Jentel in the News: December 15, 2004
Jentel Goes to the Drive In
Ranchers driving into Sheridan for supplies, children on the Clearmont school bus run and a cross section of the community commuting for work are among the many that daily pass an establishment that has all but disappeared from the fringes of towns across the country. However when the Skyline Drive In closed for the winter, the dazzling yellow marquee became an irresistible site for interdisciplinary artist and sculptor Allison Wiese’s latest installation during her residency at Jentel. The drive in theater is a perfect venue, as her work celebrates a kind of improvisational authority, the under-determined space of the soap box stage, the sub-suburban yard or rural backlot or the do-it-yourself ‘zine or broadside. The Houston resident commented that a lot of her work has a performative quality as she alters spaces through acts of labeling, christening or commemoration, creating platforms from which to speak in an out-of-the-ordinary fashion. So until the snow subsides, Sheridan county residents can ward off spring fever with musings of “Do You Believe In Love At First Sight? Or Should I Walk By Again?
photo by Allison Wiese
Jentel In The News: July 19, 2004
Curious Young Artists Visit Jentel
Geared up with sketch pads and pencils, lunches and water bottles, fifteen summer campers and five counselors arrived for a day of touring, hiking and drawing at the Jentel Artist Residency Program in Banner. The boys were 5th, 6th and 7th graders from Gillette who were participating in the Art and Leadership Programs, sponsored by AVA, the Advocacy for Visual Arts, Inc, a non-profit corporation dedicated to the promotion and stimulation of interest and appreciation for the visual arts in Campbell County and Northeast Wyoming. Executive Director, Melissa Wickwire commented that staff at AVA work in partnership with the community to support a place for inspiration, expression, education and promotion of the visual arts.
Trained staff who are high school and college interns serve as teachers of important life lessons and professional artist are scheduled to attend the camp sessions and teach art skills to the young people. The program aims to improve self esteem of the participants and to help then develop the skills to make positive choices. Participants have been nominated by their art and/or classroom teachers at the public schools. This year AVA accepted home-school and private school nominations.
While at Jentel, they met in the foundation offices to view and discuss the paintings, prints and drawings in the conference room. After a picnic lunch by the creek, the boys visited Jentel Executive Director Mary Jane Edwards’ studio and had an opportunity to see her art work in process. She remarked, “I was very impressed with the observations that the boys made about my artist books, drawings, and sculptures. They carefully examined each piece and had many questions.”
The day ended with a hike in the hills, time to sketch the landscape and collect objects from nature to draw and sculpt once they returned home.
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Jentel in the News: April 23, 2004
Two Girls Working
Until the middle of May, the Jentel Artist Residency Program will be home base for Two Girls Working, the collaborative team of artists Tiffany Ludwig (Jersey City, NJ) and Renee Piechocki, (Pittsburgh, PA) who will interview women from Wyoming to include in their project Trappings. They will meet with women in Sheridan, Laramie, and Riverton to ask them the question “What do you wear that makes you feel powerful?”
That question is the heart of Trappings, a project takes the daily ritual of getting dressed and recontexualies it to ask women to ask themselves what they think about power and how they present power in their lives.
Trappings is a project with multiple parts: At a variety of locations across the country Tiffany and Renee host interview sessions where women are invited to respond to the question, what do you wear that makes you feel powerful. After hours of processing interview materials they prepare and travel an exhibition with audio, print, and video components to art centers and museums. Finally a website, www.twogirlsworking.com, includes an archive of the interviews by each project participant.
Since October 2001, Two Girls Working have interviewed over 200 women from across the United States. Sessions have taken place in New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee, Washington, Minnesota. A wide range of women have come to the Trappings interview sessions, from diesel engineers and community volunteers to fashion-industry executives, artists, and elected officials. Trappings sessions have been hosted by groups including a quilting-circle, an after-school group for at-risk teenage women, a drag-king performance team, the board and staff of a YWCA, and a university mentor program. During their stay at the Jentel Artist Residency Program, the artists will be organizing interview sessions in Wyoming. They will be meeting groups of women across the state and expect to meet thirty to forty women during these sessions.
“Tiffany and I fell in love with Wyoming last summer when we traveled through the Western and Central parts of the state on vacation. We were inspired by the women we met along the way, and wanted to include women from the state in Trappings. We knew that Jentel was a residency program that encourages community outreach. When Mary Jane Edwards called us in October 2003 to let us know we had been accepted into the program, we started planning our drive right away”, explains artist Renee Piechocki, who lives in Pittsburgh, PA.
"We have been asked what our inspiration for this work is, why after three years of working together we are still seeking to meet and interview women? The goals of the project Trappings, and the collaboration itself, stem from a need within our artistic practices to reach outside of our studios and spark and participate in the many dynamic conversations happening across the country today. As a product of our time, we have created Trappings to document and to present the varied paths we each take in life". Tiffany Ludwig, April 2004
Two Girls Working will join the other residents for “Jentel Presents,” an evening of slide presentations and readings at Sheridan Stationery Books and Gallery on Tuesday evening, May 4th at 6:00 p.m.
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