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Those who know Jackson Hole (or the arts) look forward to autumn’s arrival and the transformation of this boots-upon-boardwalks ski town into a world-class showcase of artistic talent. Now in its 32nd year, the Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival impresses both locals and visitors alike with the art of the West for an all- too-brief 10 days in September. This little town that likes to go big dazzles with events that hold broad appeal for lovers of art and design.

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

The Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce, the mastermind behind the FAF, cements its annual theme with the selection of a featured artist and one of his or her original artworks. This piece then inspires the event poster, a collectible and much-coveted souvenir for many attendees. Western art fans will most certainly appreciate this year’s featured artist, Edward Aldrich. The renowned oil painter depicts the majesty of the Rockies and celebrates the fauna that call this terrain home. His rich use of color and light remind wildlife art aficionados, once more, why this genre remains so beguiling.

Chair by Buffalo Collection.

Cape by Wearable Art by Jae Song.

Necklace by Beltshazzar Jewels.

OUTSIDE OF THE [WESTERN] BOX

For a peek into design innovation, the Western Design Conference Exhibit + Sale has you covered. Chances to browse, shop, and stimulate the design sense are ample, as the WDC Exhibit + Sale stretches over four days and includes multiple events. The always sold-out Opening Preview Party + Fashion Show gives the public a chance to interact with the many artisans on hand, and to preview and purchase their work during a festive night of entertainment, food, signature cocktails, and shopping. The signature fashion show unveils the latest couture on the runway.

Guests browse the art inside Tayloe Piggott Gallery during Palates & Palettes.

More than $19,000 in awards is given out annually for excellence in design to 130-plus artists selected each year by the WDC jury. The one-of-a-kind, museum-quality work showcased ranges from cowboy to contemporary: Be prepared to be wowed. Original pieces on display include accents for the home, fashion, jewelry, and furniture. A great deal of this work can be acquired through the WDC’s Designer Show House—six rooms curated by prominent interior designers, featuring practical application of many of the juried artists’ beautifully crafted items. The addition of the WDC’s Retail Row represents a bonus shopping experience at the Snow King Center venue.

Taste of the Tetons.

For 24 years the WDC Exhibit + Sale has been uniting collectors and artists on a non-commission basis while presenting unique work to the public that is galvanized by themes of the American West.

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

Occurring early in the festival, the Palates & Palettes Gallery Walk pairs the art found within the galleries that line the Jackson Town Square with the work that is being accomplished by local culinary artists. This first night exploring the gallery scene is a crowd favorite, but beware—the food moves fast, and requires a pace quicker than a meander.

If you find your desire for plated artistry unsated, the Taste of the Tetons will serve your craving for more. Scheduled on the FAF’s first Sunday, this flavorful experience takes place on the Town Square in conjunction with the juried art fair, Takin’ It to the Streets. Held simultaneously, these two outdoor events are the perfect way to spend a fall Sunday in Jackson.

In the true fashion of the West, the Fall Arts Festival ends with a showdown: The QuickDraw Art Sale and Auction in the Square challenges artists to create a finished work in the span of 90 minutes. The pieces are then auctioned off to a captivated crowd, who will also be there to witness the sale of Edward Aldrich’s original work. This final ritual gives one lucky collector the ultimate takeaway from Jackson Hole’s annual Fall Arts Festival.

If every season signifies a return or shift of some kind, then surely there can be no better way to usher in an artful, community- centered fall.

Table by David Stein Woodworking.

Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival | September 10-20, 2015

> Story by Jenn Rein
> Photography by Latham Jenkins, Courtesy of Western Design Conference and Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce

After the high summer season has waned, there remains much more to look forward to with the start of the annual Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival. Showcasing work from all over the West, it continues to be a benefit for the artists that make it thrive and the community that provides enthusiasm for their talent. Now in its 31st year, this art and design rendezvous has witnessed a distinct evolution in the themes of the Western art genre. Depictions of expansive vistas, majestic wildlife, and the mythical cowboy will remain the foundation on which Western art thrives. But in the genre’s current state, artists tackling the subject matter from a fresh perspective are thriving, and more unique events than ever allow patrons and collectors from all over the country to sit in the front row.

Jackson Sets the Stage

The Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce plays the role of ringleader throughout the FAF. The selection of this year’s featured artist is a reflection on the thoughtful work that goes into planning each year. Bill Schenck, the first artist to design a poster for the FAF decades ago, carries the torch this year. His image, “13 Minutes to Eternity,” depicts the cowboy and mountain culture in vivid contemporary realism.

Schenck, whose work can be found in major collections throughout the world, will be available to sign this year’s image at Altamira Fine Art. Providing a collectible takeaway for art lovers, a signed copy of the FAF annual poster has become a beloved souvenir of the event. The pull does not stop there.

FORM MEETS FUNCTION

The Western Design Conference Opening Preview Party kicks off these 10 artful days in September with a bang, allowing a select few the opportunity to meet the artisans that have been juried into this year’s WDC. Other highlights of the evening will include a jewelry and fashion show that features both established designers and those that are new to this long-held event. Guests will be able to shop the finely crafted pieces while enjoying creations by the culinary team at Café Genevieve.

The Western Design Conference Exhibit + Sale presents functional art throughout the opening weekend of the Falls Arts Festival. Many tastes are accommodated through the exploration of Retail Row—a reflection on current trends in fashion and accessories for the home. The return of the WDC’s Designer Show House will emphasize local architecture and interior design in a home setting that establishes its own atmosphere through innovation on theme.

TASTE OF THE TETONS
September 13 | 11am – 3pm

CULINARY EXPLORATION

Palates & Palettes pairs art with flavor. Restaurants serve signature tastes while foot traffic flows from one art gallery to another. Often, the pairing of a restaurant and gallery may create a scene of its own with the addition of wine and music. This walk around downtown Jackson is a locals’ favorite, with good reason.

Two days later, the open-air, juried art fair, Takin’ It to the Streets, will feature Jackson’s finest artists selling their work to a public with discerning taste. With the fair now in its 16th year, the art that is provided to purchase on the Town Square during these few hours is both exceptional and varied in its composition. After the artists pull up their stakes, the party continues as the eateries, private chefs, and caterers that define the food landscape in Jackson have their time to shine during the Taste of the Tetons. A savory journey, it is accompanied by a wine tasting, silent auction, and live music.

JACKSON HOLE SHOWCASE OF HOMES
September 18-19 | 11am – 4pm

The Allure of the Valley

Away from the Town Square and hidden in the dramatic topography that surrounds Jackson, magnificent views are glimpsed from within some of the finest homes in the country. These residential spaces are often an ode to the craft of design-build; their artful interiors a reflection on sublime living.

A unique element to the FAF schedule, the Homestead magazine-hosted Jackson Hole Showcase of Homes will allow a limited group the chance to explore a handful of private residences during the festival’s final weekend. Representing the diversity of residential styles that reflect the New West, this self-guided, two-day tour of custom architecture and design also provides interaction with the team members who helped to create the spaces. Questions ranging in subject from site selection to architectural finishes to choices in art can be answered by the artisans and craftsmen on hand. This is a rare opportunity, and has the added appeal as a fundraiser for the charitable organization of each homeowner’s choice.

QUICKDRAW ART SALE AND AUCTION
September 19 | 9am

Art in Motion

The QuickDraw Art Sale and Auction lends high drama to the proceedings during the last Saturday of the FAF. Artists of local, regional, and national caliber gather in the Town Square to accomplish a finished work in 90 minutes. As they attack their medium, art lovers are welcome to witness the process. With the artists fully engaged in their method, knowing that their art will be auctioned off upon completion, the suspense can be palpable.

Once the QuickDraw items have been auctioned to their new owners, the true highlight of the FAF is at hand: the sale of the featured artist’s original work. In 2014, featured artist Nancy Dunlop Cawdrey’s brilliantly colored portrait of a bull moose, done with dye on silk, sold for $50,000. Each year, these proceeds contribute to the largest revenue stream for the organization that continues to make the FAF a success—the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce.

The selection of Bill Schenck as 2015’s featured artist is surely an homage to how this annual celebration of Western art has grown. His reputation as an artist has only expanded since he designed the very first poster for the Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival in 1985. Now, Schenck’s talent makes the perfect match for a tradition that continues to flourish with time.

Art can anchor the aesthetics of a room, whether providing a palette upon which to build or adding a moment of whimsy amid an architectural statement. When a piece of art is placed in a prime spot, the space embraces a story—ever unfolding, ever treasured. Herein, four takes on how art animates interiors.

DIEHL GALLERY

Hop pop

Each piece within this contemporary living space, known as Aspensong, contributes a sense of strong personality, while simultaneously remaining open to possibility. Look closely at the schema set by Jennifer Prugh Visosky of Grace Home Design and see an echoing of outlines, starting with “Bunnies” by Hunt Slonem, reverberating in the Jeff Martin Joinery table, the Studio Van Den Akker slipper chairs, the blocky Sentinel chair and the graceful Holly Hunt Studio floor lamp. Eloquently linear designs, these forms become frames for filling the space with a dynamic lifestyle.

Slonem does this in his art by transforming mundane subject matter into an apparatus for meditation. He begins every day by painting bunnies; their rounded figures serve as his creative calisthenics, the process by which he exercises his creativity. He embraces every association with bunnies, from the White Rabbit in Alice’s Adventures

in Wonderland—and the magical, continual celebration he hosts—to the luck and multiplicity linked to the mammal. Like Andy Warhol—his peer in the New York art scene of the 1980s—Slonem mines the divinity inherent in repetition; the meditative practice of tracing a form ad infinitum.

Born in the Chinese zodiac’s Year of the Rabbit, Slonem sees himself in the bunnies. His daily homage to this subject matter has become an exploration of self within the context of community—just as his “Bunnies” do in Aspensong; they add personality to place, as the homeowner requested. “I just wanted a little whimsy to round the edges of a rather self-important structure,” she says. The bunnies first appeared in wallpaper form inside the elevator. “I told Jen I wanted a surprise when those doors opened—and it does make everyone chuckle. From there, it was a no-brainer adding the ‘Bunnies’ painting.” A harmonious hop from fun to fine art.

ALTAMIRA GALLERY

Good lookin’

On a meandering road trip from Jackson back to Los Angeles, painter Robert Townsend fell in love with a flickering neon sign in Winnemucca, Nevada. “The Griddle—Good Cookin’” epitomized the mystique of the Old West—alive and well in the New—that Townsend considers his muse. Its script font, rakish geometry and beachy palette—the sign dazzled him so; he knew on the spot he must immortalize it in paint. “Moments like this are the most enjoyable of my life as a painter, because imagining anything is such a magical experience,” he says.

The eye-catching yet unpretentious pop realism Townsend depicts offers “an uplifting snapshot from simpler times,” says Dean Munn of Altamira Fine Art.

Drawn to nostalgic icons (think bubble-gum machines and motor-inn facades), Townsend blends realism with mid-century modernism, all rendered with his skillful hand and gift for color.

Now, his version of “The Griddle”—painted atop a custom 3-D panel—lives as an illusion of the sign itself, installed high up on the wall of a Teton modern kitchen. Channeling the elevation of its original context, its new placement takes advantage of the 20-foot-high ceilings spanning the great-room layout, a jaunty attraction still beckoning people to stop and eat. Mirroring Townsend’s epiphany, the homeowner fell instantly for the painting: “When I first saw ‘The Griddle’ at Altamira, I instantly thought it would be perfect for one of the kitchen walls in our newly purchased mountain modern home. It adds a touch of whimsy to the décor while balancing the other architectural elements of the space.”

WRJ DESIGN

Abstract orbit

In theory, “Planets,” a nonconformist painting by Los Angeles-based Bradford Stewart, would seem at odds with the rural vernacular of a log cabin. Not so within the context curated by WRJ Design. Echoing the textural serenity WRJ introduced, the abstract painting complements the subtle layers and natural palette that now define the classic residence. Gracing the river rock chimney, the canvas incorporates the colors coursing through the space, and even transcends the walls to reference the natural world framed by the picture windows: the caramel of the logs themselves, the chocolate brown of the moose bust, the warm grays and creams of the upholstered furnishings, the tender green of spring shoots glimpsed outside, the Tiffany blue of a clear winter’s day. The clanging of his composition seems to reverberate in the studded, steel-and-wood coffee table—custom-designed by WRJ, crafted by Jim Berkenfield—and the charcoal leather arms on the salt-and-pepper linen lounge chairs. His interplay of textures and shapes echoes in the plush surfaces of the real fur pillows, chevron cowhide rug, cashmere throws and Verellen sofa—sheathed in a smoke Holly Hunt mohair. And a Carlo Moretti Murano crystal vase mirrors the intergalactic light he captures in paint. Stewart’s “Planets” sets the vibrant yet harmonious tone of the living room.

As a former composer and musician, Stewart paints with the chaotic beauty of contemporary jazz and classical music. Having studied fine art at the San Francisco Art Institute and California College of Arts and Crafts, he now channels his sense of rhythm and movement into large, abstract canvases. When painting, Stewart imagines an overall feeling—not a final product—and never assumes total control of his materials: acrylics, enamels, resins, polyurethane and pearlescent paints. Embracing an organic process, he layers, washes and mixes materials, ultimately achieving a textured composition rich with motion and voice.

TAYLOE PIGGOTT

Luminous habitat

After 20 years of musing about butterflies as metaphors—of fragile beauty, of wondrous flight—artist Paul Villinski delved into their biology. With a lepidopterist, he reared native species in the “Butterfly Machine,” an immaculate mobile habitat that reframed their extraordinary delicacy as ecological. “I hope to suggest that the frailty of butterflies, and their utter dependence on appropriate habitat, mirrors our own tenuous condition,” he writes. “There is no separation—we are the butterflies.”

No habitat for his sculpture could be more naturally inspired than Becky Benenate’s West Bank home. Her first encounter with “Arcus” was from afar: Dining at Trio, she glimpsed the chartreuse fan within Tayloe Piggott Gallery. “It made me happy,” she says, an immediate affinity she has since translated into a professional partnership with Villinski; under her art imprint Vivant Books, she is working on a boxed monograph of his work, replete with a micro-installation.

Her editorial mission—to make art accessible to a wide audience—resonates in her cohabitation with her collection. Every piece fills a page while contributing to the complete portrait of a connoisseur: the crystal bowl by George Bucquet she found in Sausalito that now anchors the butterflies’ radiating flight; the pair of Aero Studio chairs on their third upholstery iteration in 25 years. She remodeled the home with her collection in mind, opening up the living space and establishing a neutral palette upon which her colorful pieces could alight—an aerie for art epitomized by the prime placement of “Arcus” above an Art Deco walnut sideboard, facing a Michael McEwan gear chandelier. Light is the current coursing through her collection: the way artists deploy light to transform, as Villinski does through the shadows his butterflies cast; the recollections they conjure—of leaves falling, of past lives, like their own, having begun as crumpled beer cans, collected by homeless New Yorkers whom Villinski hires. More than conceptual meditations, the resurrected insects have become his vocation, and his art has become part of hers. They are the butterflies.