Backbeat 7/22/09

Thursday, July 23, 2009

By PJH Staff

OLD-FASHIONED FUN AT FAIR
Jackson Hole, Wyo.-The Teton County Fair is back with animals, funnel cakes, carnival rides and entertainment. Director Yvonne Robertson said Teton County is one of the last in the country that doesn’t charge admission. There will be lots of free daytime entertainment all week including clowns, ventriloquists, caricaturists and more. But the evening events, which cost between $5 and $20, are the biggest draws.
On Wednesday, more than 70 teams of four will try to wrestle pigs from a pit of mud and bentonite and put them butt-first into a barrel in the quickest time possible. The young kids go first and the women go last because people like to watch them the most, Robertson said.

On Thursday the Figure 8 races bring cringe-worthy metal-on-metal violence to the arena. Friday, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band plays, and Saturday is Rodeo night.
The Demolition Derby closes out the festivities Sunday evening. Once a raucus party, Robertson said the derby has turned into a mellow family event since booze was banned there two years ago. Beer will be served at all the other evening events.

Wednesday is “wristband night,” where you can ride all the carnival rides you’d like. – HS

Pig wrestling is 7 p.m., tonight; Figure 8s, 7 p.m., Thursday; Nitty Gritty, 8 p.m., Friday; Rodeo, 8 p.m., Saturday and the Demo Derby is 7 p.m., Sunday. For a full schedule, visit www.tetoncountyfair.com.

Vhay’s new work at Trio
Watercolorist September Vhay opens a new show “Passages” at Trio Fine Art, Thursday. The show includes a couple dozen new drawings, watercolors and oil paintings, some of which will serve as visual aids for the talk she’ll give on the passages an artist moves through as they turn an idea into a finished work of art.

Vhay knows that one bad stroke, or one lapse of focus can ruin a painting. Since recently learning to use oil paints - a more forgiving medium - Vhay has become more interested in what it takes to move confidently through each step of the creative process in order to make the best possible finished product. She’ll share her musings on those steps in her artist’s talk.

This is the second show where Vhay has exhibited oil paintings, a medium that allows her to paint on a larger scale. The subjects in “Passages” are horses, dogs, mice and otters, among other animals. – HH

An artist talk and reception is 5 p.m., Thursday at Trio Fine Art, 545 N. Cache Drive.

Thoughtful images
Squeak Carnwath must think a lot. Her paintings hanging at Muse for “Loose Change” are like maps of ideas or diagrams of emotions painted on five-foot canvases. Though they are all compositionally distinct, most paintings contain the same images - an urn, a melancholy face, vinyl records, bricks of color or a tree trunk - that are organized and repeated to tell a story, or make an existential observation. Phrases like “good luck may be better than talent,” or “good ideas are stolen, not made” interpret the images.

Muse director Tayloe Piggot said she chose works from the last few years that show how Carnwath has worked with the same images over time. The more paintings a viewer studies, the more he or she understands the rest of them. – HS

The opening for “Loose Change,” is 5 to 8 p.m., Thursday at JH Muse Gallery.

Frisbee fun, competition
Do you love golf, but hate clumsy clubs and balls? Do you like walking up rolling, grass-covered ski slopes? Maybe you think ultimate frisby requires too much running? If so, disc golf may be your game.

Saturday at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, players can sign up for a round-robin style disc golf tournament. Entry fee is $5 with a winner-take-all cash prize. Nick Michael, an occasional disc golfer with Jackson Hole Sports, said they expect between 20 and 30 participants on Saturday. Players can win “all sorts of different prizes” like T-shirts and gum, Michael said. – PD

Sign up is at 3:30 p.m., Saturday at Jackson Hole Sports in the Bridger Center. The first group tees off at 4 p.m.

Literary couple shares words
Award-winning literary duo Anne Fadiman and her husband George Howe Colt visit Teton County Library July 27, to read excerpts from their works.
Fadiman has read at TCL three years in a row, but this is the first year that her husband will join her.

Fadiman intends to read from her book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down and a collection of essays Ex-Libris, about the merging of her and her husband’s libraries. Colt plans to read from his book The Big House, a memoir of his family as embodied in their turn-of-the-20th century Cape Cod home and the family’s decision to sell the home. – HH

The reading and Q & A is 7 p.m. Monday, July 27 at Teton County Library.

COURTESY TETON COUNTY FAIR
Fair time

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Backbeat 7/22/09 | Planet JH News Article: General News

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