Jim Norton

Original Publication Date: November 24th, 2009

Before I begin discussing where this local art scene-inspired "Intrepid Interloper" has been visiting lately, I have to first thank sunvalleyonline.com and sunvalleyevents.net readers out there who e-mailed me recently, chiming in with their own often verrry creative (and occasionally downright scary, too!! (LOL) ruminations about what that "C.I.H." acronym might mean that's next to the Ph.D on the cover of Michael McCann's book, "Artist Beware!", the one I mentioned in my last "Where ART Thou?" column (in the Nov. 20 "BUZZ" issue -- on Ketchum's newly-opened Petite Picasso art workshop).

According to freedictionary.com, the tantalizing choices include "Chartered Institute of Housing," (UK), Chen Ing-Hau (creator of the Chernobyl computer virus; ohhhh, so HE'S the one to blame for that!! ), "Camshaft in Head" (wasn't that an '80s punk band with Sid Vicious??? Sounds VERY painful, in any case!!!), "Cash In Hand," "Certified Incident Handler," and my personal fave of those listed there (and Petite Picasso workshop owner DeIda Runswick's, too) "Caffeine-Induced Hysteria."

In McCann's case, it more than likely either stands for "Coney Island Hospital," or "Certified Industrial Hygienist" -- but then again, if you're going to write a rather long book like "Artist Beware!" maybe you WOULD be in the midst of "caffeine-induced hysteria" at some point! Or not. Dunno...

Anyway, my latest artistic endeavor took me to a verrrrry UN-likely place last week: The Sheepskin Coat Factory (511 Sun Valley Road, noon-5pm, M-Sat.) in Ketchum where the David M. Norton Gallery (720-1105) is also located!! Pretty cool, huh??? (And please dont' feel at all sheepish about visiting there cuz I didn't.)

Have to confess in the interest of "full disclosure" (and yeahh, I'm STILL "all about that," people -- well THAT, and the "copious-notes" taking, both) that any art gallery that's filed with the smell of leather sensually wafting through the air as you walk through it it is always going to be one I happily and eagerly return to!!! (Apologies, in advance, to all the radiantly self-important "P.E.T.A. chippers" out there who only go to VEGAN art galleries).

David M. Norton has been an avid art collector since the early 1970s, and you only have to glance at the myriad of art-related books on his many shelves throughout the downstairs portion of The Sheepskin Coat Factory to see just HOW "avid" he is .... which I found to be an immediately-endearing trait about him, I must say, because I mean it's one thing to suddenly get excited about certain artists (and their work) AFTER they become ohhhhh sooooo trendy, but it's something else again when you're anxiously loading up your Rambler stationwagon for yet another excursion somewhere to try and acquire still more works by certain artists whose work "speaks to you" for whatever reason (having nooooo clue at all, apparently, that some 20 or 30 years later, those works of art you intuitively bought for often just a "song" are now suddenly worth a "symphony" or more.)

Maynard Dixon, "Desert Clouds"

But that's exactly what Norton has been doing for many, many years now, particularly with the works of Maynard Dixon, Jim C. Norton (who may or may not be a relation of David's; he doesn't really know -- or especially care, it seems -- but it always bring a playful smirk to his face whenever you ask David Norton about it), the Reed brothers, Dines Carlson, Paul Lauritz, E. L. Curtis, Leon Gaspard, Walter Ufer, Michael Coleman, Gary Ernest Smith, Herbert Dunton, John Fery, Victor Higgins (one of the "Taos 10," incidentally -- and noooo, they weren't a Dixieland jazz band so don't bother asking David that because I already made that mistake), J. Long, Gary Swanson, and many others whose mostly Western-type art has become rather legendary and highly-prized in many art circles.

Of course, being the radiantly Art-ignorant soul that I am -- and I mean could I possibly even pretend that I'm OTHERWISE at this point, even if I WANTED to, people??? (LOL) -- I had never heard of ANY of these rather "legendary" art world figures before David Norton began anxiously and joyously escorting me around his beautiful downstairs art gallery (which, btw, is also where all the men's leather clothing at the Sheepskin Coat Factory is kept -- in case you're in the market for any, fellas; his verrrrry patient -- and helpful -- wife, Brenda, handles the female leather clothing sales upstairs).

Actually, there are a number of very lovely (mostly oil) paintings upstairs in their store as well -- including a truly dazzling, and mysteriously un-titled, one by Jim Norton of a group of Indians standing by their settlement, looking across the nearby river at someone, or something, we can't actually see ourselves (David calls it: "Friend or Foe?" I call it: "I Soooo Can't Believe You Ordered Take-Out AGAIN, Sweetie!!!" -- because it the long-suffering wife of one of the Indians who's staring across the river and away from her man just then seems to be quite unpleased with, and/or disgusted by, her husband) -- but the bulk of their very impressive art collection is downstairs.

Sooooo, as I began busily and hastily writing down notes in my yellow legal pad that afternoon -- and fair warning here: If you do visit David's extremely well-stocked and fascinating art gallery, you better be able to listen and/or write QUICKLY because David tends to become verrry ... ummmmm, errrrrrrr ... ANIMATED, shall be say, when the subject of art and art collecting is concerned (David soooo doesnt need ANY sort of caffeine EVER!!!! (LOL)

Which, again, I found immediately endearing because for ME, anyway, it's always verrrry cool and exciting to be in the presence of someone who's not only obviously very knowledgeable about a particular subject, but who also is obviously quite keen to make you rather knowledgable about it as well.

Jim Norton, "Abandoned Homestead"

To be honest, I was already feeling a weeee bit winded (and dizzy) five minutes or so into my unabashedly brisk whirlwind of an art tour there 'cuz David Norton is NOTHING if not verrrrry EXCITED about the works he has.

But then again he SHOULD be, I guess, 'cuz they're apparently worth a lot of money now -- so much so, in fact, that he often lamented to me while he was talking at breakneck speed that he should've kept many of the pieces he eventually sold years later for what seemed, at the time anyway, like "biggg" money, but which in today's market would've easily fetched considerably more.

(Hey I know exactly what you mean, David: Back in my elementary school days, in Boston, I had a huge HOT Wheels and Matchbox cars and trucks; Lego, heavy metal Tonka toys, and a very impressive Lionel model train collection -- all of which, with the help of my dad, who placed an ad in the "Boston Globe" newspaper, we eventually sold to several different collectors, all of whom some 25+ years later probably sold all of huge toy collection on eBay for a THOUSAND times what we sold that stuff to those guys for back in the 1970s!!! Oh, well, David -- "hindsight's 20/20," right???)

Some of San Francisco artist Maynard Dixon's grandchildren have actually visited David gallery there, and David has visited Dixon's home (which evidently is "piled high with thousands" of line drawings, and other art works, Dixon did throughout his life. Verrrrrry prolific that guy Type "Maynard DIxon" into your search engine somtime and you'll see what I mean.

Almost everything on display in the David Norton gallery has a western-art motif to it. There are turn-of-the-century photos by E.L Curtis of various native Americans (NONE of whom look even REMOTELY happy, btw -- but then again can you really blame them???), with titles such as "Peyote Drummer" (nooooo, Keith Moon wasn't the FIRST one!!), "Ready For the Charge -- Apsaroke" (yes, there really is an Apsaroke tribe), "A Hopi Man" (I think he should've called it "Hopi Springs Eternal" -- but hey, that's just ME, I guess!!! (LOL), "The Spirit of the Past," "A Snake Priest," and the eerily prescient-sounding, "White Man Runs Him" (well, unles you're Anna Nicole Smith and you happen to die in a hotel-casino that's located on a very large Indian reservation, in which caseI don't think that's all that true).

Edward Curtis - Photograveure

David says a number of the gorgeous art works he's happly acquired since the early 1970s he has bought at various gun shows throughout the U.S. (yet another glaring omission in Michael Moore's "Bowling For Columbine" documentary: Looking for great art that'll accrue very handsomely over time? Go to a U.S. gun show!!!). Other works he's gotten at estate sales, or from other galleries around the country. Some are works that "fell out of favor" with certain prestigious art galleries, which are likwise probably kicking themselves right now that they didn't hold onto those works longer.

One, the moonlit-wintery "Russian Nights," by Leon Gaspard (which made me think immediately of the superb 1970s' film version of "FIddler on the Roof"), was evidently tied up in a lot of expensive and protracted legal wrangling involving a number of museums around the world, and also Gaspard's heirs as well (nothing quite like art that is suddenly rapidly accruing in value once again to bring out the very best best in people's nature, huh???)

David has a lovely array of multi-colored horse blankets on display in his gallery as well, and also a very ornately-braided and eye-catching horse-hair riding bit that was reportedly made by a bunch of Montana prisoners (guess they do a lot of that sorta of thing in those parts).

"Guess there must be alot of horses running without tails!!" my nurse friend, Sue, chirped at this point in the tour after she saw that bit. NICE one, Sue!!! (LOL)

Many of those sumptuous Jim Norton-made paintings, especially, that David owns look they were painted during what filmmakers call the "Magic Hour" (about an hour or so before sunset, or an hour or so after sunrise): lots of pinks and light blues and shafts of muted light sensuously filtering through foliage -- all of them quite breathtaking in their own way. One of an Indian standing by his horse with a rifle slung over his right shoulder really jumped out at me, as did some of those by Matt Smith (a winding river, saguaro cacti, lots of lights and shadow filtering through neighboring trees), one of Normandy Beach and another of some verrrry delectable-looking burgundy-red apples (both by Willam Henderson), and a simply stunning large oil-on-canvas work titled "A Time For Diplomacy," which features several Indians on horseback stumbling upon two naked white men who are bathing in a stream -- neither of whom is anywhere near his firearms. (The only even remotely "happy"-looking Indians I saw anywhere in David's gallery were in THIS art work).

At one point in our frenetic tour, David graciously showed Sue and I his large downtairs office, too -- which is likewise crammed full of books on artists such as Nicholai Fechin, Victor Higgins, Charles Russell and Albert Bierstadt (pretty sure Russell I read about in one of my Art History classes in college eons ago; not sure about the other two, though), and lots more unquivocally-lovely paintings and drawings, includng some by Victor Higgins, Walter Ufer, and others whose names I barely had time to even hear, let alone actually write down, before David was whisking Sue and I back into the main downstairs gallery again, where I desperately (and mostly futiley, too, I have to confess -- btw, the ex-Catholic altar boy in me is always all about the "confessing" stuff as well) tried to make note of some more names and titles.

Leon Gaspard, "White Nights"

One of the things I WAS able to make note of is that David said "A LOT" of these various vintage paintings he's acquired over the years, he has found in Utah, because I guess the LDS church still routinely sends students to countries in Europe such as France, Spain and Italy to study art there ... after which they come back to the U.S. and begin busily painting all these verrrry sumptuous-looking, muted-light sorts of naturescapes and what-not. (Seeee, and here you were thinking the LDS hierarchy was just all about promulgating, asap, marriage and procreation!!!)

Love that "Yellowstone Bears" watercolor by Michael Coleman that David has in his history-rich gallery there ('course, I did used to work at Yellowstone many years ago so maybe I was sort of predisposed to. Dunno...), and also that painting by Gary Ernest Smith ("Evening Sage & Rolling Hills), and also some of the ones hanging on the walls right by the staircase (NONE of whch, btw, I got a chance to write down, but I know at least some of them, anyway, are quite beautiful and nuanced 'cuz I wrote on my legal pad in big letters, "Staircase Art!!!!!!!", and there's no way I would've added THAT many exclamation marks, people, unless they absolutely ARE worth checking out.

Back upstairs, I took another look at that keenly-observed 24x36 oil painting by Gary Swanson of the two adut male lions lying in the tall grass (amusingly, it's titled "The Bachelors"!!), and was repeatedly amazed by the incredibly-minute details Swanson was able to capture in it, particularly the individual hairs on the lions' manes (neither of the lions, btw, looks even remotely happy -- but then again can you blame them? They apparently have no one to mate with, poor guys!!), and also those keenly-observed individual blades of tall grass the lions are lying behind, all which probably took Swanson hundreds and hundreds of hours to achieve.

Really quite stunning, that...

Okay, so there you have it, people: Yet another verrry cool and exciting and fun art gallery, one filled with beautiful prisoner-made, horse-hair riding bits, and deeply-nostalgiac photos of some very pissed-off and/or disenfranchised-looking Native Americans, and sumptuous oils, and keenly-observed line drawings and also very keenly-observed paintings of some very horny lions, as well as some extremely sexy and richly-aromatic leather clothing that I could've spent literally hours happily trying on if I'd given myself half the chance to (did you know, btw, that there's a leather manufacturer named "Christ"? Though that name was ALREADY taken. Hmmmmm...) -- located right in the heart of downtown Ketchum, at 511 Sun valley Road, that I think you'll really, really enjoy perusing and otherwise: trying on for size, as it were.

But if you do visit there, be sure and wear your track shoes because David will REALLY put you through your paces; boyyyyy, will he EVER, people!!!!!!!!!!!! (LOL)

The main goal of this ongoing "Where ART Thou?" series is to make Art more accessible to peope here in this Valley of ours who, for whatever reason (s), tend to SHY AWAY from it, and the David M. Norton Gallery seems to genuinely and proudly embrace that goal ... which makes me very happy that I was able to feature their galery here today.

Questions or comments regarding this article can be sent to John at: WriteStuffIdaho@gmail.com