Artworks-Nicholson Gallery
Nov 6-Dec 30, 2009
For nearly thirty years Cathy Weber has been making art in her downtown Dillon studio. She works primarily in watercolor, but also explores a variety of media. Lately, feeling increased urgency to make things of beauty in response to war, injustice, greed and violence, Weber makes images of common simple objects, giving her comfort and hope for weathering the human condition.
Stephen Braun, Addiction, rakued clay
High Gallery
Sept 11–Dec 30, 2009
Stephen Braun’s sculpted ceramic figures meet the viewer head on. Made of rakued clay in muted browns and greens, these 20- to 30-inch figures with eerily calm mask-like faces are dressed in ties and suits, decorated with crucifixes and jet planes, light bulbs and suns. They stand on blood-red globes or amid piles of broken earthenware, asking us: What’s next?
Anthropologist by training, peripatetic by nature, Stephen uses clay to shatter cultural preconceptions. Born in Quincy, Illinois in 1959, he studied at the University of Montana-Missoula with ceramic revolutionary Rudy Autio and mixed-media sculptor Ken Little. Stephen works out of Whitefish, Montana.
John Armstrong, Untitled, monoprint, 2006
Millikan Gallery
Sept 11–Dec 30, 2009
Armstrong’s solo exhibition, Engaged Abstraction, highlights John Armstrong’s strengths as an artist and printmaker. The exhibition features twenty-one abstract monoprints that illustrate, as fellow artist Jim Todd notes, the artist’s “purity of visual form, color and design unhampered by wordly content.”
An accompanying exhibition, Prints from the Armstrong–Prior Studio, features forty-five prints by internationally acclaimed artists—including Rudy Autio, Akio Takamori, and Patti Warashina—who have relied on Armstrong’s expertise to create prints at the Armstrong–Prior Print Studio in Phoenix, Arizona. The exhibitions were organized and curated by Stephen Glueckert, Curator of Art, Missoula Art Museum.
Born in 1943 and raised in Laurel, Montana, John transformed his high school interest in stagecraft into an MFA in painting and printmaking at the University of Montana-Missoula. After several curatorial and public education positions in the West and South West –Yellowstone Art Center in Billings, Arizona Commission of the Arts, Scottsdale Center for the Arts — John returned to the studio. In 1980, in partnership with his future wife, Joan Prior, he began Armstrong-Prior, Inc., a vertically integrated business that functions as a fine art publishing company and offers art consulting services for investment collections.
Artworks-Nicholson Gallery
September 29 – November 1, 2009
Artist’s Statement –Gretchen Hibbard
“I believe that in this fast-paced world of cell phones, twittering and concrete, there is a great need for quiet places in which we can retire and rejuvenate our spirits and souls. The family ranch, Adel, has been such a place for me. The ranch is the center of my family’s life, of our identity. It is a place where we can work side-by-side with wonderful people, trying our best to be good stewards of the land and its wildlife and of the animals we raise on that land. Through my work, I try to capture the special quiet moments of ranch life. The miracle of a newborn lamb. The play of light and moving shadows across the landscape. The majesty of Montana.”
—Gretchen Hibbard
Sherman Gallery
July 2–Oct 24, 2009
With humor as stories and hard-hitting imagery—in collages, monoprints, and mixed media pieces—Corwin “Corky” Clairmont uses his art to reclaim Indian history and to draw attention to the prejudice Indian people experience. Clairmont, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes, challenges viewers re-examine accepted versions of historical events, whether it is the story of Columbus or the 1855 Hell Gate Treaty creating the Flathead Reservation.
Clairmont, a celebrated contemporary artist, will be the Holter’s Cultural Crossroads artist-in-resident in October 2009. He has taught at Salish Kootenai College since 1984; before returning to Montana he taught for 10 years at Otis College of Art in Los Angeles. He earned a B.A. from Montana State University–Bozeman and received an M.F.A. from California State University in Los Angeles.
Artworks—Nicholson Gallery
May 18–June 21
Dive into photographs that portray the rich color and textures of this favorite landscape with its thickly forested slopes, wind-ruffled waters, and fog-shrouded peaks.
