'B' is for 'busy week of art'

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

By Susan Burkitt

In her new show at Mountain Trails Gallery, “W is for Wildlife,” Jackson Hole artist Amy Ringholz takes a simple pattern – every other letter in the alphabet – and creates her own vision of the gallery’s focus on the “New West.”

Starting with “A for Antelope,” Ringholz created 13 paintings of native Rocky Mountain wildlife using black ink, then oil paint and, finally, oil crayons to highlight her subjects. This technique, used for the first time by Ringholz, has added a “slightly refined” element to the contemporary works that has attracted serious collectors, said gallery director Mark Tarrant, who called her new work “exceptional.”

Several of the paintings have already sold, Tarrant noted. Although Ringholz already enjoys a strong local following, Tarrant believes her new show demonstrates that her painting has evolved significantly.

Among Ringholz’s favorite animals in the show is “M for Moose,” whose whimsical coloring “fit the personality” of a moose the artist encountered while working as a housekeeper at the R Lazy S Ranch.

“We just nodded, ‘Good morning,’” Ringholz said of the “gigantic” moose she met on a path while working at one of her first jobs after arriving in Jackson five years ago to join the blossoming contemporary art scene. The moose is such a funny-looking animal, Ringholz said, it invites a play on color and an emphasis on its unusual features.

The show also features, among others, a jack rabbit, an owl and a cougar. While the animals themselves are traditional, Ringholz believes her contemporary style fits the gallery’s forward-looking vision.
Mountain Trails Gallery, located at 150 Center St., will host an artist’s reception 5-7 p.m. tomorrow. The show, which opened on June 29, will be at the gallery through Saturday. Call 734-8150.

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Although the site appears to be under construction, Muse Gallery still plans to host its opening celebration and artist’s reception for Nicole Charbonnet at its new location, 62 S. Glenwood (former site of Anthony’s Restaurant), tomorrow.

Charbonnet’s new work, collectively titled “Wild America,” focuses on American wildlife, cowboys, horses and landscapes. “It’s the perfect show for our opening, with its American theme and coming right after the Fourth of July,” said gallery director Sarah Lustfield.

Charbonnet describes the show as using “stereotypical images of America, a cowboy, gangster, or desert highway as ways of exploring our past and presenting perceptions of ourselves and others.”

The 15 paintings, a subset of a larger group of new works, were selected for the gallery opening through a collaborative effort by artist and gallery officials to best highlight the American theme. Charbonnet’s paintings, using layers of plaster, paper and assorted materials, combine to create a textural surface that for the artist, serve as a threshold to a “cultural memory,” as described by Charbonnet. Muse will hold its opening celebration 5-8 p.m. tomorrow. Contact the gallery at 733-0555.

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The challenge of painting, especially of painting the outdoors, is that light constantly changes. The sun lolls along its celestial course, clouds tumble and cavort across the sky, the wind rustles the leaves and grass, causing them to reflect and refract differently from second to second. How can you paint what you see when what you see is subject to so many variables?

Lee Carlman Riddell knows the frustration. A plein air painter in the classic sense – she’s been known to load a daypack with a few small canvases and tubes of oils, though she’s also produced a few prize works across the street from her gallery – she has dealt first-hand with the challenges of ever-shifting light and come up with a few tricks to counter its wily ways.

Painting on small canvases, for example.

“You can cover it quicker,” she said. Also they’re more affordable and the viewer is compelled to get right up into them to really examine them. “So there’s lot of reasons” why her canvases rarely get larger than eight-by-ten.

This week, Riddell hangs her new one-woman show, “Treasure Hunt: Looking for Light,” at Trio Fine Art, 545 N. Cache, where she is indeed one of the trio of women artists who display their work and run the shop. The gallery will open the new show with a reception on Thursday, featuring a conversation Riddell titled “Inspiration, Editing & Imagination” at 5 p.m., followed by refreshments at 6. RSVP is appreciated for the 5 p.m. talk.

A more or less self-taught painter, Riddell has been influenced by art her whole life. “So you have that memory, you know what you like – liking to be outside, liking shapes and forms and colors – and then you’re out and there’s the Tetons, and what do you do on an eight-by-ten canvas?” That’s where editing comes in, she said.

“And then there’s imagination … developing a visual memory for a light and mood, so you see what’s in front of you. Of course, how I see might be different for someone else. I like simplicity, for instance. What can I leave out? What’s the minimum I can put in and still get the idea across?”

In addition to original oils, Riddell will have a collection of new limited-edition giclee prints for sale, too, extending the range of affordability for her exquisite little windows onto nature.

Riddell’s show will hang through July 21. For more information, contact Trio Fine Art at 734-4444.

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Jack Spencer, an accomplished, self-taught photographer, will show his latest work, a series of landscapes entitled “This Land,” at the Oswald Gallery, 165 Center St., through Aug. 17.

Spencer describes his work as “pictorial” and “expressionistic.” As a native Mississippian, he has been compared to Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner for the storytelling nature of his photographs.

“This Land” began at a time when Spencer was “disgusted with the politics and culture of the United States.” The first images came from great anger, revealed through torn and distressed prints. As Spencer moved forward with the project, his perspective shifted to more of a dichotomy between a land “vast, beautiful and awe-inspiring, yet dark, evil and shallow … all at the same time.”

Spencer uses a unique process to give his photographs a sepia-toned, distressed look. In the darkroom, the negatives pass through various transparent materials which give the prints a slightly out-of-focus quality when set on paper. Then, each silver print is coated with an oil varnish, giving tones of earth red and yellow. The images are then further distressed through tearing and denting as well as the application and removal of asphaltom.

Spencer says that “all work is portraiture” and that his work is primarily metaphorical as opposed to documentarian.

Oswald Gallery will hold an artist’s reception for Spencer 6-9 p.m. on Saturday. The show hangs through Aug. 15. Contact the gallery at 734-8100.

Courtesy
“Cougar,” Amy Ringholz 2007

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'B' is for 'busy week of art' | Planet JH News Article: Arts Beat

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