
should be overhauled; I don’t believe the population at large truly understands what they are voting for. We’re economically co-dependent. At the very least, non-profits should have to provide a full accounting of their expenditures to prove they deserve public money.
The Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival spikes Jackson’s lodging stats every year. That means the event brings more visitors, spending money, every year. I’m sure Santa Fe or Scottsdale would welcome our best galleries, if Jackson’s business environment becomes too hostile. This is a grasping-at-straws measure. Shipping works out of state has always been integral to the gallery business. Art is international, and we are a tourist town, counting heavily on out-of-state buyers. We’re damn lucky that Jackson is, truly, becoming an arts destination. It could all change on a dime.
•
Good to hear from Legacy!
Legacy Gallery in Jackson Hole (there is also a Scottsdale, AZ branch) presents artist Kenny McKenna, in a One Man Show, July 21-August 11, 2011. An opening reception takes place Thursday, July 21, 6-8 pm, at the Jackson gallery.
McKenna is a landscapist. His striking, traditional works present views of some of our most memorable panoramas: Mt. Moran, Taggart Lake, Cascade Canyon, the Cathedral Group, Mormon Row, Sleeping Indian and more. Â McKenna also paints the smaller landscapes—check out his gentle portrayals of lily pads, meadows and willows. Summer and Fall views prevail.
When I was a 7-year-old girl President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Â I was in second grade. Â My home room was at afternoon Music class. Â Our music teacher sat at the front of the room, at her piano–our home room teacher took a seat by the window. Â Beyond the piano was a door, and behind that door, an office. The office door was the kind with milky, opaque glass. Â Half way through class, another teacher poked her head through the door and asked both the music and homeroom teachers to come into the other room. They did. We sat, hands in laps, waiting.
Through the dense glass we saw the silhouettes of our teachers falling upon each other. Moments later, my classmates and I began looking around at each other, alarmed, because our teachers were audibly sobbing. Â After a few minutes they returned, saying they had sad news they did not want to give us, as we had been very good boys and girls: Â Our handsome President, John F. Kennedy, was dead. Upset at the news, and equally frightened by the sight of our teachers losing control of their emotions, most of us burst into tears. School ended early that day; a national tragedy sent parents flying to school to pick up their children, as nobody could continue through the day, and nobody felt safe.
The next day, I and my little grade school classmates sat at our lunch table and talked about how, if we could get our hands on the man who killed our President, we would pound the life out of him, run a train over him, suffocate him, poison him, or find guns and shoot him so he would know what it felt like. Â We slammed our metal lunch boxes on the table for emphasis and pounded our fists. And we cried some more.
We weren’t really being brave, but it felt easier to be brave in those days. Bravery was rewarded. Media was so much more pure; full of wonder. Â It was through this new and wonderful window that we
took part in the nation’s mourning. Life was simply…presented. Â Raw, in black and white, often unscripted, no shock graphics.
I don’t know where I’m going with this except to say that true bravery, these days, is hard to find. Politicians, pundits and media feign bravery—but almost inevitably we are disappointed in so many of our leaders. What Jon Stewart was saying at his rally was that media and politicians are pandering to base emotions, especially fear. They’ve set us upon each other, like rabid dogs. We have become rabid dogs. So overwhelmed by life are we that we hang everything upon the last soundbite; it’s almost as if we want to ignite loathing. We must not be aware if we’re not loathing something or somebody.
And yet the mainstream media, in its perpetual mission to whip us into a frenzy (even seemingly grounded and realistic NPR), in large part wasn’t brave enough to attend a rally organized by two television show hosts. Ok, two really smart television show hosts.
I support candidates who have shown true bravery here in Jackson and Teton County: Â Franz Camenzind and Len Carlman. I stand with them. With so many fine people running for office this election, choices are hard. But these two candidates are not influenced by unsustainable agendas, power trips, or money. Â They’re the real deal, the kind of leaders that, most of the time, we can only dream about.
“Planning in the West,” the second annual conference on the topic of Intermountain West development, takes place in Boise, Idaho, June 2-3, 2010. The conference is billed as featuring “leading planners, policy-makers, architects, developers, and landscape architects from around the Rockies….to track planning and development trends, showcase best practices, and understand how thoughtful and place-inspired planning can help us shape our region in the most positive possible ways.”
Planning in the West’s keynote speaker is Mark Muro, of the Brookings Institution, a Washington D.C. based public policy think tank with a mission to “conduct high-quality, independent research and, based on that research, to provide innovative, practical recommendations that advance three broad goals:
- Strengthen American democracy;
- Foster the economic and social welfare, security and opportunity of all Americans and
- Secure a more open, safe, prosperous and cooperative international system.”
Muro studies intermountain economic trends; you can find “Mountain Monitor – Tracking Economic Recession and Recovery in the Intermountain West’s Metropolitan Areas” when you do a search on the Brookings Institute website. The study tracks trends through the fourth quarter of 2009. It looks at large metropolitan regions (Denver, Boise, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque), and smaller areas (Reno, Fort Collins, Las Cruces, Boulder); but transpose Muro’s larger points on intermountain real estate booms, education, and diversity of economic base to Jackson’s profile, and you will get a pretty good idea of the pace of economic recovery Teton County might expect, and why.
Soft Opening for Heather James Gallery
Heather James Fine Art opens its doors at 172 Center Street, Suite 200, next door to Altamira Fine Art, in April. This month’s opening is soft. Lyndsay McCandless has been hired as the gallery’s director.
“We welcome our new neighbors, Heather James Fine Art, to the Center Street art district,” says Altamira Executive Director Mark Tarrant. “This is an important addition to the Jackson art market, providing the quality of fine art that people expect when visiting Jackson. We are working with the gallery’s director, Lyndsay McCandless, and planning cooperative events that will set the pace for the Jackson experience.”
Based in Palm Desert, California, the gallery “represents a world-class spectrum of art-bridging genres including Impressionist and Modern, Classical Post-War and Contemporary, American and Latin American, Old Masters, design, cutting-edge contemporary and photography.”
A partial list of artists the gallery represents includes American artists Marion Kavanagh Wachtel, Oscar Bluemner and Irving Norman; Latin American artists Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, Francisco Zuniga, Naum Knop and Marta Minujin; and Impressionist/Modern masters Berthe Morisot and Alberto Giacometti.
A friend passed along a recent local art “review” —perhaps “commentary” is a better word — concerning the closing of the Oswald Gallery.
I’ve been criticized for some of my own commentary, and I know the sting of having someone in our close Jackson community express strong negative feelings about what I’ve written.  I also believe that the First Amendment is one of our most precious charges. Thou shalt not shoot the messenger.
The piece I’m referring to was particularly bizarre. Is the writer trying to be facetious? If so, the effort fails. (Sign up for Satire:101) Here’s why:  The writer, an artist, should know better than to characterize all art galleries as a whorl of “…musicians, models, artists, writers, homosexuals, and wealthy patrons milling around in unbearable hipness…….”
(Dude. You have a show about rap artists interpreted as holy gospel singers.  Which isn’t such a stretch, but it’s certainly hip-hoppity.)
If, in fact, he’s pretending not to know about the gallery business, he did a good job.  If he really knew, and his writing was up to par (not saying mine is, I know my limits) we’d read his piece and think, “What a great skewering of the art scene! Brilliant!”
That didn’t happen, so I’m going forward with this post taking the position he really doesn’t know. If he does know, he should build himself a much, MUCH bigger platform before venturing out into such territory.  Think Woody Allen.  Or Colbert. Or Tracy Morgan.  Or Mike Bressler! Catch the Shouts & Murmurs “Cursing Mommy” column sometime.
The writer goes on:Â “There would always be plenty of blow and smack at hand and somehow the entire enterprise makes money and garners international acclaim.”
Are you a kid? Or are you just brain dead from your early days spent snorting and writhing around on the floor at Studio 54? Stuff happens, but this ain’t the 80′s. I understand Leya is fond of you, and she may share some of your views, and you are lucky to have someone as professional and savvy as Leya in your corner.   But for those not in on your “inside” stuff, what you write is not cutting it.
“If any of you vultures reading this article want to save 25 to 50 percent on some really nice picture frames, now is the time.”
How much will your art be worth in a few years? If your stuff doesn’t sell, by what method will you toss the carrion into the yard? Maybe you’ll go “Ebay.”
We are in a Great Recession. Not a mild recession, a GREAT RECESSION.  Picassos are selling. Big stuff. Because people with that kind of money can buy as much as they like, and are.  Many galleries are having their artists size down their work, to make it more affordable. And we’re talking about all levels of artists, all genres.  Travis Walker does a great job of coming up with innovative ways for his artists to sell, and new collectors to collect.
There’s quite a bit of information on the art market out there. Why don’t you read some of it?
I won’t touch the Wilson/butlers in the basement bit.
“Leya looks great in black, and I did not imagine anything beyond that was necessary for success in the art world.”
Perhaps you should apply for a gallery intern job this summer.  You will be lucky to get hired, even for free, but give it a shot.
“We are still surrounded by landscape paintings, of moose in front of the Tetons or Indians painted by white people. So obviously Americans prefer art that does not make us think but rather reinforces stereotypes and clichés.”
By that logic, people would be buying landscapes and wildlife art in SoHo.
Why are YOU here in Jackson Hole? It can’t be because of intense city energy, urban infrastructure and sounds, interstate highways and their traffic, or cultural diversity.
Maybe you’re here to snowboard?  On big mountains, surrounded by wildlife?
Can you name the photographers Oswald has carried since the day they opened? Lots of landscape shooters……and damn, they’re hip! One of Leya’s favorite photographers, Nine Francois, is largely about portraits of animals from the wild. They aren’t in the wild, I don’t believe, when Francois takes her photos, but they are, at their core, wildlife.  I mean, this is the West. If we were in Key West, what would you see?  Santa Fe? Cape Cod? San Antonio? Art is a reflection of place.
What do you imagine people visiting Jackson Hole and the Parks want to think about while they are here?  What do you think they want to take back with them, and why? I don’t have statistics, but my experience tells me that wealthy locals, many with several homes and access to all art markets, buy much of Jackson’s contemporary art.  We certainly need our contemporary arts in order to thrive. I adore them. I even like your work, but I’ve deleted my story about it because I feel what you are writing for your newspaper is toxic, bitter and scary; it may even foreshadow some violent act.  I hope your newspaper takes heed.
Most visitors buy art here for reasons having to do with the unmatched experiences they have in Wyoming. And many collectors buy representational and abstract or contemporary art.   Because it all has value.
Pop quiz: Who was Edward Curtis?
Dear Galleries and Artists:
Please consider donating to 2009′s Jackson Hole “V-Day,” a benefit to support women whose lives are in jeopardy because of domestic violence.  The event will be festive and fun, but the cause is serious. Here in Teton County we have one of the highest per-capita percentages of domestic violence in the nation.
I realize we are short on time, and I apologize—our donation deadline is FEB. 4. YIKES!  Less time to think, better to act! :-)
I am soliciting for three kinds of donations:
#1.
February 19th’s Opening Gala wants to include a womens’ artist QuickDraw, with the resulting works to be auctioned via silent auction. Our goal is to have six artists participate in creating a work around the theme of “Woman.”  You may use any medium. The event takes place in the lobby of the Performing Arts Theater at the Center for the Arts, and the gala will be going on as you work, so you’ll have a big audience.  The QuickDraw will begin at 6:00, and will be 60 minutes long. QuickDraw artists will work on the upstairs landing overlooking the main lobby.
As a participating artist you will receive:
* A 1/8th page program advertisement; the ad is business-card sized.
* A ticket to the opening night Gala for a guest and two tickets to the Opening Night’s Performance.
* Your works will remain on display all three days of the benefit.
* You will be recognized as a donor in all advertising materials.
#2:
I am soliciting all galleries to donate an item of at least $50 in value, as a Silent Auction item. Lots of you have great jewelry! Arts, crafts, jewelry…all are welcome; we are aiming to auction items that appeal to women.  As a personal request, I ask that you donate something you, yourself would like to have.  :-)  This will make the silent auction much more successful, and raise lots more dollars for women suffering at the hands of domestic violence. It’s also great p.r. for you!   Your gift is tax-deductible as the law allows.  I hope you will find it in your heart to make an in-kind donation to this very worthy cause. A donation with a value of $300 or more will also receive a 1/8 page program ad.
#3: I am asking for artists to donate individual works for our silent auction.  Your donation will be tax deductible as the law allows, and you will have made a very important contribution to a cause we can all relate to. You will also receive some publicity as your item will be out for all to view, and of course you can have your own p.r. materials on hand for folks to peruse.
****
February 19, 20 and 21, 2009, V-Day Jackson will present a three-night benefit for local organizations who work to stop violence against women and girls. The benefit will include a gala with Silent Auction, Thursday, February 19th beginning at 6pm followed by a very special production of “A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer.”
February 20th and 21st will feature productions of Eve Ensler’s award winning play, “The Vagina Monologues.”
All three evenings will be held in the Theatre in the Center for the Arts. Tickets will be available beginning January 30th at the Center for the Arts Box Office. Tickets for the Gala Evening are $50.  Tickets for The Vagina Monologues are $30. Two night event tickets are also available for a discount; ask your ticket agent.
To learn more about V Day Jackson 2009 e-mail the organization at VDAYJH2009@live.com. To learn more about V Day and its campaigns visit www.vday.org.
End