Arapahoe community shows its face

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

By Susan Burkitt

“It’s fun riding in the back of a truck, but dirt gets in your eyes,” writes 8-year-old Hannah Blackburn in the caption for her photo, one of 50 photos of the Arapaho people and the Wind River Reservation that will be shown at the Teton County Library Thursday through July 17.

 “This exhibit sheds light on a community … for people who have not visited or spent much time there,” said Oona Doherty, adult program coordinator for the library.
This is the second year of the “Arapaho Photography Project: My Community,” which this year features black-and-white photographs taken with disposable cameras provided by Kodak. Teresa Cohn, a geography graduate at the Big Sky Institute at Montana State, said she “dreamed the project into existence” while working on a similar project at the Wyoming Indian School. Cohn, photographer Shasta Grenier and Celeste Spoonhunter, the culture coordinator at Arapahoe School, coordinated the event, which took place over a 24-hour period.

Photographers as young as 3-years-old were asked to illustrate for viewers his/her perspective on where they live. “Moms brought their kids in with them, so everybody got a camera,” Cohn said. “It was a very unpredictable project.”

Cohn and Grenier got everybody started by taking photographs from magazines such as National Geographic, spreading them over the floor, and asking the group to identify which photos were interesting to them. Then the photographers set off into their community to shoot. The results of the group’s work range from close-up self-portraits and basketball nets to landscapes and tipis.

One of the most moving photos for Cohn is of 12-year-old Matthew Tyler Willow’s grandmother, who poses in her bedroom before a wall covered in photos. “It’s a picture of a woman who values pictures,” said Cohn. “It reminds us of the importance of images and the simplicity of the things we value most.”

The exhibit was first shown at Central Wyoming College Gallery in Riverton, and at the photographers’ request, is now being shown in other venues.

 “As one participant put it, ‘We know what our community is like. Now we want other people to see,’” said Cohn.

The Jackson Hole audience will have the opportunity to meet some of the photographers at the opening reception at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday.  Both the exhibit and the reception are free and open to the public. Contact the library at 744-2164.

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This week, Ben Roth will end his six-year stint as the instructor for YARD Art, a collaborative effort Roth started with the support of the Art Association and local high school students interested in pursuing art as a career. The latest 26 works by the group – both by individuals and by small teams – opened last Friday and will be in the Art Association’s gallery space until today.

“YARD” is an acronym for “Young Artists’ Revolutionary Design,” and this new work lives up to the name. Meeting two to five times a week for one to five hours in Roth’s studio, the students were encouraged to look at ordinary objects – such as a mirror, a refrigerator and even a recycled satellite dish – as sources for their work.
The truck door is now a desk, complete with a bucket seat desk chair (seat belt optional), and a collection of beer and soda cans is now a chandelier.

The students’ work is of “very high quality,” Roth said. All the students’ work is available for sale, including some unique belt buckles that caught my eye, like the one with the old tram car photo encased in glass and with a metal surrounding.
Roth has overseen the growth of the program from eight students the first year to 24 this year.

“I have encouraged [the Art Association] to limit the class size next year,” Roth noted. Emma Adkisson assisted Roth is teaching the group this year.

After ushering about 75 high school students through the artistic and business side of producing art as a career, Roth is moving on to pursue his own work, focusing on the metal sculpture that was the subject of an exhibit at the Muse Gallery in February. The art produced, and the YARD Art program, “evolved significantly” over time, Roth said.
Ryan Haworth, a painter and illustrator who also works in bronze, will take over the program for the coming school year.

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I recently viewed “From Sketch to Painting,” a small exhibit showing in the Kuhn Gallery at the National Museum of Wildlife Art.

Featuring well-known wildlife artists Scott Christensen, Bob Kuhn and Tucker Smith, the exhibit takes you on a journey from the artists’ initial thoughts on a composition to a final work of art.

Smith used graphite pencils and erasers in his sketches, tools common to all three artists. In his “Alaska Range,” the sketches of a bear against a formidable landscape change poses in the final painting, serving as a central anchor to the piece.

Kuhn’s “Reverberations” began with a video still that “suggested a painting,” the artist notes in his description of his creative process. The work, with mountain lions lounging on rocks, changed in both the number of animal subjects and the colors, demonstrating the painstaking process Kuhn takes to get the final work just right.

Christensen uses his sketches to provide him with information about the general composition. For “Mid-Winter, South Park,” Christensen did a small field study, but ultimately chose to vary the spacing and the palette to reflect a softer glow of sunlight through more defined trees on a larger scale.  
The exhibit will continue until Oct. 14.

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For the past 32 summers, a variety of American Indian artists from tribes across the nation have come to the Colter Bay Visitor Center in Grand Teton National Part to demonstrate both traditional and contemporary art forms. Tribes represented include Shoshone, Choctaw, Cherokee and Tarascan Apache.

The artists will demonstrate their craft on the lower level of the Colter Bay Indian Arts Museum, including pottery, painting, weaving, beadwork, decorative gourds and musical instruments. The demonstrations started May 14 and will continue 9 a.m.-7 p.m. daily through Sept. 16.

This week, Guillermo Martinez of the Tarascan-Apache, demonstrates drum and flute making. On June 18, Paul Hacker of the Choctaw, shows his flutes, knives and pottery. And starting June 25. Andrew Two Bulls, of the Oglala Sioux, will demonstrate here beadwork and painting.

Photo By Sean Burkitt
“Cutthroat” sits on “The Universe,” a steel table, by YARD Art students Cory Ellis and Chloe Brightman.

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Arapahoe community shows its face | Planet JH News Article: Arts Beat

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