Downtown Ketchum

Around 1988, photographer Peter de Lory saw a couple standing in front of Yosemite Falls. The man was blind (you can see his walking stick in de Lory’s photo), so he wasn’t looking at the falls so much as listening to them. That got de Lory to thinking: What is it about waterfalls that’s so captivating?

And that led to several decades of photographing waterfalls wherever he found them—in national parks, urban areas, state preserves and along interstate freeways.

De Lory’s photographs of central Idaho’s Shoshone Falls, and other waterfalls throughout the West, are on view at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts’ exhibition Shoshone Falls: 3 Perspectives. Formerly the director of the Sun Valley Center’s photography program for five years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, de Lory will speak about his work at 6 pm Saturday, May 26, during the Ketchum Gallery Walk. Wine, beer and light refreshments will be served, and the gallery will remain open until 8 pm.

Primarily a landscape photographer, de Lory has since the mid-1980s focused on the American West, often creating triptych images with an implied narrative. But it wasn’t until that fateful encounter in Yosemite that he made waterfalls a theme in his work.

“I resisted doing a series on waterfalls because, c’mon, every joker in the world photographs waterfalls,” he says. “It’s so banal, so clichéd. But then I thought, well, why not? There are more waterfalls in the Northwest than almost anywhere else. And many of them have become monuments; they’re so well known that I found myself photographing people responding to the falls—the social aspects of the falls as well as the landscape. It’s a very important touchstone for a lot of people.”

De Lory, who studied with Minor White, holds to a traditional view of photographic craft based on darkroom techniques and the “zone” system popularized by Ansel Adams, which strives for a full range of tones from velvety black to sparkling white. Although de Lory now uses computers and scanners to achieve the lush, beautiful tonalities in his pictures, he forgoes special effects: “I like my work to be very direct, very clear, and in a sense, understated. I think of myself as a romantic structuralist, a term I coined to describe how I photograph in a very formal straightforward way structurally, which frees the subject up for interpretation, creating an opening for emotion and meaning.”

Now based in Seattle, de Lory he has fond memories of his years in Sun Valley: “It was a very exciting time. Everything was in full bloom, artistically.” During the time he ran the photography program, The Center brought in some of the country’s best-known photographers—including Duane Michals, Robert Heinecken, Jerry Uelsmann, and Ralph Gibson—for summer workshops. (The program boasts a few famous alumni, too; de Lory was Tina Barney’s teacher in Sun Valley.) Even after he left to teach in Chicago, he returned periodically for residencies.

De Lory has had numerous one person exhibitions and is regularly featured in museum exhibitions that explore the identity of America and the West. He has taught at many institutions including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Art Institute, University of New Mexico, University of Washington, San Jose State University and, of course, the Sun Valley Center for the Arts (then the Sun Valley Center for the Arts and Humanities). His work is included in many museum collections including the Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Seattle Art Museum; and the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, MA.

 Shoshone Falls: 3 Perspectives continues through Saturday, July 7. Gallery hours are 9 am–5 pm Monday–Friday and admission is free. For information on tours and other related programs, visit www.sunvalleycenter.org or call 726.9491 ex 10.

For All the Best Costume Ideas and Accessories don't forget to stop in and say Hi to Carol @The Toy Store on 4th St. in K-town and in the Sun Valley Mall. 

 Mention SunValleyOnline and receive a 15% discount on costume accessories at the Toy Store for this weekends Ketchum Wide Open festivities!

Check out Mark Oliver's video from last years event for some great costume ideas.

The results are in! Jim Slanetz and Michael David have won the 2 seats on the Ketchum City Council!

It was a very close election with runner-up Charles Friedman, losing by one vote!

Here is the break down:

Jim Slanetz 437

Michael David 316

Charles Friedman 315

Julie Lynn 96

Mickey Garcia 83

The current exhibit of works by Jeff Fontaine make an intriguing focal point for an outside space and may be incorporated into a variety of designs.  The metal panels are "quilted" together, using both salvaged as well as new metal. Fontaine speeds up the natural process of rusting and pitting to create the desired composition, with the focus on the innate beauty created as manmade objects break down and naturally age.  Based on the artist's photography of old signs, rusting train cars and crumbling architecture, many of the patterns and the imagery used in each work are taken directly from these documented surfaces. This process employs Fontaine's controlled attempt to both replicate and suspend the natural law of entropy and the break down of things. 

Save the date, Saturday May 12, to participate in ERC’s Clean Sweep event. Each year, volunteers from our valley gather to remove litter from public areas in our cities.  Meet your friends and neighbors at 9 a.m. at local parks (in Bellevue, Memorial Park; in Hailey, Hop Porter Park; Ketchum and Sun Valley meet at Atkinsons’ Park) to sign up and collect supplies. ERC will provide disposable gloves, garbage bags, and maps with the trash drop-off points marked for each town, plus a commemorative water bottle, light breakfast items, and a ticket for lunch (supplied by The Roosevelt in Ketchum, and KB’s in Hailey). There is no charge to participate in Clean Sweep.

Removing trash beautifies our towns, and increases pride in our home, but community cleanups are not just about aesthetics.  The materials littering our landscapes tend to be  long-lasting in the environment and can be detrimental to wildlife and water quality.  Trash has economic impacts too, because littered streets and vacant lots lower our property values and discourage tourism and investment. 

If civic pride isn’t enough, ERC appeals to your competitive nature with raffle drawings, plus prizes for the most unique trash item, the most garbage collected, the team with the widest age span, and best team spirit. These categories are for teams of four to six people. If your group is larger than six, please contact the ERC at 208.726.4333 or email lhorton@ercsv.org because lunch has to be planned in advance.

In 2011, a special traveling trophy for the Largest Clean Sweep Team was won by students from Bellevue Elementary School, but it’s rumored to be contested this year by Carey Schools.

Shoshone Falls, the “Niagara of the West,” is one of the most spectacular wonders along the Snake River and, at 212 feet, is higher than Niagara Falls. One of the other wonders of the Falls? How few local residents have been to visit, though it’s only over an hour away. If you haven’t seen the Falls, join the Sun Valley Center for a guided tour (and we’ll drive!) of this magnificent landmark just three miles east of Twin Falls.

 Participants will meet at The Center, Hailey, and travel to the falls by van. Once there, they will hear a presentation from retired College of Southern Idaho history professor Jim Gentry and have lunch at Elevation 486 overlooking the Snake River Canyon.

The excursion is offered in connection with two exhibitions The Center is presenting about Shoshone Falls. In Ketchum, Shoshone Falls: 3 Perspectives looks at the falls through the lens of photographers Timothy H. O’Sullivan, Thomas Joshua Cooper and Peter de Lory and also features a huge Kraft paper installation created especially for The Center by Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen. In Hailey, Shoshone Falls and the Democratic Sublime features photographs by Benjamin Love alongside historic photos from the Idaho State Historical Society.

Cost for the excursion is $50 Sun Valley Center members / $75 nonmembers, which includes lunch. The trip departs at 9 am and returns around 2 pm on Saturday, May 19. Register online at www.sunvalleycenter.org or call 726.9491 ex 10 or stop by The Center in Ketchum during regular business hours.

As part of a project investigating how visual artists respond to Shoshone Falls, the Sun Valley Center for the Arts is presenting a photographic project by Boise artist Benjamin Love at its Hailey location.

Benjamin Love: Shoshone Falls and the Democratic Sublime opens with a reception for the artist on Friday, April 27 from 6 to 7:30 pm. Benjamin Love will speak about his work at 6:30 pm.

Through pixel by pixel computer manipulation, Love’s photographs highlight the manmade structures at the 212-feet-high waterfall along the Snake River in Twin Falls, Idaho. Higher than Niagara Falls, Shoshone Falls has attracted photographers, artists, tourists and geologists since the mid-1800s when the first U.S. survey parties mapped the West.

Historic photographs of Shoshone Falls from the Idaho State Historical Society hang alongside

Love’s work. The contrast illustrates the degree to which our experience of nature at the site is now managed and mediated.

When he uses the term “democratic sublime,” Love is referring back to an 18th century concept of the sublime in art and nature as an experience that is at once terrifying and beautiful. What makes the experience “democratic” is the way humans have shaped the scenery: “The beauty of the place is of human scale and the viewer of the falls can appreciate it because of this,” Love says. “The sublime on the other hand is vast, and unknowable. If we take this understanding of ‘nature’ and we use Shoshone Falls as our example, the framing of the falls lessens the blow (of the sublime) by making it accessible to humans both physically and mentally.”

Following along on this concept, Love is working on a larger body of photographs of similar places—mostly lesser known sites. “I have no interest in Niagara Falls because there is already too much history there. So, that means the Grand Canyon and Glacier Park are out too!”

A Boise native who now lives in Los Angeles, Benjamin Love received his BFA in Visual Art from Boise State University in 2011. His photographs are currently on view in the 10th Northwest Biennial at the Tacoma Art Museum and have been shown in galleries across the United States and in Europe, Japan and South Korea. His work is included in numerous collections including Boise Art Museum, Missoula Art Museum, the University of Buffalo (New York) and the University of Wisconsin.

Benjamin Love: Shoshone Falls and the Democratic Sublime will be on view through Friday, July 6 at The Center, Hailey, 314 South Second Ave. at the corner of Pine and Second. Hours are Wednesday–Friday 2–6 pm and admission is always free.

A related exhibition, Shoshone Falls: 3 Perspectives, is on view at The Center, Ketchum. Related  programming includes an excursion to Shoshone Falls on May 19 and a lecture by Joslyn Art Museum curator Toby Jurovics on July 3. To sign up for the excursion and for details on all events, visit www.sunvalleycenter.org or call 726.9491 ex 10.

— Shoshone Falls, sometimes referred to as the “Niagara of the West,” has drawn photographers, artists, naturalists and tourists for more than one hundred years. This spring, the Sun Valley Center for the Arts presents three perspectives by artists on this Idaho landmark.

1. Thomas Joshua Cooper: Shoshone Falls

In the summer of 2003, Thomas Joshua Cooper traveled to Shoshone Falls in response to photographs made at the site in 1868 and 1874 by Timothy H. O’Sullivan. Cooper’s photographs simultaneously engage the work of his predecessor while expanding his own formal vocabulary and generating a dialogue around history, geography and process. One of the most respected landscape photographers working today, Cooper lives in Scotland, where he founded the Fine Art Photography Department at the Glasgow School of Art. This exhibition was curated by Toby Jurovics, Chief Curator & Holland Curator of American Western Art, Joslyn Art Museum, who will speak about the work in a free lecture on Tuesday, July 3.

2. Peter de Lory: Falls of the West

Seattle-based photographer Peter de Lory has long been interested in the landscape and infrastructure of the American West. From 1974 to 1983 de Lory served as Photography Artist-in-Residence for the Sun

Valley Center for the Arts and, while here, he photographed Shoshone Falls. More recently, he has developed a body of work on waterfalls, seeking them out in national parks, urban areas, state preserves and along interstate freeways. His images tell the story of America’s parks as well as our curious relationship to nature and natural wonders.

3. Wade Kavanaugh & Stephen B. Nguyen: In Response to Shoshone Falls

Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen have been collaborating on large-scale, site-specific projects since 2005. Twisting, coiling, crinkling and stacking Kraft paper to evoke environments ranging from old growth forests to glaciers and crevasses, they consider the role of the sublime in our experience of nature and the relationship between the natural and the constructed landscape. At The Center they will create a response to Shoshone Falls, exploring its physical structure, the sensory experience it creates for visitors and issues of water flow and irrigation.

Free tours of the exhibition are scheduled for Thursday, May 10 at 5:30 pm, Tuesday, June 5 at 2 pm and Thursday, June 14 at 5:30 pm. Tours at other times or in Spanish can be arranged by calling 726.9491 in advance. The gallery will stay open until 8 pm on Friday, May 26 and Friday, July 6 for the Ketchum Gallery Walk. Regular hours are Monday–Friday 9 am–5 pm and Saturdays in July and August 11 am–5 pm.

Related programming includes a lecture by curator Toby Jurovics on Tuesday, July 3 and an excursion to Shoshone Falls on Saturday, May 19. A companion exhibition, Benjamin Love: Shoshone Falls & the Democratic Sublime, opens at The Center, Hailey, with a reception for the artist on Friday, April 27 at 6 pm.

To register for the field trip and for more information, visit www.sunvalleycenter.org or call 726.9491 ex 10.

This project has been generously supported by the Michael S. Engl Family Foundation.

A recent malfunction with the underground traffic detection for a traffic signal at the intersection of Main Street (Idaho 75) and First Street in Ketchum has required a timing change, the Idaho Transportation Department announced. The signal remains in operation with a specific time allotted for traffic in each direction.

ITD personnel initiated the signal timing change on Thursday (April 12). The signal will continue to operate by timing until a new system of traffic-detection cameras can be mounted from the signal poles in the coming weeks.

Drivers are urged to use caution through the intersection and watch for other drivers unaware of the signal changes.

In the past, the signal changed to allow traffic to cross from First Street following detection from an underground system of magnetic “loops” or wires placed in the asphalt roadway. The loops were installed with the signal in 1996 and lost connectivity with the signal control cabinet recently. Without the detection loops, traffic on First Street was not recognized by the control cabinet.

The Idaho Transportation Department is responsible for all highways on the State Highway System – interstates, state highways and U.S. routes. All other roads are under the jurisdiction of the local, city or county entity.

Author Yiyun Li—a 2010 MacArthur Fellow—will teach a fiction writing workshop at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts in June.

The workshop will be held Monday–Friday, June 18–22, from 9am to noon each day. Students are expected to come to class with a 12 page manuscript.

A native of Beijing, Yiyun Li came to the United States in 1996. She is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and  is the author of two highly acclaimed books of stories, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and Emerald Girl, Gold Boy, plus a novel, The Vagrants. In addition to her MacArthur “genius” grant, she is a Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award winner.  She is also a recipient of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the Whiting Writers’ Award and the Guardian First Book Award. In 2007, the British magazine Granta named her one of the best American novelists under 35, and the New Yorker called her one of the top 20 writers under 40. She teaches writing at the University of California, Davis, and lives in Oakland with her husband and their two sons.

She is calling her workshop “Rx for a Story Worth Telling.” 

“Stories are like people,” she says. “They exist with or without us writers, but is every story worth telling?” In this one-week workshop for intermediate to advanced writers, students will look at published masterpieces as well as their own and each other’s work and try to find, through workshopping and writing exercises, the essential narrative that combines art and truth along with the joy of storytelling.

Every June, The Center offers a writers’ workshop with highly respected, award-winning authors. The workshops give local writers the opportunity to work with talented instructors without leaving the Wood River Valley and at a price that’s not prohibitive. Previous instructors include Ron Carlson, Danielle Trussoni and Anthony Doerr.

The cost for the workshop is $300 for Sun Valley Center for the Arts members and $350 for nonmembers. Registration deadline is Monday, June 4, but because space is limited, the class may fill before then. Register online now at www.sunvalleycenter.org or call 208.726.9491 ex 10. Scholarships and teaching assistantships are available for all Sun Valley Center classes; please inquire if interested.

In addition to teaching the fiction writing workshop, Yiyun will do a reading on Tuesday, June 19 at 6:30 pm at The Center in Ketchum. Workshop students will read from their work on Friday, June 22 at 6:30 pm at The Center in Hailey. Both readings are free and open to the public.

The Sun Valley Center for the Arts has awarded more than $60,000 in scholarships to local high school and college students and educators.

In all, 39 Blaine County residents received scholarships to pursue advanced training in the arts and humanities. Scholarships are an important aspect of The Center’s commitment to the Wood River Valley community and are made possible by The Center’s annual Wine Auction and generous donors.

Chase England received the Ezra Pound Award and will use the money to study visual art at Cow House Studio in Ireland. The award is made possible through the generosity of part-time Hailey resident Jennifer Wilson and is given each year to a Blaine County high school junior for summer study in the visual arts.

Twenty-four students received Arts and Humanities Scholarships to attend a wide variety of summer programs, including Wood River Jazz Camp, Barnard College pre-college dance program, Berklee College of Music summer program, music lessons with the Sun Valley Summer Symphony School of Music and private painting lessons.

One student, Sean Dahlman, received a Gay V. Weake Award. This scholarship supports college students majoring in the arts and humanities and is renewable throughout their college career. Four previous winners had their Gay V. Weake scholarships renewed, and four students received one-time honorary Gay V. Weake scholarships.

In addition, five local educators received funds to pursue professional development.

Awards are based on artistic merit, application materials and financial need. Each applicant submits references, essays and background information to a committee made up of community members who believe in the value of the arts and education in the Wood River Valley. A full list of recipients follows.

A reception for recipients and their families will be held Monday, April 23, at 5:30 pm at The Center, Ketchum.

Each "Khor-Lo" by Catherine Eaton Skinner carries the symbolism of the mandala into the everyday world of patterns: graffiti, old walls and sidewalks, fish baskets, manhole covers and even the sides of old train cars.  The found objects adorning these encaustic paintings have been carefully chosen from Skinner's collecting drawers.

Khor lo is Tibetan for circle, wheel or spiral. Dkyil’khor literally means concentric circles from the center to the periphery, and so becomes mandala.  The mandala simplifies chaos and complexity, unifying many elements into one pattern of existence.  The central point is the axis mundi, the point of emptiness, the midpoint of self.  Outward from the center are the four walls, encompassing the external world.  These four directions of life, balanced around the center, may represent the four elements: water, earth, air and fire.  The four directions also represent the life qualities of us as living beings: our feelings, emotions, body and mind.

Friesen Gallery Hours: Monday - Saturday 10:00 am - 5:00 p.m and always by appointment.  www.friesengallery.com   phone: 208-726-4174

As part of its ongoing series of wellness programs and events, the Sun Valley Wellness Institute is presenting “The Pharmacy of Flowers & Contemplative Aromatherapy Workshop” with  world-renowned master herbalist David Crow of Floracopeia on April 27-29, 2012 at All Things Sacred, The Galleria in Ketchum, ID.

David Crow is one of the world’s foremost experts and leading speakers in the field of botanical medicine and grassroots healthcare. He is a master herbalist; aromatherapist and acupuncturist with over 30 years experience and is an expert in the Ayurvedic and Chinese medical systems. David is a renowned author, a poet, and is the founding director of Floracopeia Aromatic Treasures and MedicineCrow.com.

The workshop schedule is:  FRIDAY, APRIL 27: 7pm - 9pm: Introduction: The Pharmacy of Flowers, SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 9am - 6pm: The Pharmacy of Flowers and SUNDAY, APRIL 29:  9am – 6pm:  Contemplative Aromatherapy

Participants can choose to sign up for the entire weekend, or just one of the days.  In addition, program participants attending the entire workshop are eligible to receive 19 continuing education credits from the National Certification Board of Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (NCBTMB).

The Pharmacy of Flowers

This session will be an olfactory feast featuring some of the world's most exotic, rare, and precious essential oils, including various types of roses, jasmines, lotuses, orange blossom, agarwood, sandalwood, champaca, and many others. This is a comprehensive introduction to aromatic plants and essential oils, with special emphasis on the benefits of fragrance in daily life and the use of essential oils for enhancing health and happiness.

Contemplative Aromatherapy

"Contemplative Aromatherapy" is an experiential approach to studying essential oils and their effects on body and mind using a combination of classical Buddhist meditation methods and Ayurvedic medical philosophy. There are two basic ways to use essential oils with meditation practice. The first is to use oils to enhance meditative states, and the second is to use meditation to study the oils. In this program we use both these approaches, both separately and together.

Cost: Friday evening: $15. Weekend: $100 for Saturday or Sunday, $150 for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

For additional information and online registration go to www.sunvalleywellnessinstitute.com

Special Lodging Offer for Workshop Attendees

Our lodging partner, the highly-rated Best Western Kentwood Lodge in downtown Ketchum (just a few blocks from where the workshop will be held) is offering a special value rates on their rooms for workshop attendees, starting at just $87.99 (plus tax) per night. To secure this special deal, please call them directly at 1-800-805-1001 or 208-726-4114.

Ketchum, ID — Join British artist Jane Dixon on Thursday, April 5, for an informal talk and slideshow about her work, in particular the rubbed drawings she has on display at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts.

The free, hour-long program starts at noon. Grab lunch and a friend and come on over—no advance registration is required.

To create the 35 drawings on view, Dixon chose cities—including Berlin, Chicago, Tokyo and Yokohama—that had been destroyed through war and other man-made causes or natural catastrophes and then rebuilt. She climbed to the highest point in each city that she could reach on foot and took photographs of the cityscape below. She then made heavily textured, nearly three-dimensional paintings based on the photographs. Rubbed drawings (these are what’s on display) of the paintings followed. Finally, she destroyed the paintings. Dixon will be bringing additional works from the project with her in addition to showing slides.

“She incorporates the process of destruction and regeneration into the making of the drawings,” says Center Visual Arts Curator Courtney Gilbert. “Each successive step leads to artwork that is slightly more abstract and removed from reality, like our hazy collective memories of cities that have been razed and rebuilt.”

Dixon, who lives in London, earned her undergraduate degree at the West Surrey College of Art and Design and her MA in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art in London. She has had solo exhibitions in London, Cambridge, Nottingham and Tokyo and has been in group exhibitions throughout the U.K., in Slovenia, Greece, China and Australia. Her awards include a Rothko Fellowship, a Rome Scholarship and two awards from the Arts Council of England. Her work is in the collections of the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, among others.

For more information, visit www.sunvalleycenter.org or call 726.9491 ex 10.

On view now at Friesen Gallery are vigorous contemplative paintings by Ron Ehrlich.

Ron Ehrlich’s paintings combine the very American dynamic of action painting with the Japanese aesthetic of pottery glazing. His application methods include throwing, pouring, brushing, scumbling and glazing. To achieve his remarkable surfaces, some glistening and others matte, he mixes recipes of oil, wax, lacquer, shellac, porcelain dust, and marble dust; and then turns a blowtorch on some areas to fuse the materials into a lustrous glazed finish. The resulting canvases, with their dense layers of oil paint and other media, are simultaneously energetic and tranquil.

Friesen Gallery Hours: Monday - Saturday 10:00 am - 5:00 p.m and always by appointment.  www.friesengallery.com   phone: 208-726-4174

Showing now at Friesen Gallery is an amazing exhibition of glass sculptures and drawings by Ginny Ruffner whose work has revolutionized glass art.  The Idaho premiere of Ruffner's story, "A Not So Still Life" was a sell out last weekend at the Sun Valley Film Festival.  Ruffner was also recently honored at the Smithsonian’s prestigious Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. with a special screening of the award-winning film. 

Ruffner is a Seattle artist whose body of work has been a major influence in the resurgence of lampworked glass world-wide.  Her goal is to create accessible art that moves you beyond the initial beauty of the glass and into the world of a living piece of art.  “I find the description ‘glass-artist’ amusing.  It implies you are an artist made of glass,” mixed-media artist Ruffner laughs.  “And glass is only about twenty-five percent of what I do.  My art is thinking.”

To learn more about Ruffner's art and passionate approach to life, click this link: http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/arts/Artist-Reinvents-Herself-After-Near-Fatal-Accident-143467306.html

Friesen Gallery Hours: Monday - Friday 10:00 am - 6:00 p.m, Saturday 10:00 - 5:00; and Sunday 11:00 - 4:00 and always by appointment.  www.friesengallery.com   phone: 208-726-4174

It’s spring cleaning time and the Sun Valley Center for the Arts has dusted off some cellar gems to share on Thursday, April 12 from 5:30 to 7 pm.

Of course, when it comes to throwing a Wine Tasting, The Center has plenty of experience—its annual Wine Auction fundraiser celebrates 31 years this summer. And in the course of preparing for and presenting the Wine Auction, The Center comes across all kinds of wines that deserve to be better known—from those special occasion bottles to be savored over a memorable meal to great affordable wines to serve anytime.

Sample them all at this fun, eclectic, informal gathering at The Center in Ketchum hosted by the Center’s Junior Patrons group.  

The April 12 Spring Wine Tasting is $30 per person and ticket price includes a Spiegelau glass to take home. Everyone 21 and over is welcome, but space is limited. Buy tickets now at www.sunvalleycenter.org or call 726.9491 ex 10. 

Tickets to the Wine Picnic & Concert and Summer Wine Tasting, both to be held Saturday, July 21, are also on sale online now. Those who buy picnic tickets during the month of March will be entered in a drawing to win a Sun Valley Center Wine Auction 30^th Anniversary Commemorative Magnum of Silver Oak Cellars wine!

Come Celebrate St. Patty's Day the old fashion way with good people and good times at the casino!

Old Death Whisper Live at the Casaba!  Need I say more!

Friesen Gallery opens an exciting exhibit for the remaining of the season, showcasing  three artists with very diverse styles.  

Primarily a figurative painter, Pamela Wilson's art transcends the commonplace to develop haunting images that evoke moods and memories inspired by real life, and to create a remarkably compelling narrative. The physical and emotional isolation of her characters has emerged as a hallmark of her work, speaking to the dark and hilarious absurdities people often endure... while creating themselves.

Ginny Ruffner  is a major artist whose glass sculptures helped create the field of lampworked glass art world-wide.  This Ruffner exhibition is in tandem with the Idaho Premiere at the Sun Valley Film Festival of the Ruffner documentary “A Not So Still Life."

Ron Ehrlich’s paintings combine the very American dynamic of action painting with the Japanese aesthetic of pottery glazing. The resulting canvases, with their dense layers of oil paint and other media, are simultaneously energetic and tranquil.

The opening reception: 9 March, 5:00 - 8:00 pm. Hours: Monday-Friday 10:00 am - 6;00 pm; Saturday 10:00 am - 5:00 pm;  Sunday 11:00 am - 4:00 pm. Always by appointment.

Families are invited to explore the Urban Lifecycles exhibition at The Center, Ketchum, on Saturday, March 10 from 3 to 5 pm.

Tour the exhibition, which looks at urban decay and renewal, and see how artists from across the country and internationally have been inspired by this topic to make art and take action. Then, create a one of a kind artwork similar to what’s on view in the gallery.

The Center’s free Family Day projects are inspired by current gallery exhibitions. Many activities require adults to be hands-on helpers to their children. Drop in anytime between 3 and 5 pm—no advance registration necessary.

Urban Lifecycles  will be on view through April 17. A related exhibition at The Center, Hailey, features panoramic photos of Idaho from the first half of the 1900s and continues through April 20. For more information, visit www.sunvalleycenter.org or call 726.9491 ex 10.

Join artist Amanda Hamilton on Thursday, March 8, for an informal talk and slideshow about her work, in particular the installation she has created for the Sun Valley Center for the Arts Urban Lifecycles exhibition.

The free, hour-long program starts at noon. No advance registration is required and attendees are invited to bring along a lunch.

Hamilton’s installation, a collaboration with the Ketchum-Sun Valley Heritage and Ski Museum and the Blaine County Historical Museum, uses dioramas from both museums to give viewers a visual history lesson on Ketchum’s last century and a half. Arranged in roughly chronological order, the dioramas mark key moments: a Native American settlement, a mining camp, the Union Pacific Railroad, the Roundhouse, and the future home of the Sun Valley Center for the Arts. Hamilton sees the installation as a found history. But her project also points to the fact that history is always “found”—certain events rise to the surface and define the narrative while others are glossed over or omitted.

The intentionally rickety stands that Hamilton constructed to support each diorama are a reminder that historical narratives are often tenuous or unstable. They also recall the train trestles, mining structures and lift towers that are the literal framework on which the history of Ketchum and Sun Valley was built.

Although the Urban Lifecycles exhibition explores the growth, decay and renewal of cities, Hamilton says a major theme in her art—which ranges in medium from film to painting and in subject from vanishing lakes to walled gardens—is less history than it is perception. In the gallery installation, she has included binoculars that visitors can use for a different visual experience.

Hamilton has also made a film, It Happened in Sun Valley … Or a Studio Very Much Like It, about Hollywood movies filmed in Sun Valley during the 1930s–‘50s. The film will be screened on the windows of the Lane Building (corner of Main St. and Sun Valley Rd.) every Friday evening through April 13.

Based in Boise, Hamilton is the recipient of a 2012 Idaho Commission on the Arts and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She holds an MFA from Claremont Graduate University and exhibits her work across the country. She has recently had solo exhibitions at Seattle Pacific University and at Boise State University’s Visual Arts Center, where she is currently part of the exhibition Cutting Edge: Contemporary Paper. In 2009, she showed her film Beautiful Terrible, about a disappearing lake in Russia, in a 20 x 8-foot storage container as part of The Center’s “Container” show.  

For more information about the brown bag lunch or Urban Lifecycles, visit www.sunvalleycenter.org or call 726.9491 ex 10.

With two free tours and a Gallery Walk, it’s a great week to visit the Urban Lifecycles exhibition at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts!

Urban Lifecycles explores the growth, decay and renewal of cities through the eyes of a diverse group of contemporary artists. The exhibition includes an installation by Boise artist Amanda Hamilton on Ketchum’s history and photo/video documentation of projects done by artists in other cities, including Detroit.
Free guided tours at 2 pm Tuesday, March 6 and 5:30 pm Thursday, March 8 give visitors deeper insight into the art on view. Wine is served during the Thursday evening tour.
During Ketchum Gallery Walk on Friday, March 9, enjoy wine or beer while viewing the exhibition. The gallery will stay open until 8 pm. Also, check out the windows of the Lane Building (corner of Main St. and Sun Valley Rd.) where they’ll be screening a film by Amanda Hamilton about Hollywood movies made in Sun Valley during the 1930s–50s.
Hamilton’s film, It Happened in Sun Valley … Or a Studio Very Much Like It, will be shown every Friday evening through Friday, April 13.
For details, visit www.sunvalleycenter.org or call 208.726.9491 ex. 10.

Come play and make art in the snow! In this program, geared toward families with younger children, parents and children will work together to use their imagination and creativity to explore art in some of its forms: sculpture, painting and function.  On Saturday, March 3, we’ll meet at the ERC office (471 North Washington, between 4th and 5th Streets) at 9:45 am and will head out on foot from there.  Our adventures will end around noon.  Please wear warm clothes and be ready to spend the day outside.

This program is free to our members.  Suggested donation for non-members: $10/individual, $20 family.  Attendance will be capped at 25 individuals, so registration is strongly recommended.  For more information on this program and to register, please call our office at 208.726.4333.

Just like living organisms, cities thrive and decline. Sometimes they even die. A new multidisciplinary project opening at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts on Friday, February 17 explores the “urban lifecycle” through visual arts exhibitions, a film, an artist talk and a free Family Day activity.

“We tend to think of cities in opposition to nature and the environment,” says Courtney Gilbert, The Center’s Curator of Visual Arts. “But when we talk about cities, we often use words that reveal that they are actually complex systems with unique cycles of growth and decline, sometimes expanding and sometimes, literally, shrinking.” 

Urban Lifecycles opens at The Center, Ketchum, during Gallery Walk on Friday, February 17 from 5 to 8 pm. Enjoy a glass of wine and be among the first to see the exhibition.

Gilbert hopes the project will get people thinking about why some cities overcome cycles of decline and decay while others stagnate or wither. Are strong economies—which can push out longtime residents and lead to sprawl—always good? Are there different ways to think about urban renewal? And what role do the arts play in keeping a metropolitan area vital?

Visual Arts, Ketchum

Urban Lifecycles

Feb 17–Apr 13

Opening Celebration Fri, Feb 17, 5–8pm

The Ketchum exhibition features work by artists who use a variety of media to explore ideas about urban growth, sprawl, decay and revitalization in cities in the United States and around the world. Featured artists are Gustavo Acosta, Design 99 (Gina Reichert and Mitch Cope), Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop (Mitch Cope, Ingo Vetter, Annette Weisser), Jane Dixon, Amanda Hamilton, Scott Hocking and Andrew Moore.

Painter Gustavo Acosta makes large-scale paintings of his native city, Havana, and his adopted home, Miami, that explore the effects of political and economic forces on both cities. Partially built skyscrapers and decaying colonial architecture tell stories about these cities’ histories.

Artist collaborative Design 99 (Gina Reichert and Mitch Cope) is based in Detroit, where Reichert and Cope have produced a series of artistic projects that aim to reinvigorate the struggling city. Whether collecting cast-off materials to create public sculptures or transforming abandoned houses into artist studios or skate parks, Design 99 works with fellow residents to build community through creative endeavors. The exhibition features videos documenting some of their projects.

Mitch Cope is also part of the Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop, headed by a trio of artists who use the “Tree of Heaven” (also known as Chinese sumac) as a resource for furniture and sculpture. An invasive species originally imported from China, the tree thrives in Detroit’s vacant lots.

British artist Jane Dixon has made a set of drawings of Berlin, Chicago, Tokyo and Yokohama, which have each gone through some kind of disaster and then rebuilt themselves. She made each drawing by climbing to the highest part of the city she could get to and taking photographs of what lay below. Heavily textured paintings of the photographs became the basis for the drawings on display, which are rubbings of the paintings’ surfaces. Once Dixon made the drawings, she destroyed the paintings, incorporating the idea of destruction and regeneration into the work itself.

Boise-based artist Amanda Hamilton is creating an installation that explores Ketchum’s history over the last century and a half. A collaboration with the Ketchum/Sun Valley Ski & Heritage Museum and the Blaine County Historical Museum, the project will incorporate dioramas from both museums alongside Hamilton’s own three-dimensional models and painted murals.

Based in Detroit, Scott Hocking has done temporary sculptural installations in abandoned spaces in cities around the country. The exhibition features photographic documentation of projects in Detroit and Utica, New York.

Photographer Andrew Moore is known internationally for his large format photographs of intimate spaces in cities as diverse as Havana and Abu Dhabi. On display are three photos from his project Detroit Disassembled that offer a glimpse into the destruction of the city’s once grand historic buildings and neighborhoods.

Free tours of the exhibition are scheduled for Tuesday, March 6 at 2 pm and Thursday, March 8 at 5:30 pm. Tours at other times or in Spanish can be arranged by calling 726.9491 in advance. The gallery will stay open until 8 pm on Friday, March 9, for the Ketchum Gallery Walk. Regular hours are Monday–Friday 9 am–5 pm and Saturdays in February and March 11 am–5 pm.

Visual Arts, Hailey

Wide Open Spaces: Panoramic Photos of Idaho, 1900–1940

Feb 24–Apr 20

Wide Open Spaces features panoramic photos of early 20^th-century Idaho from the College of Idaho’s Robert E. Smylie Archives and the Library of Congress’ American Memory Collection.

RELATED PROGRAMS

Brown Bag Lunch with Amanda Hamilton

Thu, Mar 8, noon

FREE at The Center, Ketchum

Join Boise artist Amanda Hamilton for a talk and slideshow about her Ketchum installation and other projects.  

Urban Lifecycles Family Day

Sat, Mar 10, 3–5pm

FREE at The Center, Ketchum

Families can tour The Center’s exhibition and then create a one of a kind artwork similar to what they have seen in the gallery.

Film: Urbanized

Thu, Apr 5, 6:30pm

Liberty Theater, Hailey, $5

This feature-length documentary looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design and features some of the world’s foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders and thinkers.

For more information about Urban Lifecycles, visit www.sunvalleycenter.org or call 726.9491 ex 10.