Strange blossoms at ArtSpace; boxing match at NMWA; Chatham chat at Trio

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

By Richard Anderson

Nature is noisy. She speaks with countless tongues, but really has very little to say other than, “Hey, big boy, wanna cross-pollinate?” Her infinity of variations – from dandelion to orchid, narcissus to corpse flower – is the inevitable outcome of the same simple operations repeated innumerable times over the eons.

None of which detracts from her beauty. Even before humankind was trying to escape the perils of nature, we also were escaping into her majesty and awe. And thousands of generations later, we still are.

On Thursday, the Art Association presents “Culture of Nature: Uncommon Botany” in the ArtSpace Gallery at the Center for the Arts, 265 S. Glenwood. Through Aug. 24, the exhibition will display works by four artists – Michael Sherrill, Mari Andrews, Ron Klein and John Oldani – for whom nature is their inspiration, their collaborator, even the source of their materials.

Michael Sherrill, who makes his home in the lush hills of North Carolina, often combines porcelain ceramic with his own hand-forged iron for work that speaks of reverence, convergence, growth, and order. Two apples grow together in “Conversation,” for example, while a teapot takes on phantasmagoric shape and color in “Elephant Plant Tea.”

“Two things become one thing,” he said of much of his work. “Order comes out of chaos. A lot of us deal with chaos. We pick from things and we join them together to make something else. Sometimes we can add a twist, a surprise.”

Mari Andrews lives in Emeryville, Calif., just south of Berkeley on the bay, but she grew up in Ohio where, as one of 10 children, she found solitude, solace and expression in art and nature.

Her piece for “Culture of Nature” will consist of 99 sculptures – some of them as small as two inches across, others are feet wide – on a 22-by-15-foot wall in the gallery.

Andrews who has been studying Native American petroglyphs and has come to admire the beauty and power of those minimalist markings and carvings, said no individual piece is terribly elaborate, but, like a rock wall covered with ancient and mysterious writing, “when they come together, it feels like they are a family of images that relate together.”

Ron Klein lives outside of Philadelphia, but he has circled the globe for the “pods” that are his raw material. His installations may incorporate 400 or 500 individual “sculptures” – pods, sometimes altered or dipped in beeswax, as well as thrown-away manmade objects.

The farther south one travels, he added, the “more robust” the pods seem to get, so he has visited Burma, Madagascar and the Amazon several times on collecting trips. These are not casual eco-tours, but high adventure in the most remote places he can reach. In the Amazon, where some of the indigenous people call him the trash man, they fully embrace his mission.

“They would tell me, ‘Three days from here, there are some totally cool pods. Let’s take a dugout and go,’ and we’ll go miles and miles … even if I don’t find what I want, the adventure of getting there is well worth the trip.”

John Oldani, who lived in Jackson Hole back in the late ’70s and early ’80s but now lives in Brooks, Calif., has been working with the image of the nest to question the dichotomy of nature and human culture. For him, nests represent on the one hand a naturally occurring form and, at the same time, something constructed.

“I also have incorporated that with found objects or objects that have a strong human cultural reference,” he said. “They kind of play against each other.”
All of the artists will be present for the opening festivities, which will start at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday in the Center for the Arts. For more, contact the Art Association at 733-6379.

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Every odd-numbered year, the Paintbox Society – a group of generous donors and volunteers to the National Museum of Wildlife Art – invites dozens of the museum’s artists and artistically inclined friends to take a simple wooden box and decorate.

They paint them, integrate them into larger sculptural pieces, turn them into tables or other useful items, or, often, beautifully but mostly useless objets d’art. Then they auction them off to raise money for the museum’s many and wide-ranging education-related programs.

This being an odd-numbered year, the museum is again hosting the “Out of the Box” sale, auction and party at 5:30 p.m. on Friday. In addition to fine and fun art, the fourth biennial event will offer hors d’oeuvres, a cash bar and other diversions
Some boxes may go for as little as $25, while others will sell for as much as $4,000 or even more.

If that seems like a lot for a box, consider the roster of more than 100 participants that includes well-known artists whose works are in the museum’s collection (Ken Carlson, Luke Frazier, Bob Kuhn), favorites from the valley’s gallery community (Thom Ross, Nancy Dunlop-Cawdrey, Ricki Arno) and luminaries of the local art scene (Greg McHuron, Ben Roth, Miga Rossetti, Jim Morgan, Shannon Troxler) – as well as some of NMWA’s more talented and devoted volunteers and staffers.

This year’s entries include David Everett’s fun beaver box, Jim Eppler’s raven keeping close watch over her nest, Deb Penk’s rustic truck, Jan Benz’s model of the Wort Hotel (where some samples of the handiwork have been on display all week) and more than one tribute to Jackson Hole Mountain Resort’s gone-but-not-forgotten Aerial Tram.

In the past, “Out of the Box” has raised $40,000 to $50,000, according to Zeenie Scholz, director of marketing at NMWA, which has, among other things, helped to serve the more than 10,000 school-aged children visiting the museum last year.

Admission to “Out of the Box” is free for NMWA members, $7 for adults, $5 for students and free for kids 5 and under. RSVP to 732-5434. Also, Scholz noted, the Rising Sage Café in the museum will be open and serving tapas during the event – one of only a few evenings that tapas will be offered this summer. She recommended reservations be made by calling 732-5434.

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Over the course of nearly 50 years and hundreds of one-man shows, Russell Chatham has become one of the most collectible artists in America. His oil paintings sell for up to $100,000 and can be found in the homes of such aesthetes as Jack Nicholson, art critic Robert Hughes and Jackson Hole’s own Harrison Ford.

But while Chatham still paints a few canvasses each year, his real love these days is lithography, according to Kelli Tikalsky, a long-time friend and the manager of Chatham Fine Arts in Livingston, Mont.

“He loves to paint, but it’s really hard on him – it’s a hard process,” she said. “Lithography is fun for him … People love them and he loves them. He can produce a lot of them and people can afford it, and he loves that.”

Thanks to a friendship with Lee Carlman Riddell, one third of the artist-owned and -operated gallery Trio Fine Art (the others being September Vhay and Kathryn Mapes Turner), Chatham has been displaying new and older lithographs at the gallery for the past year or so. He’s due to make his second annual early summer visit to Trio Fine Art on Thursday, bringing his latest lithograph series as well as a couple of rare oils (for display only). The show will hang through June 30.

Those unfamiliar with Chatham’s work may be fooled by the word “lithograph.” While the term may be applied to inexpensive duplications, in Chatham’s case it refers to an artistic process no less thrilling and creative than applying paint to a canvas.

Since the early ’80s, he has overseen the painstaking process of making his limited edition prints – from hand-drawing each of the 30, 40 even 50 plates that make up the image to the proofing of each final product – an effort that can take up to 200 hours.

The results are elemental scenes from the West: falling rain or snow lending form to the driving wind, the shifting colors of the landscape beneath the rising or setting sun or moon, the softness of Earth and sky juxtaposed with the permanence of the horizon that divides the two.

Chatham made his new series, “The Prairie Suite,” completed last August, to help raise money for the Eastern Montana Prairie Foundation. While the series has been in high demand, according to Trio Fine Arts, the gallery will nevertheless offer a $300 discount to anyone who wants to purchase the entire series – $1,800 instead of $2,100.

Chatham will be on hand to talk with art lovers 5-6 p.m. on Thursday at Trio Fine Art, located at 545 N. Cache St., followed by a reception with hors d’oeuvres and wine until 8 p.m. Reservations are appreciated; call the gallery at 734-4444.

Courtesy Photo
Jim Eppler made this raven box for NMWA’s ‘Out of the Box’ auction.


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Strange blossoms at ArtSpace; boxing match at NMWA; Chatham chat at Trio | Planet JH News Article: Arts Beat

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