Pearls are the perfect metaphor for life, according to Shari Turpin, owner, pearl buyer, and designer for Pearls By Shari. Her shop, located just off the Jackson Town Square, has specialized in selling high-quality pearls for 25 years. “Pearls form because of pain,” Turpin says. “A nucleus is grafted into an oyster’s membrane, and the
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It all really began with a cow. In second grade, a painfully shy Kathy Wipfler drew a cow in art class and everyone said it was the best in the class. “And all these years later, I’m still painting cows,” she says. Wipfler was working as a surgical technician in Idaho Falls, Idaho, after growing
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Tom Turiano was never interested in pushing himself to the technical limits of a sport. As a kid growing up near Rochester, New York, what interested him most was problem-solving aspect of how to get from point A to point B, whether it was on the water or climbing a mountain. In school he collected
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If Vicki Garnick had a personal motto, it would come from “Unsinkable Molly Brown,” a musical she produced at the Jackson Hole Playhouse. The song “I Ain’t Down Yet” summarizes the long road she and her family business have taken over the last 40 years. The Jackson Hole Playhouse, built in 1915, is the oldest
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Ben Roth knew from the moment he learned to weld that he’d found something special. “I found my medium,” he says. “It was like I’d made armor in my last life. It just felt right.” It was 1999, and Roth was working on opening the restaurant Terroir in Jackson with several partners and investors. It
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Inside Laurie Thal’s glassworking studio, shelves of colorful bowls, vases, bottles, and other pieces line the walls, and a metal tree of dangling blownglass ornaments rests just inside the door. The studio, located off the Village road, isn’t just for display—it’s where she and partner Daniel Altwies create their masterful pieces of glass art.
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If you ask Jim “Slim” Wilson what he does, you’re bound to hear an assortment of vocations and skill sets. What might lead to a better answer, however, is asking, “What don’t you do?” A professional ski instructor, talented musician, dancing aficionado, ski patroller, U.S. Army veteran, postal worker, locksmith—the list goes on and
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Jim Woodmencey is unassuming and kind, order and Arnold Palmer instead of a dry martini, and wears a Stio puffy instead of a tailored suit, but he is Jackson’s own James Bond of weather forcasting. When he’s not updating his MountainWeather.com website at 4 a.m. each morning, predicting avalanche conditions for heli-ski operations, or
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LISA SAMFORD, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE JACKSON HOLE WILDLIFE FILM FESTIVAL, BEGAN HER CAREER AS A JOURNALIST, BUT AFTER SHE SPENT A DECADE WORKING IN THE NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY, HER INTEREST TURNED TO FILM. “My boyfriend was a cameraman and he was having so many great adventures,” Samford says. “I was just drawn to it.”
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All-night field excursions are just part of the job for Teton Raptor Center senior avian ecologist Bryan Bedrosian. To conduct research, he spends countless hours in the backcountry and skis long distances tracking birds. He often faces difficult travel conditions and avalanche risks. “One night I spent the entire night out trying to capture
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April Landale arrived in Jackson to work at Teton Science Schools in 1993. A year later, she was ushering the first 13 students into the new graduate program she helped create. Back then students came to the program with internship, outdoor leadership, and even teaching experience, and they were searching for an academic for
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When recounting some of his most memorable art students, retired Jackson Hole High School art teacher Greg Houda smiled and teared up a little as he bragged about some of his favorite students. One has a local tattoo studio with a year-long waiting list. Another former student just moved to the West Coast after
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Clutching a teddy bear, Mary Flamino quickly got to work. The Youth Services Manager at the Teton County Library posed the teddy bear and a cadre of other stuffed animals so it looked like they were “raiding” the staff refrigerator as her colleague snapped a few photos. Next, she gathered all the stuffed animals
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When Phil Leeds was finishing up college in Santa Cruz, California, he was itching to get back to the Tetons. He had spent summers working at Colter Bay Lodge, and his friend, Jeff Crabtree, had just opened a shop called Skinny Skis in Jackson. As soon as Leeds Finished School, he headed back to
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