A Bourne Collection

+ Story by Jennifer Dorsey
+ Photography by Cameron Neilson

Interior designer and furniture designer Agnes Bourne and her husband Jim Luebbers eschew the title "art collector" while housing an impressive collection of contemporary art.

This John Oldani sculpture, originally spotted in an exhibit at the Center for the Arts, will eventually adorn Agnes and Jim's yard. The painting is by California artist and friend Squeak Carnwath.

David Nash of Wales created several pieces of art from a single tree, including this wood sculpture called "Tripod." The funky chair is by London-based artist Finn Stone.

If Agnes Bourne shows you the portrait of her hanging in her living room, your initial reaction will probably be confusion. Nowhere in the seven-by-six-foot oil painting by San Francisco Bay-area artist Raymond Saunders will you see her blond hair, her glasses, her petite frame or warm smile … or human features of any kind, in fact.

Agnes Bourne and her husband Jim Luebbers sit in front of a "portrait" of Agnes.

Agnes Bourne and her husband Jim Luebbers sit in front of a "portrait" of Agnes.

The key to the portrait lies in the swirls of black and yellow paint in the lower left corner that look like something a graffiti artist might have sprayed on in haste. They represent a day during Agnes’ art studies at Mills College in California when she’d been laboring over one particular sketch for hours. Saunders strolled by and, to her chagrin, leaned over and erased her work.

“He said ‘Loosen up,’ and he walked away,” Agnes recalled. “It’s been a good life lesson for me: to not get too wound up about things.”

The relaxed attitude of those paint swirls is echoed throughout the East Jackson home where Agnes and her husband, Jim Luebbers, have lived for about a year. Designed by local architect Larry Berlin, the house is contemporary western in style, with lots of stone, steel and glass, and it’s filled with art of all kinds—paintings, sculptures, furniture. Agnes, a furniture designer and a design teacher specializing in color, said she is drawn to experimental and abstract works but enjoys figurative pieces as well. Though she is the artist half of the couple, nothing comes into the house that doesn’t please them both.

"Witness of Current Events" by William Allan hangs in a downstairs bedroom.

"Witness of Current Events" by William Allan hangs in a downstairs bedroom.

“It’s a lucky thing,” said Jim, a retired ophthalmologist who now serves as chairman of the board of the Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum. “Our tastes are similar, which makes that process so much easier.”

Agnes and Jim like to have a personal connection to their art. “The rule about the work we have is that we know all the artists, and many of the pieces are from their early times,” Agnes said. “I like to support artists as they’re beginning, because they need support at that time.”

She doesn’t really even like to use the term “collection” to describe the works she and Jim own. “I don’t think of myself as a collector,” she said. “I’m just participating. It’s an attraction. It’s a love thing.”

For years Agnes and Jim lived in San Francisco, so many of the artists represented in their collection are from the Bay Area. Among them is Ray DeForest, a now-deceased painter and sculptor credited with founding the “California Funk” movement. A wildly colorful acrylic painting of his, “Sailing With a Couple of Toughs and Mr. Ravtu,” is the first thing you see when you enter the couple’s home.

“It’s an adventure,” Jim said of the painting, which features—literally—a boatload of imaginative characters. “It sets a tone.”

One flight of steps up from the DeForest piece is a painting by Squeak Carnwath, another Californian whose work is represented, among other venues, in the San Francisco Fine Arts Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and at the Muse Gallery in Jackson. Successful as she is today, Carnwath’s relationship with Agnes and Jim goes back to the days before she made a name for herself. In fact, she designed the couple’s wedding invitation.

“She traded that to me for a piece of furniture 25 years ago,” Agnes said of the painting in the stairwell. “We’ve been friends for years.”

Further proof that they both like to support emerging artists can be found in their garage. Where most of us would hang shovels, rakes and ski equipment, the couple has hung two enormous beige “digital” paintings rescued on behalf of a young artist named Heather Gates, who created them by gouging vertical strips in the paint with her fingers. “She was a student at the Art Institute in San Francisco who had lost her studio and was going to destroy her art,” Agnes explained.

There are other artists in the extended family besides Agnes, both well-established and just budding. Jim and Agnes’ son-in-law, Johannes Girardoni, created the encaustic and rope wall hanging in their master bathroom. And in a place of honor on a shelf in the living room is a little puppet that their grandson, Robin Evans, now 10, made out of pieces of wood when he was 4 years old. “One day I was taking a walk with him,” Agnes said, “and he said, ‘You know, Grandma, what I am is an artist.’ Now he goes around with a sketchbook.”

Agnes once thought that when she moved to Jackson Hole she might ease back from the art world a bit and pursue other interests, but the pull has been too strong.

“When I came here, I thought I’d work on conservation projects, that I’d stop being involved with arts projects, but it’s too much
a part of me,” she said. “The combination of art and design, the encouragement of young artists is what I do.”