An Exciting New Year Begins

It is an unusual winter here in the Tetons. A series of strong winter storms has battered our corner of the world for the past month. Over 200" of snow has fallen so far this winter in our mountains, which is why we live here; skiers that we are. Unfortunately this winter's storms have created an unusually unstable snowpack in the mountains and avalanches have caused much concern and sadly have taken lives. Above is a picture of an on-mountain restaurant damaged by an avalanche at the nearby Jackson Hole Ski Resort. Perhaps not what one usually finds on an artists website, but it is part of our unique world.

We're sure 2009 will be unusual in other ways. Our nation faces huge challenges and all businesses will have to be creative to thrive. There is much justifiable worry and fear and the art world is not going to be immune from financial setbacks. Those of us who have been in this world for a couple of decades have lived through recessions and stock market crashes and somehow survived. We expect to again. Maybe we're just dumb, or foolish, but we plan on forging ahead, making better garments than we ever have, confident that somewhere out there our customers are also surviving and looking to bring a little joy into their lives with an artful and warm coat or jacket.

Home Again

We returned home to Driggs last week after our final show of the year in Chicago. It really soothes the soul to be back in our little snow covered valley and gaze again on the magnificent Teton Range. The very first thing we did the minute we arrived home was grab our skis and enjoy a few late afternoon runs. After weeks of no days off, these couple of hours in the sun , breathing the fresh mountain air and using long neglected muscles were heavenly and very rejuvenating.


Here's an early winter view of the Tetons with the higher peaks cloud shrouded.


Late fall is our most hectic time of the year as customers wisely get more serious about dressing for winter. Our sales of garments and hats accelerate, orders pile up and the busier shows stress our inventory. We try our very best to get out as many orders as we can to customers who would like them before Christmas, but we just don't have enough elves, and I guess our suppliers don't either since shipments of leather to us have been slower than usual this fall.

In spite of the dire economic news we are all bombarded with these days, we found attendance at our last shows in Marlborough, MA. outside Boston and in Chicago was robust. Some potential customers passed on buying, citing economic worries, but we came home very pleased with this trip and excited to have further confirmation that our designs are very appealing in the urban markets as well as in our traditional resort markets.In Chicago one of our favorite customers came to visit us, happily wearing a coat we made for her two years ago.

What is Wearable Art?

I'll bet there are many answers to "what is wearable art?"

Yesterday I discover an article from a couple of years ago in the LA Times, by Booth Moore, that took a stab at it.
"The definition is difficult to pin down, but generally wearable art is “artist-made clothing constructed from artist-made textiles,” according to (Legion of Honor museam) curator Melissa Leventon. “A lot of wearable artists were trained in fine art and weren’t interested in learning how to be fashion designers,” she said. “They were interested in beating their way into the art world with clothing.” The genre is also characterized by low-level production and capitalization, she said. “Wearable artists are not backed by [luxury fashion conglomerate] Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. They work within a cottage-industry model.”

Maybe. I don't see too many artists making their own textiles these days, but I agree with the low-level production and capitalization/cottage-industry description.
I was truly surprised to read that the movement began with the 1960's hippies. (Horay for my generation!) I would have thought it would be centuries old.

An interesting article. Check it out.

Morristown, NJ

Just across the road from the National Guard Armory, where we participated in our second craft show of our trip to the East, the sugar maples were blazing. Living in Idaho, we don't see the flaming oranges and reds the wonderful maple trees show off with on the East Coast, and we miss them. Our aspens are certainly beautiful in their gorgeous golds, but to us who grew up in New York, maples are the kings of the fall foliage show.

With the stock market in apparent free fall, we were skeptical about the potential for having a successful show so close to the epicenter of financial calamity, and we did find people who loved our coats, but who just couldn't dare to spend the money this year. But, unbelievably, we had some customers who bought two coats! Wonders never cease. Despite a modest turn out for the show, we ended up very pleased with our trip to New Jersey. We made new friends, were treated to awesome fall colors and had dinner with one of Rita's cousins who we hadn't seen in almost twenty years.

I've never gone to a high school or college class reunion, but returning to the New York area to do a show after an almost twenty year's absence produced what I imagine is a similar "getting old" fast feeling. There were probably about a dozen or so artists exhibiting there I remember from years ago. I was glad to see they had grown as artists and were producing even more wonderful works than they had before. I was glad they were still doing what they love. I wasn't so glad to see them aging though.

On a brighter note, we also saw lots of artists who appear to be in their twenties or thirties! At times at these shows, we feel like there isn't a new crop of artists coming along to replace our generation, but the Morristown show made us optimistic that this nomadic lifestyle of traveling artists continues to have appeal emerging artists. Yea!

Paradise City Northampton Massachusetts

Well, that was a long drive! All the way from Driggs, ID to Davenport , NY in three long days. Twenty-five hundred miles. Thank goodness for books on tape to make the long hours looking at the vast farmlands of center of the US pass quickly. After arriving in Davenport late Wednesday night, we enjoyed a day of rest and visiting with Rita's dad, before driving the last 3-1/2 hours to Northampton and setting up for the show there.


Here's Rita working with some early Saturday morning customers. We haven't appeared in a show on the East coast since the early 1990's so we weren't sure how what we are making these days would be received by the show visitors. Happily, the long trip proved worthwhile with many people liking and buying our work. For some reason, people at this event were especially drawn to our feathery soft Tibetan Lamb scarves. They are a perennial favorite everywhere we go, but in Northampton we found homes for a record number of them. Warm shearling coats were very much in demand as well.



The show was held on Columbus Day Weekend and Northampton was packed with people from New York and Boston enjoying the peak fall foliage as well as this terrific show. The Paradise City shows were developed after we moved to Idaho so we had never participated in any of them. Even though the tough economy has reduced sales by exhibitors at arts and crafts shows, Paradise City's excellent marketing efforts certainly brought out the public, whether they were coming to buy or just enjoy looking at all the high quality offerings. We felt this show had the over all highest quality of exhibits and wares of any show we have been at in many years.

Finding a not too crowded place to eat dinner after the show each night was something of a challenge, but Northampton had dozens of eateries, so we just looked for the shortest wait times. A highlight was the discovery of an incredibly reasonably priced bakery that had delicious deserts for us chocoholics. And, we saw our first ever piano playing busker playing an upright piano on a sidewalk under a streetlight.

Sorry Sedona and Wall Street fall out

Today we were supposed to be in Sedona, AZ. participating in its fine art show. An attention lapse while stepping off some scaffolding last week cost Fred a trip to the doctor and some pretty strong drugs making the trip to Sedona unrealistic. We find Sedona a beautiful spot and an interesting place to visit, so it is sad to not be there.

Checking the Sedona weather forecast for the weekend and seeing rain and wind as highly probable, maybe we should not lament not being in the art show there too much, doing art shows in storms are just so much fun!

Our weekend will not be a weekend off. We have too much still to sew up before leaving on Monday for our cross country drive to Northampton, MA for the Paradise City show there next weekend.

We have to admit that the nation's economic woes are a real concern. Will attendance at art shows be lower than normal. Will attendees be cutting back on their purchasing, especially shows located closer to New York City, the epicenter of the financial problems? It is a long drive to Massachusetts to find out. Fortunately this trip also gives us the opportunity to visit Rita's dad in Upstate New York, and we are scheduled for another show in Morristown, NJ the following weekend, so between the two shows we are hopeful that our trip will prove worthwhile.

On a related note, the Jackson Hole Film Institute, the sponsor of the Jackson Hole Film Festival has closed its doors, a victum of the withdrawl of funding by people who formerly made a good living on Wall Street. Wall Street's demise even reaches deep into artistic life of the Rocky Mountains.

Colorado Art Fairs Trip

One of the reasons we're still acting like kids (refusing to grow up and get real jobs) and persisting in doing this crazy business is the freedom it offers to travel to interesting places. Many of our friends have jobs that allow them to travel, but only from one crowded city to another crowded city or suburb. For the past couple of weeks we've exercised our business travel muscles by hanging out around Colorado's mountains so we could sandwich a little vacation time in between show dates.

We did a Labor Day Weekend art fair in colorful Breckenridge. Summit County, home of Breckenridge probably has too many homes, shopping plazas and other downsides of too many people trying to claim some ownership in a high mountain environment, but there is no denying that Breckenridge's historic old main street, as packed with people and touristy shops and restaurants as it is, is a delight to wander around and people watch. In addition to the colorfully painted old Victorian era buildings that line main street, we love the flower festooned street gardens, window boxes and hanging planters that are everywhere adding even more color and gaiety to the street scene. Unlike our home town of Driggs's unfortunately drab, treeless main street, Breck isn't shy about planting lots of aspens and spruces and other native species all along the median between the curb and the sidewalks bringing the atmosphere of the mountains right into the heart of the town. These trees not only offer eye pleasing beauty, but provide shade and noise quieting as well. A very cool town, well worth visiting more than once.
An attractive flower garden in front of a Main Street business.

With three days to enjoy between shows, we went deeper into the Colorado mountains to finally do a little exploring via our favorite mode of transportation; our feet. We've been too busy with the business and building our new house and studio this year to take time to take even one hike in our glorious home Teton mountain range, so we risked sore muscles to jump at the chance to climb Colorado's highest mountain (and the second highest mountain in the lower 48 states); Mt Elbert which tops out at 14,440 feet. We had a stunning day to make our way to the top, almost cloudless blue skies and hardly a breeze. Here we are, on top of Mt. Elbert, 14440 feet above sea level.

The next day we "discovered" a very long and winding dirt road that followed the route of the original train route up through a narrow canyon to connect the gold mining towns of Cripple Creek and Victor to the outside world. We had no idea what an amazing road we were embarking on when saw it as a narrow gray line on the map. Narrow, dusty, mostly single lane, winding along cliff edges and through narrow old railroad tunnels, and going on endlessly, but offering gorgeous views and interesting historical information markers, it turned out to be a surprise highlight of our trip. Victor looks like a small, sort of dirty, industrial mining town high on ridge and Cripple Creek was a surprise of an all together different breed. It at first looked like a restored tourist type old mining town with a surprising surplus of parking lots. Once we hit the sidewalks the truth became clear, the restored street side facades of the old buildings covered up large casinos that filled all the buildings on either side of the central business district. Having no interest in gambling, we were not aware that Colorado had its own little Las Vegas tucked away high in its mountains with hourly bus service down to the cities along the Front Range.

Our Colorado excursion ended with a two day show in Castle Rock, a very suburban community located about halfway between Denver and Colorado Springs. After a somewhat sparsely attend show in Breckenridge, it was nice to see good sized crowds attending the Castle Rock show. In addition to an up tick in business, the jurors at the Castle Rock saw fit to award us with another Best in Show award, an honor we always appreciate.
Receiving our Best in Show ribbon.