FROM THE COLOUR OF ITS BLOOM: CAMAS PRAIRIE JULY 10–SEPTEMBER 10, 2020 A BIG IDEA PROJECT MUSEUM EXHIBITION The exhibition features five commissioned bodies of work that explore various aspects of the Camas Prairie’s history and ecosystems. Based in New Mexico, artist Derek No-Sun Brown (Shoshone-Bannock, Klamath and Ojibwe) grew up on the Fort Hall Reservation in eastern Idaho and the Boise Forte Reservation in northern Minnesota. The exhibition includes Brown’s painting of camas harvesting, made as part of a collaborative project between SVMoA and the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes to create new signage for Centennial Marsh. Designed by Brown, the new signage addresses the Shoshone and Bannock peoples’ continuing relationship to the Camas Prairie. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to take a poster of the new signage with them. Brooklyn-based artist Daniel Gordon has created a room-sized installation in response to the palette and landscapes of the prairie. Using digital photography and wallpaper, Gordon has created an immersive environment that combines his interests in the history of landscape and still-life painting with his desire to explore organic forms through layers of collaged digital imagery. Portland artist MK Guth’s practice engages rituals of social interaction. Her artwork brings people together in cultural conversations and includes sculptures that combine books, objects and written instructions for different kinds of events that involve the preparation and sharing of food and drink. SVMoA commissioned Guth to create a new artwork and an interactive public art project that responds to the camas lily and its history. For a number of years, photographer Anthony Hernandez has divided his time between Los Angeles and the Camas Prairie. Expanding on a series of photographs he made through the screened walls of Los Angeles bus shelters, Hernandez has created new photographs of prairie landscapes and structures shot through mesh screens. The screens partially obscure our view of the prairie, adding a layer of abstraction to images that invite viewers to consider our visual experience of a place. Cambodia-based sculptor Sopheap Pich has created several bodies of work in response to the social and political histories of flowers, including the morning glory, which his family relied on as a source of nutrition during the Khmer Rouge period. SVMoA commissioned Pich to create a large outdoor
sculpture inspired by the camas lily, which he designed for a site in central Ketchum. Pich visited the prairie several times in preparation for the exhibition and has responded to the camas lily in a larger body of work that includes a second sculpture, woodblock prints and drawings. The exhibition also includes a short video of interviews with members of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes about their history with and contemporary relationship to the Camas Prairie. As part of From the Colour of Its Bloom, SVMoA is publishing a catalog featuring a commissioned essay by writer Judith Freeman, a fifth-generation Westerner and the author of a short story collection, two non-fiction books, and five novels, including The Chinchilla Farm and Red Water and the forthcoming MacArthur Park (2021). Freeman was raised in Ogden, Utah, and lives on the Camas Prairie with her husband, the artist-photographer Anthony Hernandez.
OPENING CELEBRATION Fri, Jul 10, 5–7pm FREE at The Museum & 551 N. 1st Ave., Ketchum Join us for celebrations of From the Colour of Its Bloom and the outdoor installation of Sopheap Pich’s Camas Lily sculpture. Visitors will be allowed to enter The Museum in small groups. Social distancing and face masks are required.
EVENING EXHIBITION TOURS Thu, Jul 23 & Thu, Aug 20, 4:30 & 5:30pm The Museum, Ketchum FREE, pre-registration required Join us for a glass of wine as you tour the exhibition with SVMoA’s curators. Participants must register in advance. Each session is limited to 10 participants.
PRIVATE EXHIBITION TOURS Walk-in visitors are always welcome, but if you'd like to learn more about the artwork in the exhibition, we invite families and small groups for private tours with The Museum's curators. Please call The Museum to schedule a tour.
CLASSES CREATIVE JUMP-IN: LEARNING TO DRAW FIELD NOTES IN NATURE WITH POO WRIGHT-PULLIAM Sat, May 30 & Sun, May 31 A welcoming class for beginners and up. Upon registering, participants will receive an online tutorial from the instructor on how to draw bird and wildflower anatomy. On Sunday, we will drive to beautiful Centennial Marsh to sketch the birds and flowers that nest and bloom there. Nature and wildlife, especially birds, are at the center of instructor Poo Wright-Pulliam’s life and artwork. She has won numerous awards for her art and has been selected as Artist-in-Residence for Craters of the Moon National Monument and City of Rocks National Reserve.
YOUTH CLASS: THE EMOTIONAL LANDSCAPE WITH BARBI REED Mon, Aug 3, 9am–12pm & Tue, Aug 4, 1–4pm Hillside Grain, Bellevue, and The Museum, Ketchum $65 member / $75 nonmember Students entering grades 6–8 will investigate landscape photography and be encouraged to capture an image that embodies the experience of seeing with an informed eye. On the first day, a visit to Hillside Grain will offer an opportunity to photograph, via a smart phone, fields of grain and the stone mill that produces flour. On the second day, students will be given a tour of the exhibition From The Colour of its Bloom and participate in a positive critique of their images. Barbi Reed has photographed the world around her since she was 8. With assignments in Tibet, Africa, Haiti and elsewhere, her images have appeared in numerous national and international publications, books and on gallery walls.
WRITING CLASS: A THOUSAND WORDS: GUIDED WRITING ABOUT THE ART YOU SEE WITH SARAH SENTILLES
CAPTURE THE SPRING PRAIRIE: INTERACTIVE FLAG PROJECT BY MK GUTH Sat, Jun 27, noon–3pm Hailey Classroom FREE, pre-registration required Ages 8–adult welcome Join MK Guth in celebrating the beauty and histories of the spring Camas Prairie by painting flags that will hang outside The Museum in Ketchum as part of the exhibition. Using the purples, greens, blues and yellows of the prairie, the community is invited to paint flags, which can be illustrative or abstract and embrace the colors, mood and atmosphere that the prairie represents.
Wed, Aug 19, 6–7:30pm The Museum, Ketchum $10 member / $12 nonmember Ages 14–adult welcome Can you describe what you see? Art inspires, captures, escapes, disrupts, disturbs, conceals, and reveals. It also helps us learn to look more carefully, reminding us that what we think we see is not all there is. In this time of mis-seeing and misunderstanding, careful looking is ethical and urgent work. Join us for generative writing exercises based on the exhibition. Experiment with new ways to view art and play with language. Sarah Sentilles is a writer, teacher, critical theorist and author of many books, including Draw Your Weapons, which won the 2018 PEN Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Oprah Magazine, Ms. and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She has taught at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland State University, California State University Channel Islands and Willamette University.
FAMILY PROGRAM: AFTERNOON ART (FOR FAMILIES WITH KIDS AGES 5–12) Weds, Jul 29, Aug 5 & 12, 2:30–3:20pm & 3:30–4:20pm The Museum, Ketchum FREE, pre-registration required Families will make art, explore The Museum's Art Lab and view the exhibition together. Projects will change on a weekly basis and always connect to the artwork in the exhibition. Participants must register in advance. Each session is limited to a single family of 4 people per reservation.
From the Colour of Its Bloom is made possible through significant financial support from Jane P. Watkins, and generous grants from the Robert Lehman Foundation and the
with additional support from: The Dawson Family Ann & Mark Edlen The Michael S. Engl Family Foundation Barbara & Tod Hamachek The Hardiman Family Foundation Kay Hardy & Gregory Kaslo Andie Laporte Barbara & John Lehman Jeanne Meyers Linda & Bill Nicholson Richard Smooke & Family Jeri L. Wolfson Sarah & David Woodward Special thanks to the following for assistance with the installation of Sopheap Pich's Camas Lily sculpture: Kay Hardy & Gregory Kaslo Jonathan Lunceford, Lunceford Excavation Skip Merrick, Merrick Concrete Sun Valley Museum of Art would like to acknowledge the Shoshone and Bannock peoples and their homelands here in the Wood River Valley and on the Camas Prairie, as well as their use of these lands in the past, present and future.
FROM THE COLOUR OF ITS BLOOM: CAMAS PRAIRIE JULY 10–SEPTEMBER 10, 2020 A BIG IDEA PROJECT
THE MUSEUM 191 Fifth Street East, Ketchum, Idaho Mon–Fri, 10am–4pm Sats in Jul & Aug, 11am–4pm
COVER: Anthony Hernandez, Screened Pictures Camas #2, 2019, archival pigment print, courtesy the artist and Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles
HAILEY CLASSROOM 314 Second Ave South, Hailey, Idaho Scheduled Class Times
INTRODUCTION PANELS: MK Guth, drawing from Dinner for a Camas Flower, 2020, ink on paper, courtesy the artist, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, and Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York
LIBERTY THEATRE 110 N. Main Street, Hailey, Idaho 208.578.9122 SUN VALLEY MUSEUM OF ART P.O. Box 656, Sun Valley, ID 83353 208.726.9491 • svmoa.org
BACK PANEL: Sopheap Pich, Camas Lily 1 and Camas Lily 2, 2020, woodblock prints, ed. 15, courtesy the artist and Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York
Derek No-Sun Brown, Sweet Breeze Through the Camas, 2020, oil on canvas, courtesy the artist INTERIOR, TOP TO BOTTOM: Daniel Gordon, Flowers and Root Vegetables, 2020, pigment print with UV lamination, courtesy the artist and M+B, Los Angeles Sopheap Pich, Camas Lily (process photo), 2020, bamboo, rattan and steel, courtesy the artist and Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York MK Guth, Camas Prairie flags, 2020, ink on fabric, courtesy the artist, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, and Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York
urrounding the remote town of Fairfield, Idaho, the Camas Prairie stretches for more than 15 miles along both sides of Highway 20 as it cuts across the southern part of the state. The prairie takes its name from the camas lily, which briefly blooms each spring, creating ribbons of flowers that, in the words of Meriwether Lewis, “from the colour of its bloom … resembles lakes of fine clear water.” The Camas Prairie is a place of visual contrast and multiple ecosystems: purple-blue lilies against bright green grass, tilled fields and marshy wetlands, big sky flanked by mountains to the north and south. Embedded within the prairie is the Centennial Marsh Wildlife Management Area, home to migrating waterfowl and shore birds. The Camas Prairie is also a place of layered social histories. For centuries, the area’s original inhabitants, the Shoshone and the Bannock, have used the camas lily bulb as a staple food. The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes continue to harvest camas lilies today, but their use of the prairie was disrupted by the arrival of European s ettlers who established farms in the 19th century, some of which still exist. This project invites artists to r espond to different aspects of the Camas Prairie as a unique landscape with a complex history mirroring that of the western United States.