Jackson Hole News&Guide: McCandless taps fresh art market

“Gallery owner hopes to keep bringing new ideas into Jackson’s art world."
By Angus M. Thuermer Jr.

It wasn’t your usual Jackson art opening, drawing a crowd you would expect at the Mangy Moose rather than a Jackson art gallery.

But at Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary on Jackson Street, the young athletes recently crowded the space for four hours solid, moving among the art and serving tables as if it were second nature. The event was the opening of Heather Erson’s show “Revealed” – black-and-white studio portraits of valley snowhounds, most of them from the younger set.

The location was the site of Cec’s Small Engine Repair and Glen Chamber’s welding shop, now McCandless’ “guerrilla” gallery space. Cecil Lynch died of a heart attack fighting the Wort Hotel fire; Chambers, also deceased, welded in the back bay. With a minimum of retooling – white paint being chief among the improvements of the industrial space – McCandless created an environment that allowed Erson to draw a familiar crowd to an unfamiliar event. And the next generation of valley leaders responded.

For McCandless, such events are critical to her marketing in a community best known for its Western art. Located “off the beaten path,” which means away from Jackson Town Square, McCandless has grown her business in four and a half years from a two-room consulting office to a gallery that features an opening monthly. For a painter, being close to art works has been critical.

As a consultant, “I didn’t have enough of the physical work to be involved with,” she said. “I really love showing the art, the challenge of getting it up on the walls.”

McCandless likes the anticipation of receiving new works. Opening the boxes in which they are shipped is “like Christmas, it’s so much fun,: she said. Setting up shows, deciding which works to juxtapose against which, is equally fulfilling.

“I love transforming the gallery,” she said. “That, for me, is one of my favorite parts.”

McCandless’ move to the valley is a tale often heard – one of a young athlete determined to take a year off after college and enjoy skiing. A Princeton student who played varsity hockey, she came out with a group of six others after graduating in 1991. “They all left after the first year and I didn’t,” she said.

Her Ivy League degree qualified her for the usual Jackson Hole career ladder; wait tables at Bubba’s, learn how to carry 10 Billy’s burgers at a time, work into the darkroom position at Powder Shots so you can ski all day. Since then there was a trip back East, time spent teaching and coaching at a boarding school, return to Jackson Hole, marriage, the adoption or two daughters, and the birth of a third.

Back in Jackson Hole, McCandless entered the world of nonprofits, signing up with the Snake River Institute. She taught at the Art Association, became engaged with pARTners and joined the Art Associated board, still using her waitress apron at The Range. An opening at Martin Harris Gallery allowed her to spend five years learning the gallery ropes.

The Jackson Town Square “has a strong historical traditional Western market,” McCandless said. “I’m trying to go down a different road.”

Response to contemporary art in Martin Harris was good, McCandless said, before the other galleries opened in Jackson to a different vision. McCandless thought about a gallery or office on the square but realized “that’s not the place for me.” Her alternative art space – 2,500 square feet of industrial interior as opposed to a formal gallery – required her to take a leap of faith, she said. To open a commercial gallery was instinctive and came after spending time as a painter, teacher and worker in nonprofit organizations; “I’m not an MBA,” she said.

Her approach requires “guerilla PR,” she said. “I don’t have a huge advertising budget.” Her “First Friday” events open the monthly shows and are becoming an institution.

With a father who was an orthodontist and a mother who was a painter, McCandless said she was destined while growing up outside Boston to become an artist. “It was sort of a given that was the direction for me,” she said. McCandless studied studio art and art history at Princeton, producing a show for her senior thesis.

Today, she continues to explore the untapped possibilities of her gallery space and its potential. A goal is to contribute to a sustainable community and environment. Ultimately she would like to build a green gallery and art space and run an organization that breaks the bounds of normal institutions. “It’s more than buying a beautiful painting to put on your wall,” se said about what should go into art purchases. “It’s about contributing to the good of our world.”
Not only does McCandless want her shows to be green, she hopes to offer a program of carbon offsets and would like to partner with nonprofits on different shows.

McCandless said she also would like to paint again, but doesn’t quite have time.

“I would like to have a show,” she said. Meantime, “I just live vicariously through everybody else.”