From cow town
10C - FALL ARTS FESTIVAL, Jackson Hole News&Guide, Wednesday, September 4, 2013
to arts center
Jackson Hole’s art scene has been 100 years in the making.
I
By Ben Graham
n the pre-World War II days of “Jackson’s Hole,” a young mountain guide and two fledgling painters made camp together along the shores of Jenny Lake, plying their trades among the tourists vacationing in the area. Archie Boyd Teater and Olaf Moller would lean their paintings against pine trees, pestering visitors to purchase mementos of their trips. A young Paul Petzoldt, the first mountain guide in Grand Teton National Park, would then convince the tourists they needed a guided trip up into the mountains. The three free spirits took up a communal lifestyle together during the summers just to get by. “If rations got low, the one with the money went to the store to buy more food,” Petzoldt wrote in his autobiography. “If they sold a painting, we ate. If I made a climb, we ate.” Petzoldt was particularly fond of Teater’s work back then, before either was well known. Teater, later known as “Teton Teater,” went on to have national and international followings as an artist during his lifetime, with shows at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and travels to Europe. “Archie was a self-taught painter whose paintings I loved,” Petzoldt wrote. “They were rugged and realistic, and I used to say Archie painted mountains I could climb.” Like those three young Teton pioneers, Jackson Hole’s art scene has grown up with the valley over the past century, alongside the explorers, homesteaders and other adventurers who settled here.
Painter Conrad Schwiering’s move to Jackson Hole in 1947 helped establish the valley as an arts destination.
In the 1930s, Archie Boyd Teater would show his paintings each summer by leaning them against trees at Jenny Lake.
The very first who came to paint and photograph the Tetons hauled their brushes and tripods over rugged terrain during the second half of the 19th century, battling the elements with little differentiation from the explorers they accompanied to survey untamed landscapes. Photographer William Henry Jackson documented the wonders of Yellowstone as part of the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871. Thomas Moran added color to Jackson’s black-and-white photos by painting what he saw. Their work helped convince those in Washington, D.C., that the region should be reserved as a national park, which happened the following year. Moran painted the Tetons, including his namesake mountain, but it’s probably he never actually made it to Jackson Hole. His work depicts scenes from the western side of the range, said Adam Harris, curator of art and research at the National Museum of Wildlife Art. In the days before World War II, before Jackson Hole tourism started to boom, artists began making the trek to the valley during the summer. They were frontiersmen and free spirits. These included Teater and Moller, but also famed painters William Leigh and Thomas Benton and prolific photographer Harrison Crandall, among others. They produced work during the summer, then headed off to the East Coast and other places for the rest of the year, looking to sell their paintings and photographs of the Tetons. Crandall, however, came and stayed, establishing himself on the shores of Jenny Lake and later becoming Grand Teton National Park’s first official photographer. It wasn’t until Jackson’s post-war tourism boom that entrepreneurial-minded people began establishing galleries around town. There was suddenly a plethora of people willing to buy art in and of Jackson Hole. Conrad Schwiering moved here in 1947 and went on to help establish Jackson as an arts destination. But
things weren’t easy at first. “There weren’t that many tourists then buying pictures,” said popular Jackson painter Bill Sawczuk. “I think he sold his first picture for $35. “He painted everything — ranch scenes, buildings, portraits of cowboys, horses, cattle and especially the mountains — at all times of the year,” Sawczuk said. That wasn’t as easy as it sounds, he said. Artists have always had to contend with the extreme weather, especially when attempting to paint winter scenes. “Once Conrad Schwiering came here and set up his shop,” Harris said, “others would come visit him.” Sawczuk never met Schwiering, but he did visit his studio on Antelope Flats in 1986, after the artist had died. He attributed his own commitment to plein air painting to Schwiering’s legacy. Since the beginning, it has always been the beauty and the wildness of the landscape that has drawn people to Jackson. The same things drew artists, said Jim Wilcox, a highly regarded 72-year-old painter with a studio and gallery north of town. “I think Connie said once, ‘There’s no way you can keep artists out of here. They just gravitate to beautiful places,’” Wilcox said, referring to Schwiering. Perhaps the greatest indicator of the valley’s coming of age as an arts town was historical painter John Clymer’s move to Teton Village in 1970. Clymer relocated here after a long career as a painter and illustrator, which included producing 80 covers for the Saturday Evening Post. “He was the sign of this place growing in stature as an art community,” Harris said. The rest has been history. “It was a cow town in the ’60s,” said Wilcox. “There was still a hitching post on Town Square. Galleries have been added and artists have been added. It’s become a more important place to show.”
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