Bair Gallery
May 7-Aug 8
Carroll College reception at the Holter Museum: Thurs, May 6,
5pm-6pm
Holter Reception: Fri, May 7, 5:30-8pm

In the photographs that comprise Traces, Montana’s Frontier Re-visited Richard Buswell brings together the elements of time, memory, Montana history and nature. More abstract than in previous series, this work takes a “micro” view at the inevitable march of time. Richard Buswell’s intimate, poetic approach of pulling images out of their original context offers a visual puzzle to solve.

Richard Buswell has been a fastidious collector of images since he dedicated himself to photography in the early1970s. He is a consummate printer who follows closely the exacting procedures first outlined by Ansel Adams in the1930s. Traces is a collaboration between the Holter Museum and Carroll College’s celebration of its centennial.

Artworks-Nicholson Gallery
July 13-Aug 8, 2010
Reception: July 15, 5-8pm

Late in 2008 George Gogas re-injured his left rotator cuff increasing a former tendon tear. His orthopedic surgeon advised him against surgery, recommending therapy instead. However, this has limited his ability to handle and paint large canvases. As a result his current option is to work with smaller pieces; thus the Rotator Cuff paintings. Without a theme to hold them together, they are a non-series.

High Gallery
May 1- June 30
Reception:  Friday, May 7,  5:30-8:00pm         Gallery Talk: Saturday: May 8, 10:00am

Do artists living together, breathing the same creative air, influence each other’s art? How well do artists coexist yet maintain creative boundaries? Does the everyday give-and-take of shared experience create an artistic tension reflected in their work? These and other questions inspired Double Vision: Partners in Art. Montana is a haven for couples engaged in the act of making art.

In Double Vision, the Holter Museum brings together the work of 22 regional artist partners and explores the influence on each other’s work, both individual and collaborative and across media.

Artworks Gallery
May 18-June 13
Reception: May 20

I credit my mother for instilling in me the love of nature and art.  She gave me my first oil paints at the age of six.  We would go out together to do plein air painting in the New England countryside.  From her I learned the basics of color and composition.  From that point on art became my passion: studying, teaching and creating.

While at Yale Graduate School of Art I was privileged to study under Josef Albers and his successor Sewell Sillman. The hours spent studying Albers “Interaction of Color” profoundly changed how I interact with color.  It is the foremost element of art that effects me on many levels. Another major influence has been the expressionist work of contemporary  landscape artist Wolf Kahn, who thinks “outside of the box” in terms of color.

These “Studies” reflect my investigation of Nature’s colors. The small watercolors force me to reduce broad scenes into simple color compositions.  The challenge then becomes to make large paintings that capture the sense of Montana’s  wide open spaces while remaining intimately connected to nature and its seductive array of colors.

 I am fortunate to live in a rural area that blesses me daily with amazing combinations of colors.  Although the scene may be the same, the drama played out by Mother Nature is an ever changing palette.

 Hopefully, I will never run out of color studies or inspiration!

Artworks Gallery
May 18-June 13
Reception: May 20

Landscape has an extraordinary place the heart of Montanans. We value Montana for her raw beauty, the splendor of her many moods, and multiplicity of her landscapes. We feel wonder and reverence in Nature–it teaches us, makes us saner, and more confident. We now, however, also feel a disturbed uneasiness when we walk through the browning forests or when we note the change in weather patterns. More and more artists are turning back to the landscape to capture what we are loosing and to lessen their feelings of disconnect and discomfort in a rapidly changing world. Artist Mike Glier says, “Landscape has become an urgent subject.” When I am out painting, I take in the colors, the compositions, the textures and I feel no alienation, no separation.

“…I go to Nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in tune once more.” [John Burroughs] My hope is that through sharing the intimacy of my experience, we all become more motivated to protect the land we love.

DD Dowden was born in Arkansas and has been expatriated from the South for 35 years. Her BFA in art led to a couple of tries at graduate and architecture school, before abandoning higher education to work in the woods of Southeast Alaska. A resident of Montana for nearly 30 years, her work is compelled by Montana’s landscape and the immediacy of the medium of watercolor.

One-woman shows at the Hockaday Museum, Kalispell; Holter Museum of Art, Helena (x2); The University of Arkansas Museum Gallery. Various collections and galleries, auctions, and invitationals.

Forget-Me-Not: Mothers and Sons;
Forget-me-not: Blossom
High Gallery
Jan 29-April 25, 2010

Marie Watt, a 2008 winner of the PDX Contemporary Northwest Art Awards, fabricates sculptural webs and wall hangings to show the interconnectivity of storytelling, history and collective memory. In Forget-me-not, she honors the lives lost in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan with embroidered portraits. Her fabric webs call attention to the invisible human bonds ever-present between strangers, neighbors, acquaintances friends and family. While at the Museum, she will add portraits of Montanans lost in the current wars and include sewing circle workshops and storytelling. Born in 1967 to the son of Wyoming ranchers and a daughter of the Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nation, Watt identifies herself as “half Cowboy and half Indian.”

For more information on Marie Watt, go to www.mkwatt.com

April 13-May 16

“The objects I create often refer to the form, decoration, color, and materials of historical ceramics, yet ask viewers to confront their contemporary context. These parallels can exist in my work through decorative motifs or traditional visual surfaces on forms of various origins.

My work investigates the process of recognition — how as individuals, we draw realities based on experiences and environment. I enjoy examining various cultural systems to question what is inherent and what is learned. ”

Steven Young Lee is the Resident Artist Director of the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana. Lee is a Chicago native. He received his MFA in Ceramics from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2004. In 2004-5, he lectured and taught at numerous universities throughout China. While there, he created a new body of work as part of a one-year cultural and educational exchange fellowship in Jingdezhen, Jianxi Province. A former Bray resident, Steven also spent a year teaching at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, B.C. in 2005-6.

In the United States, he has taught classes at Alfred University in New York, Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, the Clay Art Center in New York and the Lill Street Studio in Chicago. He has also managed a ceramics supply business in Chicago.
His work has been exhibited in China, Canada and throughout the United States, and is held in private collections in New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Montana.

Lee maintains an active studio practice rooted in both functional and sculptural ceramics. His current work examines the process of recognition-how individuals draw realities based on experiences and environment. Through functional pottery and sculpture, he challenges pre-conceptions of style, form, symbolism, superstitions and identity.

Artworks Gallery
Mar 9-April 11

In the summer of 2009, I worked as a “folder” at the Wild West Shirt Company.  This rather repetitive and mindless job coincided with the disintegration of the romantic expectations I held for the summer.  As I dealt with this disappointment, I found myself trapped in my own negative thoughts and feelings, and began to wonder how the other employees dealt with the gloom and boredom, which had set in for me after only a few weeks.  How did they contend, year after year with the same people, place, and shirt designs?

These questions provided me with a new lens as I interacted with the people and physical environment at Wild West and helped me to take notice of how employees visually and somewhat unconsciously expressed their feelings and thoughts in and on their physical work environment.  What I began to explore, and worked to capture in my photographs, was this rich and colorful canvass created by Wild West workers.

My intent for this collection of photographs is to illustrate how we as humans shape and impact our built environments, sometimes with careful thought and intension, but often in an unconscious or unknowing manner.  These afterthoughts of our labors have the ability to generate unique, interesting and visually aesthetic qualities. 

While my photographs lack human subjects, the human element is always present and credited with the creation of the landscape. The images in these photographs are clean, sharp, and straight, capturing the fine detail and subtle nuances of this physical environment.