By Henry Sweets

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Clint Green has big plans for 2009.

It could be Obama’s purported social sea changes, the dire economic times or the fruit of “The Celestine Prophecy,” but Green sees 2009 as a year of creative growth both for himself and for Jackson Hole’s arts community.The studio manager at the Art Association, Green has packed and unpacked hundreds of crates of paintings and sculptures, unclogged sinks, wiped up kids’ messes ­– and generally neglected his own art projects. Green has a sculpture degree from University of Montevallo in Alabama, from where he lugged a hundred-pound stone that he still hasn’t carved, but this year Green is promising himself he’ll create at least 10 finished pieces of art. And, more importantly, he is getting pro-active about bringing artists in the door of the Art Association, he said.

The recession is hitting, and the higher-ups in Jackson’s cultural organization are listening to ways they can bring community members in their doors, while people like Green are speaking up. He hoped to bring a nationally renowned printmaker to Jackson for a winter residency, but funding dried up. So Green asked Travis Walker and his Teton Artlab to step in and take over the project, which will be called “Recession Proof.” And for the first time the Art Association is opening the doors to one of it studios - the Borshell drawing studio - free for any artist to use anytime it is open, from now until March 15. Three of the prints the artists’ create during that studio time must be donated to the Art Association. A $6,000 Takach press, ink, and etching or wood-cutting tools are available to those who know how to use the press. Beginners need to contact Green to find out about free instruction. E-mail Green at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information.

Green and the Art Association aren’t the only ones mobilizing in the midst of a bad economy. An as-of-yet unnamed think-tank artist collective has already met a couple of times at Lyndsay McCandless to gather and synthesize ideas about progressing creativity in Jackson despite tough economic times. “Everyone is sort of banding together,” McCandless said. “It’s an outcome of everyone feeling the crunch economically and coming together and saying ‘Look, we’re not going to let our creative spirits and creative juices die.’”

The first event birthed by the group will be “Art Aloud,” a collaboration between Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary and KHOL. Spearheaded by local DJ and artist Brian “Cutter” James, McCandless and a cadre of other local freethinkers, “Art Aloud” will explore the connection between musical and visual creativity. Artists will make art, DJs will spin music, ideas will change hands and people will have fun, McCandless said.

But the collaboration still doesn’t stop at LMC.

Last Friday, two men passed a power drill between themselves in the afternoon sun. They were bolting women to the side of an apartment building. The girls now face south, across from Powderhown Park off Alpine Lane. They are about seven feet tall and were made from waste construction material by Tom Woodhouse. It is the second iteration of the quest of Bland Hoke Jr. and the Center of Wonder to bring public art to Jackson. The first was the hundreds of painted 2-D animals posted along Hwy 22.

The new alliances and collaborations are already bearing fruit in the form of a larger phenomenon artist Ben Carlson discussed with PlanetJH several weeks ago. Carlson (who has already been in to use the Borshell Studio) shared his theory that “troops and tribes, cultures and collectives” will be “pushing what our culture might become” with difficult, unclear times on the horizon. That plays in with Green citing “The Celestine Prophecy,” a novel that says a critical mass of people will ban together to create a new culture.

Green also wants to orchestrate “critical mass” bike rides that stop to make art – and maybe drink beer ­– along the way. PJH

Courtesy photo
Tom Woodhouse eyes his freshly mounted sculptures.