‘Pipeline’ contemporaries gather at gallery

Artists celebrate statewide works

Joy Ufford
Posted 4/5/17

The Pipeline Art project grew from five contemporary Wyoming artists’ inspirations, during the energy boom, to reach across and connect with each other and their publics to show not all western art highlights cowboys and horses.

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‘Pipeline’ contemporaries gather at gallery

Artists celebrate statewide works

Posted

PINEDALE – The Pipeline Art project grew from five contemporary Wyoming artists’ inspirations, during the energy boom, to reach across and connect with each other and their publics to show not all western art highlights cowboys and horses.

Those five include Pinedale artists Sue Sommers, JB Bond and David Klarén, who joined forces with Laramie photographer Susan Moldenhauer and multi-media artist Wendy Bredehoft to create a Facebook group in 2008.

From there, they have participated in statewide arts discussions, shows and projects, right up to their March 23 opening reception at Klarén’s Mystery Print Gallery on South Sublette.

All five Pipeline artists were present at the recent reception and more than happy to discuss their experiments and inspirations.

Photographer Moldenhauer’s landscapes are panoramic and composed on her digital screen. Unlike some black-and-white photographers, she thoroughly welcomes technological advancements from film to digital.

Moldenhauer and fellow Laramie artist Wendy Bredehoft also joked about “breaking the rules” when it comes to the classic “rule of thirds” in composing artworks – with a visual artwork’s elements dividing what a viewer sees into well-balanced thirds.

Moldenhauer is director of the University of Wyoming Art Museum, where Bredehoft worked for years in educational outreach and both often plan joint artistic forays, such as this summer’s upcoming summer visit to South Pass City’s Carissa Mine with a dancer to pose in the high desert landscape.

Bredehoft’s pearlized white canvases take a very close look at what might be a common desert plant – rabbitbrush in winter – under a 10-power microscope. She explained how she pulled apart one dried blossom and arranged, then rearranged it, drawing and moving bits and pieces until they came together in an arrangement she recreated on canvas.

“The depth of the paper creates a similar look to what the landscape looks like under flat light,” Bredehoft explained. “And then the sun comes out and moves a little and more is revealed.”

Sommers displayed her latest “Willows” graphite sketches taken from her pleine air notebooks as well as a finished etching, showing many stages of experimentation with lines for the same subject.

Klarén, known for his bold graphic works inside and out around Pinedale, hung a display that features unusual flags painted with Indian ink on Yupo, which is a thin synthetic paper. He encouraged art viewers to look at a piece and its elements, then start asking a lot of questions.

For example, “Alternative fact #1 (Red, White, and Blue)” is painted green, black and orange – red, white and blue’s opposites on the color wheel, he explained.

Hanging next to Klarén’s works are abstract metal sculptures by fellow Pipeline artist JB Bond, who it turned out named these pieces after creating them – not starting with a completed picture in his mind. They are paired with his highly technical and lightly colored skyscraper-like drawings.

The Pipeline Art Project’s five-artist show is hanging at Mystery Print Gallery, 221 S. Sublette Ave., in Pinedale. For more information, visit http://pipelineartproject.com or call 307-367-3473.