Potter, hoffman offer male, female perspectives on landscapes

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

By Susan Burkitt

What better way to celebrate a month that brought us “Live Earth” than to have John Potter, a Native American painter, teacher and humorist, share his view of the Earth we have “borrowed from our children,” as the current artist-in-residence at the National Museum of Wildlife Art puts it?

While painting at the museum on Saturday, Potter, whose ancestors were of the nomadic Ojibwe or Chippewa tribe, said he and his wife, Janet – an anthropology professor at Lyndon State College in Vermont – split their time between St. Johnsbury, Vt., and Billings, Mont., where, before turning to painting full time, he was an illustrator and columnist for the Billings Gazette. Potter wrote as a humorist, focusing on Native Americans and sometimes commenting on local issues related to the land, such as brucellosis.

“I was always attracted to the land,” Potter said. “Our elders tell us that we belong to the land, that the land does not belong to us. … When I look on a landscape, I see my relatives.”

Encouraged by his wife to pursue painting full time, Potter enrolled in a Jim Wilcox workshop about six years ago and has been in the Jackson Hole Miniature Show the last four years. He affectionately referred to his wife’s support as having “made every dream possible” for him as an artist. Then, last September, Bronwyn Minton, adult education coordinator at the NMWA and an artist herself, invited Potter to be an artist-in-residence at the museum.

For Potter, the landscapes he paints “provide a sense of quiet dignity that I hope gives [the viewer] a moment of peace and solitude in their day.”

Potter, along with his brother, recently traveled around England, lecturing at various colleges on Native American culture and religion. The landscape in England was “ more atmospheric and had fewer edges,” Potter said. “I had to shift my palette to reflect the lack of harsh light you have so much of here in the West.”

As NMWA artist-in-residence, Potter will be painting at the museum 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday until July 28.

In addition, Potter’s latest work is being presented in a two-person show next to local painter Jennifer Hoffman at Galleries West Fine Art. The show, entitled “Nature in Balance,” opened July 4 and offers an interesting comparison of male and female perspectives on the landscape. Potter said his work is easily identifiable as male in that “every element is aggressive.” Hoffman’s work is more elegant, tender even, Potter said.

Hoffman, who has lived and painted in Jackson Hole for 11 years, is often found, brush in hand, at Galleries West. Several of her paintings from “Nature in Balance” have already sold, a testament to her skill at depicting the local landscape. While quiet in demeanor, her paintings have a strong vitality that allows the viewer to feel the moment in nature she has captured, whether it be the sun filtering through a stand of aspens or the murky light accompanying a winter storm.

“I live in Hoback Junction and like to paint in both Hoback and Snake River Canyon,” Hoffman said. The artist prefers winter’s blue and grey landscapes to autumn’s palette, where “the colors are more riotous,” she said. “My work is more quiet and goes with the way I look at things.”

The show will hang at Galleries West Fine Art, 70 S. Glenwood, until July 22.

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Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary jump-started its First Friday series with “AudioIntensityVisusalOverload” or “AIVO” on Friday evening, spotlighting the work of local artists who could provide a glimpse into the creative process in addition to their artwork.

The event was co-curated by assistant gallery director Sam Fitz and artist Ricki Arno with the goal of providing “sensory overload for attendees, to hit them with the visual imagery from ceiling to floor,” said Fitz.

The event featured everything from Bronwyn Minton’s photage of rice paper and soy-based ink placed on fallen burned logs near Jenny Lake, to a street-art montage of painted images, tagger-style, that artists were invited to participate in, imaginations unchecked.

Arno, who works locally and in New York City, provided a series of mixed-media collages of brightly colored images and words. Her Dadaist, non-art influences are evident as she tackles issues as personal as her mother and family to war and politics, each image layered and highlighted in a carefully random pattern.

Landscape artist James Shay literally brought an edge to his work, layering the trim from his landscape paintings in unique, contemporary patterns reminiscent of Kenneth Nolan.

Other artists experimenting into new areas include Susan Thulin, whose sketches and cut-out stenciled words are a study for future works evoking neon signs. Thulin spoke on Friday about the difficulty of using words, and the right words, in art.

The artwork will hang for the rest of the week, although without the energy generated by the party Friday. Check it out at Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary, 130 S. Jackson.

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Dropping by the Art Association’s ArtSpace gallery to view “Culture of Nature: Uncommon Botany” proved disappointing as the finely detailed work of Michael Sherrill’s metal and porcelain sculptures seemed largely missing, particularly those highlighted in the Summer 2007 Exhibitions brochure. After his luncheon slide lecture in late June featured by the Art Association’s “Thank God It’s Art,” it would seem that Sherrill’s work would have been highlighted.

And while Mari Andrews’ found objects created a spray of three-dimensional texture on the wall leading to the second floor of the gallery, it seemed strange that those same objects were being sold not as a selected grouping, or even smaller subsets, but as individual pieces.

One intriguing sculpture of found objects and metal by John Oldani featured an inverted baseball bat topped by a metal nest and with a new, green branch poking out of the side, with one leaf having emerged. Overall, the works, while interesting and intricate in and of themselves, seemed disconnected from one another.

Courtesy
“Aspen Dawn,” pastel, 16x20, Jennifer L. Hofffman 2007.

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Potter, hoffman offer male, female perspectives on landscapes | Planet JH News Article: Arts Beat

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