Visiting artists advocate environment; Close, Mullaney show at Muse Gallery

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

By Kate Balog

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Hollywood filmmakers and ex-vice presidents aren’t the only ones drumming up public awareness on environmental issues. Visual artists are also methodically changing the world through their persuasive images.

At least four of them are coming to Jackson Hole during the first two weeks of October.
CC Lockwood and Rhea Gary bring the Louisiana coastal wetland situation to our attention, Jean-Michel Cousteau’s new expedition book displays the importance of our national marine sanctuaries through photography and sculptor David Edgar Allen picks through neighbors’ curbside recycling for raw material.

“Vanishing Wetlands: Two Visions” opened last weekend at the National Museum of Wildlife Art. The two visions are those of photographer CC Lockwood and painter Rhea Gary.

CC Lockwood began his career shooting wildlife in Yellowstone after graduating from LSU in Baton Rouge. Back in Louisiana in 1974, 40 years before Hurricane Katrina, he became involved with wetlands studies: “Even then we knew the wetlands were in big trouble.”

The Mississippi River used to drop sediment at its delta, Lockwood said, building up marshlands along the coast. The marshes were a natural protective barrier to inland residents who were building homes and businesses seven or eight feet below sea level. The infamous levees were built, “making New Orleans into a bathtub.” While the city was protected from moderate river overflow, the levees made it impossible for the river sediment to disburse.

“We were sinking before but gaining land, and now we are just sinking,” Lockwood said.
Hurricane Katrina brought New Orleans’s precarious situation to the country’s attention, but due to misinformation, most of us now blame the failed levees for the devastation. According to Lockwood, the 20-foot surge would have been a mere two feet if the marsh had been intact. The solution is simple and relatively inexpensive: Dredge the sediment from the river, pipe it over the levees and onto the coastline.

Lockwood’s collaboration with painter Rhea Gary, called Project Marsh Mission, aims to stir politicians, landowners and corporations into action. In 2002, he began talking with Gary, who had already been painting the wetlands for 10 years. For “Vanishing Wetlands,” the two artists exhibit their different perspectives on the same sites. Gary’s rich, exhilarating colors and abstract interpretation show a wild, pristine and far away land, reminiscent of Gauguin’s Tahiti. Her “Sensuous Summer, Terrebarre Parish” reverberates with deep reds, purples and yellows. Lockwood’s adjacent giclee print, “Red Sky at Sunset,” reflects a more literal but equally as mysterious sense.

An opening reception for “Vanishing Wetlands” starts at 5:30 p.m. today at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, with artists’ lectures beginning at 7 p.m. Call 733-5771 for more information.

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Tina Close and Mary Mullaney, both popular local artists and long-time area residents, unveil their new joint exhibit, “Before, During & After,” this week at Muse Gallery, 62 S. Glenwood.

Close’s watercolor and gouch pieces are a treat. With unbelievably delicate and intricate detail, she depicts butterflies, shells, seeds, bananas, pepper cores, many of them in various states of decay or alteration. Her colors are pure and vivid, with such undiluted bold pigment that there cannot possibly be much water involved in her watercolors.
“There is a lot of building up of layers,” she said. “The first two layers are pretty loose and then I eventually build up the color.”

Close moved to Jackson in 1981 after spending summers on a family-owned dude ranch in Sublette County. She grew up in Connecticut and was accepted into the prestigious Parsons School of Design in New York with no formal training, but declined the offer. She chose to travel and see the world instead.

“I’m self-taught,” she said. “I’m really about trial and error. I think getting accepted at Parsons gave me the self-confidence I needed to pursue painting. Someone else must think I am talented!”

She lived in Africa, Scotland and Switzerland, and decided to paint more while living in Scotland when her children were still small.

“The more you do, the more your eye and hand coordination develops,” she said.
She did take some art courses, including one in scientific illustration and a graduate-level course in plant morphology, which taught her enough about botanical structure to become the Leonardo DaVinci of plant corpses.

But ultimately her reasons for selecting the subject matter she paints are refreshingly pragmatic: “Bananas are pretty interesting to paint.” Similarly, she was inspired to paint peppers when she was cutting some up.

Although glass blower Mary Mullaney has been living in Driggs, Idaho, for over 20 years and is also from Connecticut, she met Close for the first time only recently to discuss their joint exhibit.

Mullaney mainly produces bowls and vases. Her newer works use the same techniques, “but the forms are larger, organic … . This show’s pieces tend to be more sculptural than functional.”

Mullaney learned her craft at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven. She met her husband, glassblower and business partner Ralph Mossman, in 1987 when they taught a class together at the Horizons New England Craft School.

Mullaney’s unique process is difficult and takes three people at certain stages. A hot, colored bubble of glass is wrapped around a clear glass bubble, which results in a thin layer or layers of colored glass on the outside of the bowl. After the bowl cools down, the entire piece is masked with a rubberized sheet. Mullaney then draws her design on the mask freehand, with pen and pencil. She goes over the lines with a knife and removes the mask where the glass will be carved by the sandblaster.

The Muse hosts an opening reception for the pair 5-8 p.m. on Friday. “Before, During & After” remains on display through Oct. 31. Contact the gallery at 733-0555.

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Word has it that there are some wild events on the first Friday of each month at the Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary gallery, 135 S. Jackson St.

This Friday, the featured photography exhibit is a collaboration between McCandless, the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, and Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Futures Society.
Writers Jean-Michel Cousteau, Julie Robinson and photographer Carrie Vonderhaar celebrate the release of their 250-plus page book, “America’s Underwater Treasures,” a collection of commentaries, stories and photographs of the country’s 13 National Marine Sanctuaries and the first National Marine Monument.

An artist’s reception will be held 5-7 p.m. on Friday, with a book signing and storytelling by Vonderhaar and Robinson. Explorer, filmmaker and author Jean-Michel Cousteau and expedition team members will have another book signing 2-4 p.m. on Saturday.
Call Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary at 734-0649.

Courtesy Rhea Close
“All that Remains” by Rhea Gary, part of “Vanishing Wetlands: Two Visions,” a show at National Museum of Wildlife Art.

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Visiting artists advocate environment; Close, Mullaney show at Muse Gallery | Planet JH News Article: Arts Beat

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