Jentel in the News: February 2006
Governors Arts Awards
Gov. Dave Freudenthal and other state leaders will honor four groups and individuals from around the state for their extraordinary contributions to the arts in Wyoming
For more than two decades, the Governors Arts Awards have provided a forum to recognize those who dedicate their time, passion and financial support to Wyomings cultural life, as well as the importance of the arts in daily life. Those selected to receive awards this year will be honored at the February dinner and awards ceremony at the Little America Inn in Cheyenne.
Recipients include:
Neltje, of Banner, WY. A painter in her own right, Neltje (who uses only one name) is one of Wyoming's most ardent patrons of the arts. In addition to her longtime philanthropic support of many prominent Wyoming arts organizations, Neltje established the Neltje Blanchan and Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Awards for writers through the Arts Council and is the founder of the Jentel Artist Residency Program.
William Missouri Downs, of Laramie, Downs is an award-winning playwright in residence at the University of Wyoming whose longtime service to the state as a theater professor and head of UW's playwriting program has earned him numerous accolades. His dedication and contributions to the academic and artistic life of his students has been extraordinary.
The Oyster Ridge Music Festival, of Kemmerer. What began as a small, one-day bluegrass festival in 1994 has grown into the largest free festival in Wyoming, featuring world-class bluegrass music that attracts thousands of music lovers to downtown Kemmerer every year.
The Ucross Foundation Artist Residency Program for the arts and literature, of Clearmont. For more than twenty-five years, the Ucross Foundation residency program has welcomed and encouraged the work of more than 1,100 artists, writers and composers from all fifty states and twenty countries, ranging from Egypt to Canada. The residency program has brought international recognition to Wyoming as a nurturer of artistic excellence.
"I am delighted to be able to say that the arts are flourishing in Wyoming, and that is because of the contributions of organizations and individuals like these," Freudenthal said. "I am very much looking forward to the awards ceremony as a chance to provide them the public recognition they most certainly deserve."
Jentel in the Jentel in the News: July 5, 2005
White Line at Jentel
Snap! Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! CATCH! Clunka. Clunka. Clunka. CLUNK!
First the winch broke, sending the two ton test aircraft cable whirring out of control and finally catching on itself before the lights came crashing down. Then the gas fired generator stopped and totally shut down. A broken winch and a two hundred fifty pound dead generator signaled the closing of the short lived venue for White Line.
White Line is an artwork that Adam Frelin of Grove City, PA created on the ranch behind the Jentel Artist Residency Program during the month that he has been an artist-in-residence here. The piece consists of 56 four-foot, single-bulb fluorescent light fixtures that are strung along a steel cable spanning the two hundred thirty foot gap between two of the hills in the thousand acre pasture behind Jentel.
Adam shared that before coming to Wyoming he had an idea for an artwork similar to White Line that he wanted to realize, but he never found the proper location for it. For this artwork to succeed, he needed to find a place where it could easily fit, not only technically, but also physically. The scale and location of the place would need to feel as if it were willing to accept this addition. While hiking on the property during his first week at Jentel, he discovered two hills that were not only very close in size, but they created an equally proportional valley between them. The equal proportion of these two hills to each other, and the size of the hills to the valley made him believe that this place might work well for his project. As well, from this location the artwork could easily be viewed along Lower Piney Creek Road to anyone who happened to be driving by. Therefore he decided to devote his time here solely to this project.
Though White Line is a sculpture, it is different than one you might see at a museum or gallery. It is not only an artwork to be looked at, but also one that helps to transform the night landscape by casting an otherworldly glow onto all that is around it. In this way the artwork is both the piece itself and the effect it has on the place it is created for.
Adam remarked, “I enjoy creating artworks that are made in and for a particular place. The landscape in North-Central Wyoming is stunningly beautiful and very large, so to create something for here it had to be of a certain scale not to get lost. Therefore White Line demands a particular amount of attention to itself, but I believe that it also draws an equal amount of attention to the landscape around it. This balance is something that I sought out to achieve with this artwork.”
In the end, White Line came to an untimely end. After existing for only a few nights for a small audience of neighbors and supporters of Jentel, it now is gone forever. Though it will live on in photographs, those who saw it firsthand will be the only people who truly witnessed it as it was meant to be: a temporary phenomenon that comes and goes like a storm.
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.
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.
|
|
Jentel in the News: June 19, 2003
Jentel Comes to Buffalo
What does a Western landscape have in common with Saudi Arabia? These are just two of the topics that inspire current residents at the Jentel Artist Residency Program in Banner, who will be featured in an event open to the public at DeerField Boutique and Espresso Café in Buffalo on Tuesday evening, July 1st from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. “Jentel Presents” is a community outreach program that features slide presentations and readings by the visual artists and writers at the residency. Presenters include Dennis Bertram, Buffalo, NY, a painter who takes his tripod out into the hills at daybreak at the residency for painting studies; Anne Sanow, St. Louis, MO, a writer who is working on a collection of stories set in Saudi Arabia; Sarah Manguso, Brooklyn, NY, a poet who uses her western adventures to inspire her poems about natural elements; Mary Henderson, Philadelphia, PA, a painter who currently has a solo exhibition in Chicago utilizing family photographs in an extraordinary style; and David Harmon, Osceola, IN, who quite often paints on location using watercolors and pastels and exhibits his work nationwide. For anyone looking for an exciting evening, come join the crowd at DeerField. There is no admission charge for “Jentel Presents” and refreshments are available.
Jentel in the News: April 1, 2003
Build and They Will Come
No sooner had the guests departed from the last in a series of parties celebrating the opening of new facilities for the Jentel Artist Residency Program, staff were greeting the first group of residents for the 2003 season. While quietly operating a one month residency in March for three artists for the past two years, at the new location Jentel has expanded its program to award residencies to a group of four visual artists and two writers each month throughout the year.
Construction crews moved on to the site of the old Collins ranch in earnest in September 2001 to break ground for five new buildings and to renovate two of the original ranch buildings that now house the program’s offices and conference room. Now antique furnishings, cupboards, doors, frames and even porch posts salvaged from regional buildings give each eclectically appointed room a warm and inviting feel. The six bedroom residence has an open vaulted ceiling over the spacious living and dining room adjacent to a country kitchen. In a loft area over the kitchen, a library stocked with art books and a respectable fiction collection, beckons residents to wander in and choose a volume, try out the sliding antique ladder attached to one of the bookcases or to log on to the Internet. A multimedia room next door offers a place to relax with music or any one of a number of videos in every film genre.
The studios for visual artists in this low technology, low equipment based program are large, well lit spaces with high ceilings and a window looking out onto the creek. A Takach Garfield lithography press is available for artists interested in printing monotypes. Writers have comfortable studios with Internet access and views of the willow banked creek.
A distinctive feature of Jentel is the incredibly beautiful setting amidst irrigated fields and scoria topped hills with views west to the Big Horn Mountains and Cloud Peak Wilderness Area. Set on eighty acres carved out of the middle of a working cattle ranch in the Lower Piney Creek Valley, the Jentel Foundation is twenty miles southeast of Sheridan, Wyoming in the northeastern part of the state.
Jentel in the News: December 1, 2002
Jentel Moving In.
While carpenters and painters are wrapping up cabinetry and trim in the new facilities for the Jentel Art Artist Residency Program, the staff are moving furnishings and installing art work, stocking shelves and making beds, and using gallons of lemon oil on the antique tables and cupboards. A road grader and gravel trucks are finishing the scoria gravel roads and parking lots. The landscapers have planted thousands of bulbs, seeded native grasses and placed trees all around the new structures. After only fifteen months on the job, the construction crew is about to hand over the keys to the Residency, artist’s studios, writers’ cabin, and reception center and offices, while the staff makes final preparations to welcome the first group of four visual artists and two writers on January 15th. In the midst of all the activity, friends and supporters from the neighboring communities have shared the excitement about the expanded year round season and the new site for Jentel with afternoon tours and Sunday morning brunches looking out on the foothills and snow covered Big Horn Mountains of Northeastern Wyoming.
Jentel in the News: October 1, 2002
Groundbreaking News!
Jentel Expands Season
Last October as the air grew crisp, excavators on trailers with Wyoming plates and hard hat construction crews moved onto the new site for the Jentel Artist Residency Program. With the new facility comes an expanded season and room for more artists and writers each month long session.
In operation since 2001, Jentel has welcomed two artists and one writer to share a month long residency for the month of March. A year ago June the Board approved the plan to move to another site in the Lower Piney Creek Valley and begin construction on a residence, artists’ studio, writers’ studio, a reception, office and conference center and a residence for staff. Whether new construction or renovation of existing ranch buildings, the architect and designer have worked closely to insure that residents and staff have an experience of the western landscape and culture through out the facilities. Ceiling to floor windows open walls in rooms throughout the complex to the beauty and richness of the Lower Piney Creek Valley with the majestic backdrop formed by the Big Horn Mountains to the west. Antique architectural details from area residential and commercial spaces play off contemporary and natural building materials.
Renovation of one of the original ranch houses began almost immediately after breaking ground for new construction and now features a reception area, spacious offices for staff with views of the surrounding landscape and a large conference room. A weather worn wooden barn was dismantled and will be reconstructed to house two studios for writers. Typical metal ranch outbuildings are outfitted with ventilation and lighting to accommodate four artists with large high ceiling studio spaces.
Cathedral ceilings open the views west and further expand the spaciousness of the common areas in the residence. An open fireplace merges the activities in the living and dining rooms, while a cooking island and lower ceiling allows meal preparation in the kitchen area to be a more intimate experience. An open staircase defines a sunken conversation area beneath and leads to a library and a recreation room that both include balconies overlooking the creek and rolling hills to the East.
Each residence has a private room with generous space for sleeping, relaxing and journaling. All rooms have immediate access to the outdoors and to spaces leading to the common areas. Clusters of common washroom facilities are well spaced for easy access and privacy.
Barns and outbuildings on another section of the ranch are filled to bursting with antique and contemporary furniture, assorted lighting fixtures, unusual baskets, hand woven rugs, forged metal work and a variety of brightly glazed and bulbous ceramics in anticipation of moving day in early December. Landscaping includes native plants and grasses to create sitting and recreation areas, while offering a transition to the wilder, natural setting of a working cattle ranch.
Miles of county roads around the ranch lead to unusual spots distinguished by their geological, historical, archeological or ecological value. To date residents have also enjoyed trips into the Big Horn Mountains to explore and experience another environment rich with history, wildlife and natural beauty.
With construction nearly completed, Jentel will expand its season to year round programming. Four visual artists and two writers, will be accepted for one month residencies scheduled January 15 through December 13, 2003.
Jentel will continue to offer dedicated individuals a supportive environment in which to further their creative development. More artists and writers may now have the opportunity to experience unfettered time to allow for thoughtful reflection and meditation on the creative process in a setting that preserves the agricultural and historical integrity of the land.
The Jentel Artist Residency Program accepts applications postmarked until January 15, 2003 for the Summer/Fall Residency May 15-December 13, 2003 and September 15, 2003 for the Winter/Spring Residency January 15-May 13, 2004 from visual artists in all media and writers in all genre for a one month residency. Residency includes private accommodation, common living, dining and recreation areas, a private workspace and a $400 stipend to defray expenses during the program. For more information, send a request and a self addressed label and $.60 to:
Jentel Artist Residency Program
130 Lower Piney Creek Road
Banner, WY 82832
www.jentelarts.org
Jentel@jentelarts.org
Return mailing includes application form, application guidelines and brochure about the residency program. The same material is available on the website. The closest airport is 20 miles to the northwest in Sheridan, Wyoming (population 15,800) with connections to Denver International Airport and the Billings, MT airport.
|
