Posts Tagged ‘wildlife artists’
The National Museum of Wildlife Art (NMWA) brings Sculpture Trail designer Walter Hood back to Jackson on July 26, 2011. Hood will personally conduct a hard-hat tour of the site for museum members and talk about the concepts 
and planning process for a trail that will be organic, artful and integrated to its surrounding Western landscape. NMWA notes that the new trail and sculpture gardens emulate parallel projects installed at nationally noted museums–New York’s Museum of Modern Art and L.A.’s J. Paul Getty Museum, for example. Situated above Jackson Hole’s National Elk Refuge the new trail is uniquely Wyoming.
While leading the tour, Hood will talk about his initial concepts for showcasing the outdoor sculpture and how plans have developed. Important sculptures slated for the new outdoor space include a casting of Simon Gudgeon’s (also look for Gudgeon’s work at Jackson’s Diehl Gallery) bronze bird form “Isis” , Tim Shinabarger’s “Black Timber Bugler”, and eight “larger-than-life” bison sculpted by Richard Loffler. That work, “Buffalo Trail,” will be installed on a hillside with its own access path.
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The Art Association’s Jenny Dowd notes that occasionally community businesses offer artists a chance to display artwork on premises. A few weeks back an in-town Phillips 66 Station was remodeled, and the owners were looking for artwork to “liven up the walls.” Contact Dowd for info at the Art Association by emailing jenny@artassociation.org.
Interesting that a gas station, as opposed to a natural food store or restaurant or some other venue more closely associated with creativity, is offering artists a chance to show their work. I hope the effort sets an example for more Town of Jackson establishments. Bringing darkened commercial space windows to life with local art is a common practice. And it’s win-win.
Dowd has provided a link for artists wanting to sell their work at this year’s People’s Market: http://www.jhpeoplesmarket.org/ Lastly, the Teton Mudpots hold their annual summer sale outside the Art Association’s ceramics studio 10am – 5:30pm, on Thursday June 30th. For more information contact Sam Dowd: sam@artassociation.org
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Plein air painter Dennis Doheny is a familiar name in Jackson’s art scene, featured in past NMWA exhibitions. Doheny is wildly famous in his home state of California, and truly ranks amongst the country’s most distinguished plein air artists. He has twice won the Frederic Remington Award and was honored by the Autry National Center with the Masters of the American West Purchase Award. Though his work is in high demand, Doheny
has not had a one man show in five years. He’ll break that pattern on Saturday, September 24th, when an exhibition of new works débuts at William A. Karges Fine Arts, in their Beverly Hills location. An opening reception takes place 4-6 pm.
Doheny is represented exclusively by Karges. www.dennisdoheny.com/
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Jackson photographer Jeff Diener has new “Wildlife and Wildflower” images, taken last spring. His favorites include shots of “…an intense coyote and [a] mysterious Great Grey Owl.”
“I’ve always known coyotes to be curious but I was pretty surprised by this encounter,” Diener says. “This guy actually approached me, checked me out, then proceeded to lay down and relax. I shot photos for over half an hour!” Diener now offers Canvas Gallery Wrapped prints. “These are a simple and elegant approach to presentation–high quality canvas, gallery wrapped and ready to hang,” notes the photographer. http://jacksonholegallery.photoshelter.com/gallery/Wildlife-Wildflower-Photos/G0000V1dqwKNStHk/
A new collection of silk thread embroidery works from Japan’s Meiji Period (1868-1912) are on view at Heather James Fine Art. Jackson, a stand-alone-county-in-a-stand-alone-state, is being infiltrated by global movements and thought; many of those are expressed in art.
JapanGuide.com provides a summary of the Meiji Restoration: “Like other subjugated Asian nations, the Japanese were forced to sign unequal treaties with Western powers. These treaties granted the Westerners one-sided economical and legal advantages in Japan. In order to regain independence from the Europeans and Americans and establish herself as a respected nation in the world, Meiji Japan was determined to close the gap to the Western powers economically and militarily. Drastic reforms were carried out in practically all areas.”
Gold and silk threads illuminate these portraits of birds of prey. An interesting exercise would be to compare these Japanese works with avian arts from the same era at the National Museum of Wildlife Art.
“Japanese embroidery technique goes back more than one thousand years. It originated in China and was eventually introduced to Japan by Korean artisans, around the same time Buddism entered Japan,” says Heather James’ Lyndsay McCandless.
A six-panel Soga School painting of birds is part of this exhibit; the work dates from c. 1700. McCandless notes that falconry was introduced into Japan around 244AD.
“In the late sixteenth and seventeenth century, the samurai warriors had mastered falconry as part of their military training,” notes McCandless. “Both of these pieces really need to be seen and appreciated in person, so please stop by the gallery anytime and I would be happy to share them with you! Enjoy!” www.heatherjames.com
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“What’s really happening is happening down in the studio with a pencil and a drawing pad, experimenting and exploring ideas and materials or executing the pieces themselves. But then how do you talk about that? If there were words, it would destroy the essence of my personal experience of fooling around with materials and ideas. I’ll leave the words to the critics.” ~Kate Hunt
Over-explaining and criticizing can suck art’s intrigue dry. We like to describe, let you know where the art is, comment and ask a few questions.
Montana born, contemporary Western sculptor Kate Hunt still resides in Kalispell, Montana. A former Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary artist, Hunt’s artwork is now available at Amangani Resort, where she has a large installation. Her work is included in the Yellowstone Art Center in Billings.
Hunt was kind enough to send me a note about an upcoming show of hers, Kate Hunt. The exhibition is up at Seattle’s Davidson Galleries, opened February 3 and is on display through February 26, 2011.
Her work is distinctive, dense, and very satisfying to take in. She’s at one with her materials. She
works in large and small scales, using materials we know: newspaper, steel, twine, nails, palm fronds. But she packs, wraps, stacks and binds these materials together to form objects that feel that they are only now arranged as they were originally meant to be. She gets to the core of these materials–and mixes a Western sensibility with Asian minimalism. Quiet, meditative, Hunt’s works can be large but they tread gently, like spirits.
If you were on an archeological dig and came upon any one of Hunt’s works, you would immediately be curious about the culture that created the blocks of nail-pierced blackened steel, curving columns and baled stacks of cut newspaper.
The show’s cover image features a row of broom-like, bristled sconces–dark paper swags hang off them like a goat’s beard. A few goats are wandering around inside, in front of the sculptures. “The goats are my pets and they just hang out,” says the artist. “They sleep in the studio I work in, in front of the fire. This day they were just there. They are named Pinky and Frida. Frida is the little female in front of the work.”
Hunt says that though a bit of time has elapsed since her last show in Jackson, she’s continuing on course. “Nothing has really changed about the materials, I just keep tunneling in deeper. One piece leads to another.” www.katehunt.com
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The new exhibition opening at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, A Change of Seasons: Wildlife in Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter, is on display at the museum February 11 – April 29, 2011.
Exploring ways wildlife adapts to changing seasons, the show reflects the pride artists take in recording animal behavior in the wild, says Curator of Art Adam Duncan Harris. The 
show’s title was inspired by T.D. Kelsey’s bronze sculpture, A Change of Seasons, (on the museum’s Rungius Road approach), depicting two bison shedding their coats as winter gives way to spring.
“This exhibition allows us to use the breadth and flexibility of the museum’s collection to illustrate through beautiful artwork how animals adapt to the various seasons of the year, from bears fattening up for their long winter hibernation to elk in velvet,” says Harris.
The show includes these notable works: Knight Errant by Carl Rungius, a winter scene; Mother Quail by Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait for spring; Curious Visitors by Michael Coleman, summer; and Virginia White-Tail by William Jacobs Hays, fall. Question and answer formats engage visitors, presenting queries about animal behavior.
“Why do moose stand around in the water?” and “Why do bison face into the wind on cold days?”
I don’t know the answers. Do you? A visit to NMWA is afoot! www.wildlifeart.org
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“The Earth is at a crossroads never before experienced. My hope is that we begin a new path, one of enlightenment, understanding, appreciation, and tolerance for all living things.” – Tom Mangelsen.
Here in Jackson Hole, wildlife photographer Tom Mangelsen needs no introduction. Our arts, particularly our conservation-based arts, have long looked to his intuitive, prescient practice of seeking out species and their habitats around the globe. Tom Mangelsen is a given, thank goodness. But preservation of wildlife, its assured survival, will never be a “given.” We are responsible, and Mangelsen has taken up the sword. He won’t put it down.
His awards include “Outstanding Nature Photographer of the Year” honors from the North American Nature Photographer Association and “Wildlife Photographer of the Year” from the BBC.
So welcome the chance to take in his work – a significant and renowned oeuvre – and reconnect to the wildlife and landscapes 
Mangelsen spends eight months a year exploring. The National Museum of Wildlife Art opens “On the Natural World: Photographs by Thomas D. Mangelsen,” on October 1. The exhibition remains up through April 25, 2010.
“These animals, even the most seemingly insignificant ones, are the barometer of the health of this planet,” says Mangelsen. “It doesn’t take long to realize that we are on that same chain, we are all linked in nature.”
I am the proud owner of Mangelsen’s quintessential book, “The Natural World.” It is a prized possession. Through his looking glass I peer. I close my eyes, fan the pages and stop. I do this several times, opening my eyes to see where I’ve landed.
Lord, he’s been written about. But my guess is, Tom (May I call you “Tom?”) is most proud of his connection to Jane Goodall, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and a UN Messenger of Peace. She thanks Tom for his “magnificent enterprise,” and she speaks of his work:
“There I found myself in a magic place, for the breathtaking photographs around the walls transported me to faraway countries, some loved and familiar so that looking at them woke a yearning to be back, others that provided tantalizing images of other worlds I had yet to experience. Here, at last, were photographs that had captured…the very essence of the wilderness scenes depicted.”
I wish I could be there this Thursday, but I’m traveling. You all go, you hear? What better place to take in Mangelsen’s work than within the rustic stone walls of the Museum, crouched on its butte like a watchful cougar?
For information, log on to www.wildlifeart.org or phone 307.733.5771.
Treasures in the Vault-20 Years at the National Museum of Wildlife Art
By Tammy Christel
“May it long serve those…in search of the wild, the natural, the forgotten, and the serene.” – Bill Kerr
Twenty years ago next May, a vision became reality. Twenty years ago next May, Bill and Joffa Kerr, and a handful of committed friends, opened a small museum now known as the National Museum of Wildlife Art. Standing on the threshold of twenty years, it seems right to talk about our museum’s history, and to look forward. I sat down with Chairman Emeritus Bill Kerr, Curator of Art Adam Harris, Chief Preparator Ron Gessler, and Sugden Family Curator of Education Jane Lavino to do just that. The following interview was filmed, and is now a part of the Museum’s archives.
Tammy Christel: Bill, tell us about the museum’s first days, and how you began this journey.
Bill Kerr: Our group was the most naïve group of friends you could imagine. You build it and they will come! Well, it turned out that wasn’t quite the case. But, we kicked things off with a collection from Tulsa’s Gilcrease Museum. Most of the art came up from Oklahoma City in the spring of ’87. We housed it in Marion Buchenroth’s garage!
TC: Casual!
BK: Yes, and it turns out that insurance value on the original borrowed art was five times the insurance value of our museum’s contents.
Adam Harris (laughing): You had the original 280 pieces, that were our museum core, and then you borrow 20 Moran sketches from the Gilcrease!
TC: Did you realize you were establishing a new genre?
BK: Joffa and I were excited. It had been a 25-year passion for us. I believe the other folks just liked the idea of trying to give something back to the community. We wanted to represent Jackson’s character, culture, and location.
AH: Our original name was “Wildlife of the American West.” How did the change of museum titles affect you and the exhibits?
BK: The original building was only 5,000 sq. feet, so there were natural obstacles to large exhibits; and therefore we were restrained in the number of topics we could address. In the old space, art was devoted only to mammalian subject matter. In the new space, we could include avians and aquatics. We could look more comprehensively—to Europe, for instance—for our exhibit.
And we have iconic objects. Robert Bateman’s “Chief” is among them, consistently capturing visitors’ imaginations. The bison was the 19th century symbol for the U.S., the most documented animal in the Trans-Mississippi West.
AH: It is iconic. It became so after 1900, when most bison had been decimated from the plains. We have a collection focused on the American bison. The sheer size of Bateman’s canvas is incredibly powerful.
TC: Adam, how will “Treasures from the Vault” be different than previous exhibits?
AH: I think it is very different. Inevitably, I am drawn to certain pieces, that illustrate a certain point well, and those are the works that end up making it into the galleries. This challenges me to look at pieces I haven’t for a long while, to think about them more carefully.
The tough part will be giving them coherence, so the collection doesn’t seem random. And that is the fun, seeing how different time periods and artists speak to each other.
The inspiration for “Treasures” is a piece of illustration art portraying a woman in an elegant 1920’s evening gown. She’s leading a black panther on a leash, and the panther is wearing a huge diamond collar. That’s a real Treasure from the Vault, and it’s never been out. We have Rungius paintings that have never been out. All stylistic periods will be represented in this show. We have very old bird stones. A Bierstadt caribou. There are unseen many works on paper, difficult to manage; and we’ll be rotating works in and out of the exhibit throughout the year.
BK: In the late 30’s Carl and Louise Rungius went to Hawaii. We have many works from that trip, and they are a totally different palette than Rungius used in Wyoming or Canada. He was two different artists in Alberta and Hawaii.
TC: Speaking of found treasures, there are some great stories about the Clymer Studio exhibit.
Ron Gessler: The exhibit began in an effort to make space. We had so many Clymer items that hadn’t made it out to the floor. Dan Provo, Doris Clymer, David Clymer and other staff set up the studio. Friends would look at the studio exhibit as it was and their first comment was, “It’s too neat! It’s not messy enough!”
Pouring over the old pictures of the original photographs of the original Clymer studio, I saw things we still had in storage. But the exhibit was sacrosanct.
I found a filing cabinet—all the clippings in it were in archival boxes—taking up a whole shelf in sculpture storage. We figured we could put that cabinet behind the Clymer desk; use it as a place to stack things.
I pulled out a file drawer, and there’s color in there! So we pull out the rest of the drawers. It had no sides, and John used what was convenient to close it up—two masonite panels. On those panels were paintings. Judging from the signature, they probably date from the mid-30’s. So here were paintings on the inside of a filing cabinet we’d known nothing of! And now they’re on display.
We’ve made numerous discoveries—a sketch box was simply cataloged. We opened it up, and there are four sketches in various degrees of completion inside! Now those are on display.
We’ve looked under almost every stone, and I think we’ve found all the Clymer treasures. We feel we know John and Doris; we dig through their stuff all the time!
Jane Lavino: There’s trivia that’s taken for granted. Like moving large pieces of art. Take the totem—it had to be lowered through the skylight! It wasn’t finished, and when we opened, there was just a steel support beam there. We had one education program that year when kids came up to study totems, and they each made, out of paper mache, a totem section. So the first totem there was actually one that local kids created.
Part of the culture of creating a totem is that you do it with one continuous tree trunk. Ours is 24 feet high. It arrived on a flat bed, a crane was hired to lift it and angle it over the roof. The skylight was removed and the piece was lowered right into the spot. The artist conducted a smudge pot ceremony, and there was concern over smoke damage and fire alarms. Our head of security didn’t sleep for a few nights, and said all he could envision was a giant totem coming loose on the new building!
RG: By the time they were ready for the crane to pick up the totem, it was getting dark. We had flashlights on it. At one point, when the totem was over the skylight opening, it was totally illuminated. That spectacle stopped traffic. All they could see was this giant, lit totem floating over the museum!
BK: Photography was not on the radar when we opened. Since our first photo exhibit, “The White Wolf,” it has become an important component for us, an integral part of our schedule. That also occurred with Junior Duck Stamp.
JL: One reason I think Junior Duck is so important is that it approaches students who may become the next great wildlife artists. We recognize them with an exhibition, and the art travels around the state. It encourages kids interested in wildlife art to continue. The award celebration affords a chance to meet other kids with the same interests, and see other renditions of Duck Stamp art. It is a great way to talk about how art can be a conservation tool, more than just a pretty picture to hang on the wall. Its success may partly be because we are an art museum, and art teachers see it as being a valuable art curriculum entry. Most state programs are run by other agencies that aren’t art oriented; through us, this is an art curriculum tool, rather than a science curriculum tool.
TC: What about the future?
JL: We want to continue to introduce school children to museums. For many school children in this region, whether they participate in Jr. Duck or other programs, it is their first experience. We want to do programs atypical of things we’ve done in the past. For example, the two dance programs we’ve done, where dancers come and choreograph around our collection; and the building inspires them. The dance moves through the museum. We are bringing in experimental filmmakers. More and more we’ll be thinking of ways to capture audiences that aren’t typical. We want to do something very different.
AH: Bill, what are our next art frontiers?
BK: Is there wildlife art in outer space? Seriously, the next region we should look to is the Asian subcontinent—India and China. In those cultures, wildlife has been thematic from the time mankind began creating art. The polar bear is represented around the world, in Russia and Scandinavia as well as in Alaska and the Arctic. So our challenge will be to keep learning, and to seek out cultures that portray wildlife.
Adam harbors a secret desire for a Roy Liechtenstein. We’re not sure if he did any wildlife art, but we’re researching it.
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