Jackson Hole Art Blog

Nicolai Ouroussoff’s March 31, 2010 article in the New York Times Arts Section brings to light a plan to reconstruct Haiti’s urban infrastructure by breaking up the population of over-crowded Port-au-Prince into smaller cities.   These compact towns, if realized, are termed “smaller urban growth poles,” and could dramatically change Haiti’s economic, social and political future.

If you haven’t already, you can click on the above link and read the entire article.  If you are short on time, here’s a bare-bones synopsis:

• The new urban distribution plan centers on the idea that many smaller cities would be established in areas of Haiti least likely to be struck by natural disaster.  Port-au-Prince would no longer be the dominant city.  Currently, Port-au-Prince has almost no sewage treatment and its building code is “barely two pages long.”
• Ouroussoff says these plans, still being developed, already best early rebuilding plans post-Katrina and post-Tsunami.
• Haiti’s woes go back a century, when America began concentrating trade ops in Port-au-Prince, shutting down other existing Haiti ports.   By 1960, François Duvalier shut down any remaining ports in a bid for total political control via a single power base.
• Over 20 years, the city’s population almost doubled, to 3 million people.  The “effect of the shift was an urban disaster – one that has put more and more pressure on the capital while draining the provinces of economic opportunity.”
• The quake has made redistribution away from Port-au-Prince’s major fault line and its exposure to landslides and floods a logical step.   Thousands of the city’s buildings were destroyed, practically leveling it, as the world has seen.   Refugees have fled, moving to other regions of Haiti.
• Planners hope relocation services like hospitals and schools will encourage re-establishment of new urban centers.  They propose organizing new buildings around public parks and the like, which would provide sorely needed civic center points.   Similar plans would be applied to rural areas, with farms surrounding central core services areas.   Public structures would be paid for by the government.
• Light rail is proposed.  Earthquake debris (millions of cubic tons) would serve as shoreline landfill, that could be turned into parks.
• One planner noted that “We should think in terms of the city’s urban evolution rather than large-scale development.”
• Haiti planners need access to money and ideas; the University of Miami’s “new urbanism” proponents can advise.
• Ouroussoff ends his article by observing that “….a connection between good urban planning ideas and political realities on the ground was never made (in New Orleans).  The best plans went nowhere.  Let’s pray that doesn’t happen in Haiti.”

Item #2:

University of Wyoming (UW) Adjunct Professor Nathan Abel’s print exhibition Origins, on display at Teton Art Lab May 7-31, also includes prints produced by members of the UW Print Exchange.

Besides being an accomplished artist, Abel is able to write with languid beauty about his work.   Working to connect with a father he has no conscious memory of,  Abel incubates his native landscapes, giving them new life that exists in binary-colored melancholy.

“In a time when oral history is diminishing I cling to the histories passed on to me by family members. My interpretation of those memories exist between the unconscious and the conscious mind. Through my work I explore the common ground that I feel I share with my father whom I never consciously knew. I utilize the rural landscape (where I grew up and still feel the most at home) in juxtaposition with integrated personal archetypes. The images exist as a dialogue between memories of the old family farm, photographs my father took, and my own personal narratives.”

Through his printing process, Abel is building what he calls a “dialog of history.”

“Wyoming” connotes thoughts of vast, wind blown space.   Memories, in pictorial and written forms, sift their way through the ages.   Abel is a highly conscious artist, taking history seriously.   This is the true road.

“Years later I’m going back and looking at the projects we did.  My critique is, they are pastiche.  They are cardboard facades.  The real town is a block behind them, and it’s still awful, in trouble. So we didn’t help the people who live there, the thing that was supposed to be helped.” – Walter Hood

Finding what is particular and special to a community is part of what urban landscape designer Walter Hood does; over the years it has become clearer to Hood that urban centers require different formulas for renewal, depending on relevant measurable goals.

Pittsburgh, with its steel industry history, at one time existed for opposite reasons than Jackson exists.  But, says Hood, Pittsburgh  (sort of a sister city for me, and a great example in urban renewal) has found itself again. Like other mid-west industrial towns Pittsburgh fell on hard times; hard enough that a few decades ago many were giving it up for lost.  Jobs disappeared, people left in droves, and the city was gritty and depressed.

Jackson and Pittsburgh have traditionally relied on single industries. Jackson’s magnificent beauty and location have made it an economy inflated by landscape;  Pittsburgh’s economy relied on steel.

Now Pittsburgh’s economy is strong; it has weathered this recession relatively well, in large part because the city has taken pains to attract diverse market sectors.  Healthcare, education, technology, financial jobs play a large role. City parks are being restored. Abandoned spaces are recycled into new housing and businesses.

Hood opines that whatever direction Jackson takes in shaping its future, keeping traffic in check is crucial.   Open space cannot be fully protected unless we control congestion and emissions.

“I think where we are as Americans, things are hitting the fan.  We will have to make some really serious decisions about the land.  I have a lot of projects where people are investing in alternative transportation modes; they are starting to say “we don’t need that much parking.”  They are beginning to say we want to be greener—it will force them to act differently.”

Its community locking horns over a new Comprehensive Plan, Jackson’s town and county officials are attempting to correctly address a demand for affordable housing.  The risk of over development is very real.  To date, officials are treating mass transit as a finishing touch for building more units;  most urban planning takes the opposite approach.

Whenever I return to Jackson from the east coast, my immediate sense is Jackson’s traffic is under control.  Then summer arrives.

“In the winter it is really fantastic to be here—you could drive and everything goes back to scale,” says Hood.  “When spring comes the scale gets smaller but it is still big.  You see more in Jackson.  It’s sensory overload.”

A national park’s purpose is defeated, says Hood, when 4,000,000 tourists a year jam the roads and the scenery is…”unseeable.” If you want to reduce traffic, and impact, you make roads smaller and narrower. Cars then have to get smaller.  Discourage, don’t encourage, more traffic.

We agree that the town of Jackson should be about this place.  That gentler transitions from park to town are optimal, but not planned.  Approaching downtown Jackson, there is a sense that our open spaces are chopped off at the knees.  It’s good, we conclude, that the National Museum of Wildlife Art is one of the first things you see.   But many buildings and landscapings closer to town are visually harsh.  Lots of aging concrete, signage, little shoulder softening, no real thought to the landscape.

And simply as a marketing concept, in addition to the conservation benefits, planning should accentuate sensitivity to place.

But what about helping a community through recession?  Hood may not have Jackson’s specific economic remedy, but he does have experience with plans that didn’t work.

Hood says that collectively, we often make big mistakes when trying to “save” community.

“There are some amazing places, but the way we act in those landscapes is still the freakin’ same way,” he notes.  “I worked for a firm in the 90’s that would go to lots of small towns, particularly in Washington state. There was, at the time, the whole notion that you can go to these communities and save them by design.  A lot of them have lost their industries; they were river towns and people logged, or fished…those economies died.

The community then dies.

So we’re in this amazing valley or setting and what do we do?  Tourism. Immediately the main street programs help fortify the preservation of these towns—and I was into it.  At the time it seemed like the right thing to do.

Years later I’m going back and looking at the projects we did.  My critique is, they are pastiche.  They are cardboard facades.  The real town is a block behind them, and it’s still awful, in trouble.   So we didn’t help the people who live there, the thing that was supposed to be helped.”

Hood says the reasons people do choose to live in Jackson Hole are clear.  Safety is big, he says, and that feeling of safety springs in large part from how we control growth.

“It is a gift to have the ability to just walk around without fear and collision.  Last night I saw a woman running in the near dark, without street lights, without fear.  Wow.  She’s safe, there’s no traffic, the landscape is still visible, and she wants to be there.

I could not do this where I live.  Those are the kind of experiences to save.   The ability to navigate the landscape at night!  But more people, more traffic—more security and more lights come in. Success breeds more demand. It’s a circle.   I asked for a room on the upper floors of my hotel, facing the mountains, so I could take that in.  That’s the experience!  I know why people live here.”

To find out more about Walter J. Hood and his work, log onto his website here.

Post Script:  The Jackson Hole Art Blog is VERY happy to hear of Blaize Oswald’s encouraging progress as he recovers from a bad fall from a ski chairlift.   Our prayers and best wishes go out to the Oswald Family.

FIRST THING:

I thought about apologizing for being OTL this holiday, but I’m not.  I will say: the Art Blog is back, we’re takin’ it back with Barack, and we don’t take no pennies from those wackety-PACs!

Here’s a little swing ditty, “Takin’ It Back With Barack, Jack!” Makes me happy; hope it makes you happy!

SECOND THING:

Following in the footsteps of Terry Tempest Williams’ December reading over at Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary, comes an appearance by Wilson writer Alexandra Fuller at the Muse Gallery.  Artist Mike Piggott’s new collection of paintings, “Objects and Things,” inspired Fuller’s essay “The Emperor of the Red Wheel Barrow,” which Fuller will read at the artist’s reception this Friday, January 16.   Festivities run 5:00 – 8:00 p.m.; Fuller’s reading is scheduled for 6:30 p.m.

Fuller has authored several non-fiction books, including “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood,” and, most recently, “The Legend of Colton H. Bryant.”

THIRD (quite giant) THING:

Last week’s J.H. News and Guide included missives praising Bland Hoke Jr.’s public art project: portraits of indigenous animals cut from recycled wood and painted by kids.  Mr. Hoke’s role as the Center of Wonder’s Public Art Ambassador was imagined and supported by Wonder’s Executive Director Carrie Geraci, and by that non-profit’s founders, Gary and Veronica Silberberg.  The Public Art Ambassador Program aspires to work with members of the business community in fostering art projects that connect to nature; installations that will serve as new and interactive art media in Jackson.

Public art encourages environmental stewardship through curiosity and creating a sense of ownership, and by enhancing public space. It is a significant community tool that promotes tourism and regional appreciation.

Public art is great marketing. We imagine myriad public art installations in and around the Town of Jackson. I take this opportunity to call upon our Town and County officials to spearhead a public arts installation program. In most urban areas, the quest to design for relevant public art is old hat.  Public art installations define cities, and we are a small city.  Posers, at any rate.  Our planning process needs to include space for public plazas, parks and sculpture.

There are lots of experts out there to consult.  Find them, Town of Jackson,  because claiming to know about the arts, their history and impact when one does not is a bit like claiming to be qualified for the Vice Presidency because you can see Russia from your house.

Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park combines places to eat, shop and walk with nine acres overlooking Puget Sound.  The project “…brings together the best of (the) city: art and recreation….21 sculptures take center stage, representing such artists as Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Richard Serra, and Ellsworth Kelly.”

Contemporary Seattle mixes traditional Inuit art with contemporary masters. Walkways and ‘paths’ of connected galleries connect sites.   We can conjure a similar urban art potion.

My primary reason for voting against the late “Town as Heart” DRD proposal was not that I didn’t envision growth; it was that its creators had incorporated virtually no landscaping, parks, arts or ‘grace of space.’  Our town’s square chunks smashed up against one another offer no secret spaces, no enticing fountains or gardens.  Without these provocative elements, we forfeit a higher level of urban vibrancy.

Define the Town of Jackson as a business, educational, and cultural center; not as a Teton Village clone.  That’s our opportunity.

End