Spankie trades cows for self

Thursday, September 10, 2009

By Henry Sweets

Jackson Hole, Wyoming - A half dozen years in Jackson Hole will change anybody.

See what it’s done to Craig Spankie when he presents new works alongside old ones for the Palates and Palletes artwalk this Friday at Teton Artlab.

“It Came From a Supervolcano, Volume II” will also feature paintings by Mark Dunstan and photogrpahs by Wade Dunstan.

Six years ago Spankie was painting full time in New Zealand, “living the dream” he said, after he’d put himself through art school on construction wages and winning a nationwide contest after he graduated.

Then he met his wife Gretchen and moved to East Jackson. After working in the U.S., exposing himself to new materials and new ideas (he became a father of two), Spankie began experimenting with a third element to break up the powerful relationships between the terrestrial textures and gleaming sky of his works.

“I don’t know when a piece goes from being a two-dimensional painting to when a person could say ‘that’s not a painting; that‘s a sculpture that hangs on the wall,’” Spankie said.

He got to the point where he exclusively used frames he’d built as his canvases; mounting a panel covered with old roofing material, wine labels or corroded copper plating for the ground, and cutting a shiny panel of color to match it for a sky.
And now the formula is evolving. He’s molding concrete panels with different textures of wood, giving panels a geometric depth of their own. The concrete he’s using has properties like plaster or another sculptural medium; so the light changes throughout the day, or depending on how artificial light is aimed at it.

In another piece, Spankie’s molded a plug of concrete that fits a hole left by an old light socket on a piece of paneling taken from his house.

That gives his paintings a more playful feel.

Now, the only subject he feels like painting these days is himself mowing the lawn.
It makes his art more contemporary, more playful and, the barometer of

“contemporary,” addressing human experience now.

“I like the lawnmower guy because mowing the lawn is the least important thing I have to do,” Spankie said. “When I’m at that point, I’m at a pretty good place.” JHW

“It Came From a Supervolcano, Volume II” opens, 5 p.m., Friday, at Teton Artlab. 

Image: “Invisble hands” by Mark Dunstan

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