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Buzz is Building for the Jackson Hole Showcase of Homes!

Check out this press release from the Fall Arts Festival about our upcoming event:

Showcase of Homes Tour Reveals the Art of Living Spaces in Jackson
Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival event opens doors on exclusive homes and ranches

Fall Arts Fest Showcase of Homes

“Shooting Star Elegance” (left) and “River Meadows Retreat” (right) are two of the homes to be featured in the Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival’s Showcase of Homes Tour.

Jackson, Wyoming – August 22, 2014 – The art of Jackson Hole home design has become an integral part of the annual Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival, offering visitors the opportunity to peek behind usually closed doors both of mountain modern Jackson, Wyo., residences and of surrounding historic ranches. The Jackson Hole Showcase of Homes, September 12 and 13, provides a chance to experience the beautiful craftsmanship and unique architectural designs of local homes – including firsthand discussions with the professionals who designed and built them – while Historic Ranch Tours on September 6 offers the chance to experience Jackson Hole’s cowboy culture of old while exploring the beautiful country properties.

“Visitors and locals alike are curious to get an insider’s view of some of Jackson Hole’s fabulous homes and ranches,” says Maureen Murphy, director of special events for the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce, “so these ‘art of the home’ tours have been a popular addition to our annual line-up of Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival events.”

The first home on the Showcase of Homes tour is Shooting Star Elegance, located at the base of Rendezvous Mountain and combining old world style with modern appointments of the highest level. Next is the thoughtfully designed 5,515-square-foot “cabin in the woods” known as the River Meadows Retreat. The tour will also visit Martin Creek Cabin, located in the private Snake River Sporting Club, where the river runs through it.

Now in its second year, the Showcase of Homes tour gives its guests the opportunity to see a variety of imaginative Jackson residential design. More than just a walk-through, the tour also includes face-to-face interaction with the designers, architects and creative professionals responsible for some of the most exclusive and artistic homes in Jackson Hole. Hosted by Homestead Magazine, the Showcase tour is available Sept. 12 and 13 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tickets are $75, available at WRJ Design Showroom at 30 S. King St., or online via Homestead Magazine. Ticket proceeds are donated to local charities chosen by the participating homeowners. The tour is limited to 250 tickets so purchase early; this event typically sells out.

Those interested in architecture and design dating back to Jackson Hole’s early days will enjoy the Historic Ranch Tour, where guests will tour historical valley ranches while getting a taste of the area’s cowboy heritage with real cowboys, Wild West entertainment, and an old-fashioned Western barbecue. Hosted by Mountain Living magazine, the tour leaves at 2 p.m. from Home Ranch Parking Lot on the corner of Cache and Gill Streets in Jackson. Tickets are $50, available from the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce. Limited seats are available so advance reservations are required.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2014, the Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival continues to secure Jackson’s place as a leading cultural destination for collectors, art lovers, and families alike. The 10-day event presented by the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce brings a signature mix of visual, contemporary, culinary, Western, landscape, wildlife and Native American arts to Jackson, Wyo., September 3 – 14, 2014. Along with the Showcase of Homes tour, The Fall Arts Festival offers visitors more than 50 family-friendly events, many of them free. Visit the festival online at http://www.jacksonholechamber.com/fall_arts_festival/ for a full calendar of events.

Conveniently located just 20 minutes from the Jackson Hole Airport, Jackson is served by major airlines including Delta, United, American and SkyWest. Reservation information for Jackson’s numerous hotels, as well as a complete schedule of Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival events can be found at www.jacksonholechamber.com. For additional information, contact Maureen Murphy at Jackson Hole Chamber, 307.733.3316.

2013 Jackson Hole Showcase of Homes: Recap

This year as part of the Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival, Homestead Magazine’s Jackson Hole Showcase of Homes presented something unique: the chance for patrons to leave the gallery space for the home interior space. In recognition of the vibrant architectural, design, and building community of the valley, the Showcase offered ticket holders an intimate glimpse into every aspect of three magnificent local homes, and the opportunity to interface directly with the design professionals who made it so.

From airy modern to warmly-textured western to updated lodge luxury, the three featured properties—Gros Ventre Overlook, Owl Creek Elk Refuge, and Tucker Ranch Retreat—meant a full sampling of the latest in architectural and design innovation. “We loved the fact that all three houses were very different and all three spectacular!” noted one guest. Spaced over two glorious fall days in Jackson Hole, 200 guests experienced a treasure hunt of a day with rambles through “dream homes” that are usually sealed to the public, hors d’oeuvres, and most importantly, the chance to enjoy face-to-face conversations with premier valley artisans in the fields of architecture, building, and interior and exterior design.

The Showcase of Homes was successful in raising $9000 for local charities selected by the generous homeowners that opened up their doors, including The Grand Teton National Park Foundation, Center for the Arts, and JH Land Trust. Each organization will also receive a matching grant through the Old Bill’s Fun Run for Charities. Event organizer Megan Jenkins counted the event a resounding success based on “the enthusiasm showed for each project by all of the attendees” and the “opportunity for people to have one-on-one conversations with the design professionals.  You could really appreciate the work and craftsmanship of each home.  People really had a great time and were extremely complimentary. ”  She hopes that the attendees were inspired and motivated to try “innovative things with their own spaces.”

This was echoed by multiple guests, who indicated that they attended precisely to network with design professionals and were looking forward to following up with the artisans who designed, built, or furnished the homes they visited during the tour. One noted the “informative,” “friendly,” and “welcoming” aspect of the Showcase, while another enthused, “I loved seeing the exquisite houses and having all of the builders, designers and others present to answer questions.”

Participating design professionals were able to connect with patrons in the context of their own design schemes and craftsmanship, illuminating their work in new ways. “It really is rewarding to have great clients who let you show off their home and attendees who comment on what a great job we all did,” noted Sharon Nunn, Vice-President of Ellis Nunn & Associates, Inc., whose firm designed the Owl Creek Refuge. “I look forward to doing it again next year.”

Bradley Suske of The Bradley Company—landscaping firm for the Tucker Rancher Retreat—felt similarly. “I thought it was an amazing experience for me,” he said. “I really felt like I was in my element.”

Megan Jenkins was pleasantly surprised at “how excited people were to be able to tour some of the masterpieces that are in this valley.” The three homes on the self-guided Jackson Hole Showcase of Homes tour allowed a multi-layered peek into all the creativity afoot in the Intermountain West, and the Renaissance in western style being forged by our singular community of creators, drafters, and craftspeople. With the canvas of the Tetons as its backdrop, Jackson Hole’s creative identity continues to evolve, and these exciting new properties are on the vanguard of it all.

Our mission at Homestead Magazine is to highlight Jackson Hole’s top-notch residential architecture and design community for local homeowners and visitors. Next year, we hope you’ll join us to tour one-of-a-kind homes, learn the ins and outs of the design process, and be inspired by the myriad possibilities of your own spaces.

Modern Shape, Western Substance at WRJ Design Associates

WRJ Design - Ashley Tutor

WRJ Design Principal Rush Jenkins and artist Ashley Tudor

What sets the aesthetic of the Jackson Hole homeowner apart? It wells from the setting: a love of rustic Western textures melded with the contemporary. Sleek, sharp lines that simultaneously pay tribute to the legacy of place and the outside world.

This blend of collectors with a discerning eye for the au courant alongside a reverence for the wilderness led San Francisco based artist and author Ashley Tudor to mark a mental bull’s eye over the town of Jackson as she considered where next to place her work. A contact connected her to WRJ Design Associates and its dynamic collecting and design team of Rush Jenkins and Klaus Baer – turns out, the admiration was mutual. Both parties knew her work would be a perfect fit for, in Tudor’s words, WRJ’s “modern rustic chic aesthetic.”

Tudor specializes in bronze European game mounts that fuse stylized contours and a high gloss finish with the time-honored tradition of interior display. At home in a show room that also features trophy antlers from the collection of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Tudor’s mounts provide a new twist on a classic collector’s object. More importantly, she hopes her work adds to an ongoing conversation between man and nature, and provokes examination of our participation in a food chain that has become increasingly mechanized.

Ashley Tudor poses with an attendee of the WRJ Design Associates opening

Ashley Tudor poses with an attendee of the opening and one of her pieces — a bronze impala.

During the Wednesday night reception hosted by WRJ, Tudor described her own evolution from consumer to active participant in the system of supply and demand. Galvanized by her first elk hunt in Idaho’s Frank Church Wilderness, Tudor says she “became connected to [her] food in a new way.” A field-to-table chef as well as the author of two books on the benefits of a paleo diet, Tudor views her art as a means to honor the creatures that quite literally add to our lives. “More than pretty pieces that hang on the wall,” the elk, deer, and even African impala that she memorializes in bronze casts are intended to impart just a little of the “soul of pieces and where they came from,” even as they reflect the viewer, caught in the lustrous glow of a high art skull.

The process of turning harvested game into the mounts pictured here is an arduous one to say the least. Beginning with a stripped skull, Tudor adds braces for the original horns before creating a lost-cast wax mold, adding several layers of plaster, and finally dipping the skull in molten bronze. At this point, the individual bronze pieces are painstakingly welded back together before Tudor polishes them manually with pass after pass of a polishing wheel. Then, the animal’s natural horns are re-attached, and Viola! A mount is born.
Elk_Ashley_Tudor

The materials of each mount are an appropriate metaphor for this “collaboration between man and nature.” Bronze and modern metallurgy sinuously curve over nature’s silhouette – rather than overpower nature with ornate decoration, the spare, radiant pieces exhibit “a beauty that magnifies both.” Jackson Hole’s own focus on sharing space with wildlife and gamesmanship means that many a local collector’s interest is likely to be piqued by the thought of introducing a Tudor piece into the intimate exhibition space of the home.

How best to feature a work of art such as Tudor’s? Blair Friedeman of WRJ Design Associates sees the mounts as “very impacting” on their own, and a fantastic focal point for a wall or table space. Tudor also suggests them as accent pieces above the fireplace—a nod to the custom of European mount display—and has even seen homeowners get creative and feature her smaller works as bookends.

A Tudor elk mount affixed over a fireplace at WRJ Design Associates Showroom in Jackson Hole, Wyoming

A Tudor elk mount affixed over a fireplace.

She takes commissions from avid hunters hoping to venerate their trophies in more unique ways, and is scheming to create new whitetail deer and ram’s head pieces for exhibition at WRJ. As has become customary for Tudor, the new works would be a nod to the rootedness of place, an inescapable aspect of owning property in a valley as breathtaking as our own.

Whatever their placement within an interior space, Ashley’s work stands out as an arbiter of the interior style favored by WRJ Design Associates and the Jackson homeowner at large. The mounts’ blend of sophisticated styling within a tradition that honors the great outdoors means objects that are, indeed, much more than a pretty face.

For inquiries on Ashley’s pieces, please contact WRJ Design Associates at 307.200.4881 or http://www.wrjassociates.com.

Four Daughters: Not Your Typical Jackson Kitsch

Four Daughters: another western collectibles store on Town Square? One more shop that sells Jackson Hole souvenirs and gifts?

Not so fast say Lyle and Jesse Gestal, owners of Four Daughters, one of the newest additions to Jackson’s town square. Down the wooden steps and across from the Boot Legger, this sister duo has brought to life their unique vision for a store selling Western inspired memorabilia with a big wow-factor.

“We wanted to sell art and one-of-a-kind collectibles without the typical Jackson kitsch” Says Lyle, the youngest of the four Gestal sisters. “We’ve both worked in retail here, and wanted Four Daughters to stand out from the rest of the Jackson crowd.” So after securing their new retail space, the sisters spent their off-season making road trips across the American west, finding inspiration in Taos, and unique items in antique shops throughout Utah and Wyoming. Thus the store became a collection of Western-inspired items from vintage belt buckles and old-fashioned pocketknives to restored antique furniture and worn leather saddles.
[Read more…]