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.”

Broyles First Friday in Planet

Andrea Broyles’ subconscious

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

By Kate Balog

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-In Jackson, three weeks will pass with minimal activity in the art world and then the first Friday of the month arrives and it’s suddenly party time. This Friday is no exception, with artist reception parties scheduled at Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary and Muse Gallery.

“I have a memory. Not really a memory, but a memory of a memory that I fell into a well when I was little and almost drowned. My parents denied this ever happened, of course. But I remember the silence and falling into the green water.” One would think this statement came from a 21-year-old yoga practitioner listening to the Thievery Corporation, but, in fact, its speaker was a slender, tanned, blonde Jackson mother of three, clad in faded jeans and expensive boots. Artist Andrea Broyles used this scene from her subconscious to inspire her painting “The Well,” a composition of three faceless, undulating figures swirled in green ribbons.

Broyles’ appearance, statements, and artwork are slightly incongruous. She is private and reserved, but also funny and dark. Her 2006 diagnosis with thyroid cancer may have contributed to her fascination with mortality. She worked on a series of bullets using mixed media on paper after hearing the cure for her type of cancer was said to be “like a silver bullet.”

“Common themes I explore are loneliness, relationships, gravity, aging and small shapes found in nature. … The idea of falling or of being disconnected from earth has always captivated me,” Broyles said. She is also captivated by the figure and is inspired by Renaissance artists and 20th century figurative artists, Manuel Neri and Larry Rivers. Broyles tends to experiment with different materials as she does with themes.

She has used all type of media - sculpture (resin, clay, plaster and bronze), oil paints, and mixed media with found objects. She recently explored the concept of shadows in charcoal and white gesso but found “the shadow started to look like a grave or coffin. I didn’t want it to be so depressing and dark, so I stopped and started another one playing with perspective and a ghostly figure. I wanted to convey a feeling of aloneness and simplicity,” she explained.

Sometimes Broyles paints faces and sometimes not, depending on the kind of emotion she wants her work to portray. Faces directly reflect emotion and occasionally she prefers a vague sense of emotion to emit from the figure and the bodily expression.
“I Ask for a Word” features an elongated, faceless man with mini drawers containing found objects constructed at the bottom of the painting. “Self Portrait,” on the other hand, has a distinct, haunting, green face with no neck and a figure swaddled in a red coat. Broyles’ work also has a playful side. For example, her wood painting/sculpture of a plump woman whose body and head are wrapped in towels is an amusing rendition of the Venus Di Milo.

Trained in sculpture at University of Texas, Broyles later found herself attracted to the simplicity of materials in painting. “I didn’t have the resources to set up a studio for sculpture,” she explains. She recently worked on a study in small scale combining a wood panel background and layers of wax, oil paint and sculptural elements such as upholstery finishing nails.

Broyles has always been a professional artist, but took time off after having kids. She and her husband, screenwriter and author William Broyles, have lived in Jackson on and off for 10 years, but this show is actually her first one-woman show in Jackson. Broyles acknowledges in her new book, “The Gathering,” that she hasn’t followed the rules of being an artist. Instead, she got married, had children, never pursued an MFA, and moved to Jackson instead of a major art center. Nevertheless, she finds satisfaction in her creative journey, professional recognition, and even struggle in her work.
Her book will be available on Friday for purchase. Broyles will attend for book signings, and DJ Howler will spin. The artist’s reception runs 5:30 to 7 pm on Friday at Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary, 130 South Jackson Street.