Slack tries painting for herself; Ciao Gallery showcases work by two more

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

By Richard Anderson

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Even though she has never shown in galleries, you’ve probably seen Jocelyn Slack’s artwork. In addition to providing the images for many cards for Crane Creek Graphics, she has done tons of commercial work and commissions throughout the region, including a mural in Dr. Jim Little’s office and pen-and-ink drawings for restaurants in Lander.

But Slack – who lives in Wilson and works in a tiny but tidy shack across the yard from her house – has never had an exhibit of her work because, she said, she hadn’t ever just painted for herself. Until recently.

Eleven watercolors, completed over the past year and most painted out of doors, are on display through the middle of October at Pearl Street Bagels, 145 W. Pearl Ave. There are big, panoramic landscapes of Death Canyon, Spring Gulch, West Gros Ventre Butte; smaller, more intimate scenes of a shady Fish Creek Road and a neighbor’s idyllic cabin; and a few animal paintings that will appear instantly familiar to anyone who has picked up her Crane Creek cards.

Slack studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts, but dropped out after a year. She lived and painted in Banff, B.C., for a while, then started doing art freelance – illustrations, logos, T-shirts, catalogs, restaurant menus. Her peripatetic lifestyle brought her to Jackson Hole in the late ’70s, and though she returned often over the intervening decades, it wasn’t until 2000 that she moved here for good.

All that commercial work was enough for her to earn a half-decent living, but the birth of her daughter, Luna, inspired her to try art simply for herself. She confessed it was difficult.

“I like to work for people,” she said. Clients get the process started with an idea and usually provide source material. Painting for herself, she had to make all her own decisions, including what her personal style really looked like.

Judging from the Pearl Street Bagels show, Slack’s style is loose and energetic. “I love line,” she said. “Color is a challenge.” She brings a keen eye to composition.

“I get straight-laced when working for someone else,” she said, “but when I’m working with friends, I get more whimsical.” Witness the two red fox paintings, whose whiskered subjects seem to wink at the viewer and who curl and arch to fit in within the paper’s confines.

As an artist in search of herself, Slack did not shy away from the challenge. She threw herself willingly into the crucible by taking up plein air painting. Painting from life in the outdoors means she maybe gets two or three hours to render her subject, before conditions change too much or the sun gets too high and beats the shadows and the sense of perspective down – or, she said with a laugh, before she starts wrecking everything by over-painting.

“What I like about painting from life is … all the information is there,” she said. “It’s almost like a meditation.”

 “I still have a long way to go figuring out where I’m going,” she said, but that journey appears well underway.

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Ciao Gallery, the artists’ co-op in Victor, Idaho, presents another monthly showcase for two of its members: stained-glass artist Heidi Snow Mey and plein air painter Tom Bradshaw.

The gallery at 145 N. Main St. hosts an opening party for the pair, with art, food, drink and live music by Teton Valley band Forty Story Shack, 6-9 p.m. tonight.

Mey, a 30-year area resident, took a stained glass class in the ’70s and fell in love with the art form. She started playing around on her own and found a point in her life where she had the time and space to dive into the ancient craft in a more serious manner.
“You need to have a spot where you only do glass,” she said. Not only do all the materials take up a lot of space, but, “You can’t eat around it, you can’t sleep around it, because of the lead, and picking up after yourself every hour is a pain.”
Commissions and sales followed. This past year she began to show her work at Ciao Gallery.

“It’s very time consuming,” Mey said of her art form. “It takes five or six steps and is a very meticulous, precise medium. You cut the glass wrong, you’ve got to cut another, because everything has to fit really close together.”

Mey starts with a pattern drawn on paper. Then she considers what types of glass will work for feathers or fur, water or clouds. Next, Mey cuts the glass and grinds the edges – “You wouldn’t believe how cut up you get,” she said – then wraps copper foil around each piece and solders them together with lead.

May has sent work to clients as far away as Portugal. “And I’ve got five pieces in the Catholic church here.”

For the Ciao show, she will display about 20 pieces from this past year.
Tom Bradshaw lives in Kelly and works nearly full time at the National Museum of Wildlife Art. He graduated from the Art Institute of Atlanta in 1995 and used to paint abstraction, but switched to plein air landscapes about five years ago.

“I always knew I’d rather do landscapes,” he said, “so I just went out one day with a portable easel” to give it a try. The experience changed his life, he said. It gave him a focus and he’s been doggedly pursuing it ever since.

“It’s been a fun trip so far,” he said.

Originally from Virginia, the West beckoned Bradshaw in the mid-90s, but then he went back East “to get out of debt.” He returned to the Hole in 2005. “I figured the debt was worth it, to live out here.” While Jackson Hole is not an easy place for anyone, let alone a painter, to make a living, it’s a great place for a painter to live.

“I just open up my window shade and can paint. I do early morning painting, every sunrise, little studies, six-by-eight. That gets my head thinking of art right away.”
For additional information, call Ciao Gallery at (208) 787-4841 or email ciaogallery@yahoo.com.

Courtesy Heidi May “The Green Trout”


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Slack tries painting for herself; Ciao Gallery showcases work by two more | Planet JH News Article: Arts Beat

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