Posts Tagged ‘Wyoming’
Musings: Jackson Hole’s Creative Journeys
“Life is a journey, not a destination.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Beginning with the end in mind is about examining why life is worth living and being true to your own values and dreams,” says Acton’s MBA Entrepreneurship. ”If you have trouble uncovering these fundamental goals and values, it is time to go back to your basic foundations. Query people you trust and admire. Read great literary works and books on philosophy. Spend time alone in a quiet place. If you are religious, reexamine the fundamentals of your religion. Question, examine assumptions, reflect, and question again.”
In recent weeks I’ve listened as artists and non-artists spoke on the subject of embracing failure as it relates to success; the conversation began at last month’s Culture Front forum. It’s so in the air! How do we stay afloat? It’s so easy, even comfortable, to allow our values and true wishes to take a back seat to daily demands. We want the public to invest in us, yet we often avoid digging in to the very problems we must solve in order for that to happen. It’s a conscious effort every day, and it’s a tough go. I’m reading a wonderful book that says the typical mindset of “success” is about “getting.” And “getting” is a fight.
A friend recently said that Jackson is full of wonderful people, and she’s right. We’re a persistent, well-meaning, cause-driven population. In all things creative, we’re on the hunt for that “groove,” and the unknowns are…unknown.
A positive development: Vertical Harvest was unanimously supported by Jackson’s Town Council! The next step is sending that proposal to Teton County’s Wyoming Business Council Representative Roger Bower, Wyoming’s West Central Region Representative. Bower’s office is in Riverton, Wyoming. Word is, he does not like the project. However, he’s the man who will approve appropriations. I’ve emailed Mr. Bower a question or two; if he responds, you’ll see it here. If not, assume “no comment” by post time.
Mark Nowlin - Landscape, Mixed Media on Paper
“These are all landscapes, I made them on the spot, off the highway, during my drive from Portland, Oregon to Jackson,” says Jackson Hole artist and purveyor of arts supplies Mark Nowlin. Last Sunday, Knowlin took his turn showing and creating art at the new Teton County Library, where—lest you live in a cave—you know that Filament Mind, the huge art installation by conceptual artist Brian Brush has just been completed.
Under the filament tent, a fine cross-section of Jackson’s local artists brought their work to the library. “Stumble on Art in the Afternoons” began by hosting Travis Walker, who blipped on his Facebook page that “the best art I’ve ever seen in Jackson is at the Teton County Library.” Catch any sass, Travis? (I’m teasing…)
Nowlin, so well known in our arts community, is a great proponent of contemporary art. He owns and operates Master’s Studio, a Jackson arts
supply and framing store. His creativity and knowledge of art history, perspective on Jackson’s art scene and where it might be trending and the region’s arts influences, are topics you should talk to him about sometime.
Nowlin does not exhibit often, but he should. Each of his compositions I viewed last week were dynamic, swinging with motion, affected by place, and wholly recognizable even as they embraced abstraction. Nowlin lined up dozens of works, a visual diary of his travels.
Pinedale is a Wyoming town working hard to infuse art into its veins; the movement is growing. A blooming flower, its seeds are sewn by local artists, Sue Sommers among them.
Her mural, seen here, is one of two completed in the past two years as part of Pinedale’s public art program. Sommers’ large-scale, whirling, arcing and bright painting, “Our Glittering World,” will remain at its current site for two years.
Pinedale’s public art initiative, IN|SITE EX|SITE, hosts an artists reception on Friday, February 8th, 6:30-8:30 pm at the Sublette County Library. Artists contributing work to Pinedale’s community, also to be honored, include Bronwyn Minton, JB Bond, Kirsten and Palmer Klarén, and Sommers.
I asked Sommers about the world she was considering as she created her mural.
“I like the semi-religious aspect of doing something devotional and with discipline. Because the root of discipline is “disciple.” If I’m practicing, this is a form of worship, and I have to have a disciple’s severity towards myself.” ~ Tad Anderson
Everybody can draw and paint, believes Laramie artist Tad Anderson. But the act of taking out a brush, chalk, or any instrument capable of rendering art doesn’t necessarily mean the art will be good. When one undertakes learning to become an artist, one needs to be comfortable self-criticizing and understanding quality.
Even so, Anderson works to approach drawing with a sense of freedom, a willingness to “follow the course of a drawing.” Then the work of listening to your gut and “hearing” if what you’ve completed is good begins.
“Just as you do in climbing, and I am a climber,” says Anderson. He’s dedicated much of his life to climbing and says his friends are all climbers.
“I’m just kind of a wild man–that’s who I am. So I have to try to discipline myself to make anything happen,” Anderson explains. “I might follow my emotions to the point of extremity. I have to hold on to a certain discipline to maintain sanity or relevancy; otherwise I risk floating away, into the air. My friends are kind of a rag-tag group, but they are dedicated, heartfelt rock climbers. It’s what they do all the time, make new climbs and explore new territory. You’d never know they were climbers, in the Jackson sense, because they’ve got no fancy equipment and aren’t in magazines.”
"Schwabachers Landing," Todd Kosharek
“I focus on the falseness of our Wyoming terrain – the gentle looking river that tore a canyon into the ground, the soft looking horizon of sage, a snarly and abrasive plant, the calming appearance of the winter landscape that is freezing cold. I love the duality of the way we romanticize nature and what nature really is….I focus on the process of searching.” ~ Todd Kosharek
"Canyon," Todd Kosharek
Blue canyons, blue rooms. Walk into Jackson artist’s Todd Kosharek’s house (shared with his wife, dancer Kate Kosharek) and you’ll find yourself surrounded in blues. Kosharek is not singing the blues, he’s painting them. Kosharek, an effusive, upbeat artist with a passion for art history, spends many a day out in Jackson Hole’s landscapes, painting them. Most plein air artists don’t create whole works devoted to shades of blue, but Kosharek does, and it sets his work apart from traditional Western landscape painters. Kosharek ventures out in bright, harsh mid-day light. His goal is not to paint perfectly, but to feel the landscape’s underlying secrets and get paint on his canvas. His approach to what we describe as beautiful is newly, uniquely his own.
Kosharek says this about his large scale, acrylic works: “What I love in painting, both as an artist and as a viewer, is the feeling I get from seeing something that was meticulously created by pigment and brush. I want to see time – time taken by the painter to think, feel and create – but also the element of time, as if the painting is not frozen as an image but will grow and change with me as a person as I grow and change.”
