John hill’s large digital images are beautiful interpretations of Walker Evans’ famous photographs of sharecroppers taken in Hale County, Alabama, in the late thirties and early forties. Hill has meticulously and thoughtfully culled Evans’ Farm Security Administration (FSA) images, pulling out details that expose the older photographer’s genius and provide much more detailed information than ever before. Hill taught with Evans at Yale University and is the executor of Evans’ estate. He has produced a number of books and catalogs on Evans’ work.

Jim Dow states that he wants “to record the manifestations of human ingenuity and spirit remaining in our country’s everyday landscape.” His work on barbecue joints and baseball stadiums, corner shops and sites of North Dakota are a testament to his ability to illustrate the colloquial without nostalgia or pathos but with a curiosity born from the photographer’s delight in discovering the profound in the ordinary. Dow worked with Evans on his 1971 Museum of Modern Art retrospective photographs and was deeply influenced by Evans’ photographs, which he describes as “razor sharp…pictures that read like paragraphs.”

Artist Brittany Powell creates entire environments using an unusual medium for an artist: contact paper. Powell covers walls with contact paper and then carefully cuts away, exposing parts of the walls beneath to create illusionistic images of life-size spaces. She has used this technique to recreate her childhood bedroom, a doughnut shop and a Mexican restaurant. Recently she has turned toward rural subject matter, producing an installation of images related to horses. For this exhibition, Powell is creating a small town backyard that will evoke life in the forties at the same time that elements will clearly reference rural life today.

iDaho’s Fences an oPen exhiBition

June 5 – august 31the center, hailey

In conjunction with the Community Library’s presentation of the Smithsonian Institution touring exhibition Between Fences, the Sun Valley Center for the Arts opens up The Center, Hailey to local photographers, illustrators, painters and printmakers to present their take on the fences that inhabit our landscape, our community and our neighborhoods.

opening celebration

and community

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for the center’s new

executive Director,

Bill ryberg!

Fri, June 5, 5:30–7pmThe Center, HaileyJoin us for drinks and appetizers to celebrate local artists and to welcome The Center’s new Executive Director, Bill Ryberg, who will be joining The Center in late May.

Walker Evans, Printed by Martson Hill Editions, Post Office, Sprott, Alabama, 1936

Jim Dow, Masonic Temple Billiard Room, Coopertown, ND, 1981

Brittany Powell, Mini Mart (detail), 2003, cut contact paper on wall

Stacie Brew, All Woods Must Fail, 2009

the rural Vernacular

June 5 – august 8, 2009sun Valley center

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gallery walk

Fri, July 3, 5–8pmFri, Aug 7, 5–8pmJoin us for drinks and appetizers while viewing The Rural Vernacular.

Free exhibition tours

Tue, July 7 & Tue, Aug 4 at 2pm and by arrangementTrained docents offer visitors new insight into the artwork on display in free tours of our exhibitions.

special evening

exhibition tour

Thu, July 9, 5:30pm, FreeEnjoy a glass of wine while you tour the exhibition with the curator.

the ruralVernacular

June 5 – august 8the center, Ketchum

“Rural” implies remote places, places where there is more land than people. “Vernacular” typically describes the commonplace or ordinary as it pertains to language, but the word can also mean related to a particular place. This exhibition is about the places that are usually overlooked or dismissed because they are in fact so ordinary. We present the work of artists who examine and describe the life of Americans who live in the country, away from urban dominated culture. In presenting a body of work shot in the South during the Great Depression alongside more contemporary images, we explore what has and hasn’t changed about rural life in the United States. What are the values and the assumptions embedded in these images? What do we learn about ourselves, our nation and our society from these pictures?

lecture by clark worswick

on walker evans

Thu, June 18, 7pmThe Center, Ketchum, FreeIn a 50 year long career, photographer Walker Evans profoundly—even radically—changed the way Americans look at themselves, their social causes and their country. This lecture will give an overview of Evans’ career and also explore the work of John Hill, a photographer who was one of Evans’ last printers and later the executor of his estate, and whose photographs are featured in The Rural Vernacular at The Center.

Clark Worswick has written many books on photography and photographers including Walker Evans: The Lost Work. Worswick’s knowledge of Walker Evans will help us understand Evans’ approach to picture making as well as the infleunce that he continues to exert on 21st century artists.

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Janice Loeb, Portrait of Walker Evans, c. 1937