Wood River Valley Studio Tour
s li k
e D av i d B o w i
e.
98 sunvalleymag.com | 40th anniversary issue
50 Plein Air Exhibition renaissance. The effects of that decade, however, would ripple throughout our art community for years to come, and the ideas ignited by Glenn would pulsate into the rest of the state like a beating heart. “If Glenn and Bill had not started the Center and not had the vision to encourage young art professionals to move here, this would be a very different community,” said Kristin Poole, the current artistic director for the SVCA. Kristin gravitated to the Valley in 1983, drawn, like so many others, by the Center. “They have made it not only a recreational destination, but a destination for arts and culture as well.” Today, Sun Valley now has nearly 30 art galleries and exhibition spaces. The newly
photographs clockwise : courtesy sun valley center for the arts
An
te
mi
an
g t i m e Ke t c h u
ic i
Lon
us
“This was a great time for the Sun Valley first art galleries in Ketchum in 1976, folCenter, in the ’70s,” she said. “That was when lowed shortly by Diane Kneeland, Barbi Anne all these really wonderful artists came out. We Reed and many more. “It was Bill Janss who had amazing teachers like Jim Romberg and encouraged me to open my own gallery,” said Sheri Heiser and Walt Jones from the Yale Gail. “Without question, Bill and Glenn were Theater Group. We took over the Quonset my mentors.” hut, where LA Dance came, and Robert KetGlenn explained, “I will always credit Bill chum taught at Dollar Cabin. Artists, who for creating what he called ‘the total comwere the most famous in the country at the munity,’ a place where all of the human needs time, flooded to Sun Valley. Bill let us have were met—not only spiritually and physically, the ski instructors' facilities to house but the more ethereal, creative and artistic i c o ni c p h t o the students and the whole town h s oto sides. That’s what he believed fulnt Ke so became an art center in the w f m filled a human being. That was re d summer. I can’t tell you his vision for Sun Valley.” what an exciting time it After Bill’s wife, was—it was just so rare Anne, died in an avathat this was happening lanche accident out in such a small town.” Trail Creek (skiing Artists like Annie with Glenn, as fate Liebovitz, Peter deLory would have it), tragedy and Paul Soldner came brought them together. to see what was happenFriends for 40 years, these ing on the fields and rivtwo married in 1973. erbanks of a small town in Soon thereafter, things Idaho, where rumors spread came to a sudden halt for like wildfire of a movement the SVCA. Oil billionaire Earl underway. Over 500 students filtered Holding bought the Sun Valley in throughout the summer and in 1970 “the Resort from Bill Janss and the community Center” was formally founded as a nonprofit. of vagabond artists that had collected for the From this incubator of ideas would spring summers was uprooted—shooed out of the the modern-day Sun Valley Summer Symresort buildings and housing apartments where phony, the Sun Valley Gallery Association, the they had set up shop. Earl Holding had a difannual Sun Valley Arts and Crafts Festival, ferent vision for Sun Valley. the Summer Concert Series, Plein Air Projects, “Earl has done so many great things for Ketchum Arts Festival and local artists like the community,” said Glenn. “He just had difMariel Hemingway, Carol Glenn and Tina ferent ideas, and he didn’t have the space for us Barney. anymore. I don’t blame him for that.” When Jim Belson took over in 1973, he The students packed up their paintbrushes, changed the name to the Sun Valley Center their ballet shoes and their clay pots and left for the Arts and Humanities (what is now town. Many of the artists moved back to called the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, or their homes across the country. Some drifted SVCA). to larger cities where new movements were Gail Severn, who had worked at the Potato underway, closing the doors on what would be Gallery in the early ’70s, opened one of the Ketchum’s, and Idaho’s, most significant artistic
/ brooke bonner / courtesy lori mcnee / inset: andrew kent
Sun Valley Arts and Crafts Festival