SPRING ARTISTS

Carolyn Courson


AT THE TRAVELERS’ REST STATE PARK

Inspired by the quilters of her family and the Impressionist Art Movement, Carolyn Courson’s fiber art quilts emphasize the beauty of Nature, featuring traditional and contemporary quilting techniques. Recent botanical art studies have honed her art skills in fiber and colored pencil, while selection as an Artist-in-Residence at Old Faithful in 2017 and 2018 narrowed her focus to flora and landscapes. A native of Montgomery, Alabama, she and her husband reside along the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay. They enjoy travelling, especially to Montana, and are active volunteers in their community. A graduate of the University of Central Florida, she retired from a successful career in governmental accounting. She is a member of two fiber art groups in Alabama and is a Board Member of the American Society of Botanical Artists. Her fiber pieces have been exhibited regionally in group exhibitions in Auburn, Callaway Gardens, and the Mobile Museum of Art. Her botanical paintings have been exhibited at the Mobile Arts Council and the Ashland Gallery.

Aaron Jennings


AT THE HISTORIC CLARK CHATEAU

Wailing Aaron Jennings was born in Texas, but has Montana roots going back over 100 years. Inspired by stories of his great-grandfather roaming the West as a singing cowboy in the 1920's, Aaron brings his own unique modern perspective to Western traditions. Hailing from Missoula, MT, Aaron has roamed and rambled across 11 states west of the Mississippi river spreading good cheer through Honky-Tonks and One-Horse Towns with his raucous yodeling. Aaron likes old guitars, old songs, old dogs, and new ideas. You might find him singing a forgotten ballad from 100 years ago on a street corner, or swinging with his 14-piece band 'The Hellgate Hillbilly Orchestra' on a stage. A frequent collaborator, Aaron is always looking for new ways to preserve and present traditional music in a new light.

David Lusk


AT THE MONTANA NATURAL HISTORY CENTER

David Miles Lusk/Anomal Press is an artist based in Missoula MT. David specializes in detailed relief printmaking. From a tiny leaf moss to towering mega fauna, his subject matter spans the natural world.

Holly Tripp


AT THE HOME RESOURCE

An environmental artist, fine art photographer, painter, writer, an avid hiker and a friend of the earth. Her artistry is informed by years of daily meditation, mindfulness, and the influence of nature. In addition to a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Fine Art Photography from Montana State University, she also pursued a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Photojournalism from University of Montana. Her work has been displayed and published in numerous cities throughout the United States. Holly currently resides in Missoula, MT.

 

SUMMER ARTISTS

Grace Brogan


AT THE MOON RANDOLPH HOMESTEAD

Grace Brogan is an interdisciplinary artist, currently focusing her work on broom making at the intersection of traditional craft and contemporary design. Her practice cultivates connections between people, humans, and the beyond human world. Grace explores the life of raw materials and the processes that bring those items to a state of service in our current culture, with eyes open to the social, economic, and environmental impacts of that journey. She studied art as an undergraduate before embarking on over a decade of study with craftspeople in ceramics, wood, and textiles, including broom makers in 2009 and 2018. During that time, she also worked closely with farmers and other rural entrepreneurs to encourage the growth of values based economies, and completed an interdisciplinary MS in environmental studies attempting pulling all of these threads together in 2012. Because a broom is a ubiquitous, functional object, people have a sense of familiarity and – sometimes – dismissiveness toward it. But a broom is an object open to material and design interpretation, while still remaining identifiable as a broom. In broom making, the agricultural skills of growing broom corn can be married with the arts of weaving, natural dyeing, wood working, and ceramics. Grace aims to explore history, culture, function, beauty, and connection through broom making.

Bill Bowers


AT PHILIPSBURG, MT

As an actor, mime and educator, Bill Bowers has traveled and performed throughout all 50 of the United States, Europe, and Asia.  His Broadway credits include Zazu in The Lion King, and Leggett in The Scarlet Pimpernel.    A student the legendary Marcel Marceau, Bill is hailed by critics as one of the great mimes of our generation.  An award-winning performer and playwright, Bill’s work has garnered top honors and rave reviews worldwide, including The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, International Thespis Festival in Germany, MonoMafia in Estonia, United Solo in NYC and Poland, the Fresh Fruit Festival, the Nature Festival of Korea, among others. His original plays include All Over the Map, Beyond Words, Under a Montana Moon, It Goes Without Saying, Heyokah/Hokehay, Johnny Got His Gun, and The Traveler.  Bill is currently working on his memoir and has been awarded  fellowships at the Hermitage, The Eugene O’Neill Foundation, Ohio University, University of Wyoming, Williams College and Princeton University. “To watch Bill Bowers is to see the technical elements of a style that brings Marcel Marceau readily to mind, joined to the American West.   Mime can be wonderful - the air between him and us is his palette.” New York Times Bill is featured in the film Two Weeks Notice, and on television in Disney’s Out of the Box, Remember W.E.N.N, All My Children, the PBS adaptation of Peter and the Wolf, and the PBS documentary series Brief But Spectacular.Bill holds an MFA from Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, and an Honorary PhD from Rocky Mountain College

Angela Cieslewitz


AT THE SELWAY BITTEROOT WILDERNESS CORRIDOR

Angela is a California based multimedia artist and writer. She brings her art and writing practice together in the creation of zines and illustrated books. Her work explores themes of place, home, belonging and relationship to the natural world. She is inspired by landscapes and humanscapes and the process of seeing both through drawing and writing. Angela spends her time between Oakland, where she lives and works, and rural west Marin where she takes part in a rich folk music community and spends time in nature. Angela was born and spent formative years in eastern Montana. She is working on a writing and illustration project that centers her early years in Montana and is excited to return to Montana to focus on this project this summer.

Cait Finley


AT THE MISSOULA PUBLIC LIBRARY

Cait Finley is an American artist working in Montana. She/they hopes to solve environmental destruction through pleasure. Her work is about the differences between human perceptions of time, and geological time. Using sculpture, writing, video, and performance, she fantasizes kinships with entities much larger and more nebulous herself. Preferring to think of things like petroleum, capitalism, and global warming as entities in order to see more clearly how they can fit within human narrative timelines. And exploring the ways humans attempt to speed up and slow down geological time to more comfortably align with our corporeal, fleeting understanding of being. Finley received an MFA in Sculpture from Syracuse University in Syracuse NY and a BFA in Ceramics from The University of Montana in Missoula MT. Exhibiting nationally at Art Helix, Brooklyn NY; CB1, Los Angeles CA; Cornell University, Ithaca NY; The Montana Art Museum, Missoula MT, and internationally at Bunsunrad Gallery, Bangkok Thailand and Das Gift, Berlin Germany. She has been the recipient of The Freeman Asia Fellowship, Mansfield Fellowship, and granted artist in residence at The University or Montana in Missoula MT, Anderson Ranch in Snowmass CO, OxBow in Saugatuck MN, as well as the Turner Residency in Los Angeles CA. Finley currently teaches at The University of Montana.

Jessi Harvey


AT THE EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY EMLEN LAB

Jessi, also known as George, Harvey is a Montana-born freelance composer and teacher; gardener and reader; thinker and walker. Works are based in the natural world, integrating social curiosity and environmental causes; described by Seattle Mag as “full of surprises and consistently attention holding” and clarinetist Julia Lougheed as “diving into the absurd corners of the human condition-the moments where you have to laugh so you don’t cry”. Their work, by the nature of our conversation, was awarded first place at the 2020 Darkwater Womxn in Music Festival's Composition Competition. Jessi has been commissioned by Opera Elect, the Art Song Collaborative Project, Karin Stevens Dance, LA duo Strange Interlude, among others. Music has been performed throughout the United States and Canada, including at the Waterloo Contemporary Music Sessions, Music By Women Festival, and the Montréal Contemporary Music Lab.

Stella Nall


AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA ALEXANDER BLEWETT III SCHOOL OF INDIAN LAW

Stella Nall is a multimedia artist and poet from Bozeman, and a First Descendant of the Apsáalooke Tribe. She graduated from the University of Montana in 2020 with a BFA in Printmaking, a BA in Psychology and a minor in Art History and Criticism. She now lives and works in Missoula, where she is involved in the community as a member of the WMCI Indigenous Art Advisory Committee, by playing in the local band Cry Baby, and by frequently sharing her work through exhibitions, publications, murals, and interactive installations which invite community participation. Her work lives in murals across the state, as well as in numerous public and private collections, including The Montana Museum of Art and Culture, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and The Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Arts.

Jennifer Ogden


AT THE FLATHEAD LAKE BIOLOGICAL STATION

Jennifer Ogden is a mixed media artist from the Bitterroot Valley. Her collage and paper mache work is primarily centered around place and belonging. She teaches K-12 art at Victor Public School and is a long-time member of the Missoula Art Museum Teaching Artist faculty. Jennifer has served as a Teaching Artist for SPARK! Arts Ignite Learning for Missoula County Public Schools, Corvallis Primary AIR program, Bitterroot Public Library, Evergreen Kids Corner "Summer Explore", and the Bemis School of Art at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. She is a recent graduate of “The Creative Pulse” Integrated Arts Master’s program for educators at the University of Montana.  

Rachael Marjamaa


AT PHILIPSBURG, MT

Rachael Marjmaaa is a Montana-based oil painter and fiber artist. Her work is inspired by American and Finnish folk art.

Julynn Wildman


AT THE EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY EMLEN LAB

Julynn Wildman is a dancer, choreographer, and teaching artist based in Helena, MT. She grew up in Colorado, splitting her time between the Western Slope and the Denver Metropolitan area. This stoked a lifelong pursuit in the complements and contrast of natural sciences and human cultural vibrance. Julynn graduated summa cum laude from Bard College at Simon’s Rock in 2013 with a BA in Cross-Cultural Relations and Dance. She pursued coursework in Interdisciplinary Art and Media at Columbia College Chicago before relocating to Helena for a tenure with AmeriCorps, serving at ExplorationWorks! Science Center. Julynn’s choreography has been featured in student showcases and professional productions alike. She was a contributing choreographer for Cohesion Dance Project’s Resonance ~ an evening of Art Inspiring Art (2018-2020) and in 2018, presented Death of Others, an original community based performance exploring grief and empathy. In 2020, Julynn received a fellowship through Intrepid Credit Union and the Holter Museum of Art to create Body in Motion, a dance film and immersive installation exploring evolutionary biology and comparative anatomy. As a performer, Julynn has danced in many stages and sites throughout Montana, notably as a soloist in Cohesion Dance Project’s Nutcracker on the Rocks (2013-2019) and Resonance ~ an evening of art inspiring art (2018-2020) and as a guest performer in What’s Going On (Vincent Thomas Dance, 2017), Cave (Amber Moon Peterson, 2017), and Beyond Words, the body as narrator (Jennifer Glaws, 2022).  Julynn’s teaching practice is vital to her creativity. She is a Montana Teacher Leader in the Arts through the Montana Arts Council and the Montana Office of Public Instruction. She has taught art, dance, and creative movement in schools, residential living facilities, group homes, dance studios, and non-profit arts organizations. Her span of students includes early childhood, adolescents, adults, geriatrics, and individuals with special needs and physical or developmental disabilities.

FALL ARTISTS

Ian Hanesworth


AT HOME RESOURCE

Ian is a non-binary print maker, textile artist, writer, and vegetable farmer currently based in Missoula, MT (occupied Salish, Kootenai, and Kalispel land). Spanning disciplines of printmaking, textiles, and gardening, Ian's work asserts the critical interconnections of human and ecological well being and argues for the place of gardening and farming within a contemporary art practice. Ian received a BFA in Fine Arts Studio from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design in 2018. Since graduating they have participated in residency programs such as Caldera Arts in Sisters, OR, and exhibited work in numerous group and solo exhibitions. Ian is a recipient of the 2019 Jerome Emerging Fiber Artist Grant through the Textile Center of Minnesota and the 2020 Artist Initiative Grant through the Minnesota State Arts Board. Ian's writing has been published on MnArtists, a platform of the Walker Art Center, and in the book Slow Spatial Reader: Chronicles of Radical Affection, edited by Carolyn F. Strauss.

Sophia Hart


AT THE FLATHEAD LAKE BIOLOGICAL STATION

Sophia Hart is an artist, illustrator, and designer originally from Michigan and currently living in Bellingham, WA. She earned her BFA in Illustration from Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University in 2019, which was preceded with two AA degrees in Fine Art and Ceramics from Henry Ford College. Sophia is a member of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators and has had her work shown in the 2020 and 2021 Annual Member’s Exhibitions. Much of her inspiration comes from wildlife and nature and her favorite mediums to work with are watercolor, acrylic, and oil. She has a deep passion for science, ecology, and conservation and strives to bring awareness to our natural world through her artwork. If you do not find her on an adventure doing a plein air painting, you will find her in the studio enthusiastically building her career.

Hannah Harvey


MISSOULA PUBLIC LIBRARY

Hannah is a born-and-raised Montanan currently living, creating, and working in Missoula. She graduated from the University of Montana in 2019 with a BFA in Painting and Art Education, and looks forward to developing her creative practices further! Hannah’s current work centers around systems, arrangements, and relationships through the guise of technology and machinery. She enjoys using her artistic practice to play, tinker, and build meaningful relationships.

Kelsie Leonard


AT THE FLATHEAD LAKE BIOLOGICAL STATION

Kelsie Leonard, the Odd Duck of Odd Duck Printing, is a relief print-maker and writer. A graduate of Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a bachelor of fine art with a focus in sculpture as well as a graduate of University of Massachusetts Boston, summa cum laude, with a bachelor of science with a focus in biology. Her work centers around the synthesis of the scientific and the artistic with the intention to make pieces that encourage a more educated relationship with the natural world and reflect the inherent aesthetic beauty found there.

Gunhild Lien


AT THE MONTANA NATURAL HISTORY CENTER

I am a Norwegian visual artist living and working in Kongsberg. My work address’s themes connected to various aspects of social- and environment issues, I use a variety of media including drawing, photography, painting, and installations. Carefully utilizing that medium and technique that best illustrates the concept I wish to depict. The images I create are often based around a collection of subjective infrastructures containing fragments from environments, photographs, old family pictures, and found objects. The execution of these artworks/projects are often a direct result of particular meetings or an aggregation of different types of visual memories or pieces of consciousness. The intention behind this form for expression has been to compile and allow a meeting between different types of raw material, generating in the creation of new meaning. My creative practice would be best categorized as being art projects. I work in an international arena and have in recent years carried out art-projects in Portugal, Mexico, Japan and England. Many of these projects have addressed environmental issues including the Relationships between Primeval Forest/painting and digital photography. One such art project was “The Plight of the big trees” 2018 carried out in cooperation with University of California, Berkeley, and Berkeley's UCB Sagehen Creek Field Station. One of my most recent projects is closely connected to Montana USA. The title of this art project is “Hidden truth” and is a visual investigation of the visualization of the immigrant experience. To be more precise is about what these stories and photographs do not tell us about the culture, local nature, art, history, and anthropology of that time.

Kate Mostad


AT THE FLATHEAD LAKE BIOLOGICAL STATION

Kate is a story and songwriter from western, MT. She graduated from the University of Montana with a BA in Creative Writing and Environmental Lit in 2017. Her work often reflects on the natural world, from the landscapes, to the plants, to the events and relationships that take place in their midst. She has been playing music since she was a kid, and has just recently jumped into the world of digital recording. Her passion for nature takes her around the state studying wildflowers and learning more about the intricacies of our ecosystems.

Claire Thompson


AT THE HISTORIC CLARK CHATEAU

Claire Thompson is a seasonal trail worker in the North Cascades, a fellow at the National Forest Foundation, and will soon receive her master's degree in environmental studies from the University of Montana, as well as a graduate certificate in natural resources conflict resolution. With a background in journalism, Claire writes creative nonfiction that merges personal narrative with reporting, research, and lyric approaches. Claire is drawn to themes of disturbance and upheaval, and looks for patterns and tensions between the ecological and the emotional. She is at work on a book that uses narratives of her trail-work experiences to explore how changing fire regimes impact forests, public lands, and human connections to place and landscape. This fall's Open AIR residency presents an incredible and welcome opportunity to dive back into this project immediately after another summer on the trails. Claire is thrilled to be in residence at the Clark Chateau in Butte, a city which has always loomed large in her imagination as the place where her grandmother grew up. A Seattle native, Claire calls both Missoula and the Washington Cascades home.

Maria Uhase


AT THE FLATHEAD LAKE BIOLOGICAL STATION

Maria Uhase is an oil painter and illustrator living and working in Northeast Ohio. Uhase completed a BA Studio Emphasis with a Minor in Painting and a Minor in Drawing from the Myers School of Art at the University of Akron (OH) in 2019. She creates surreal narratives involving combinations of plants, animals, and objects in the natural world. Much of the inspiration for her art comes from her daily experiences of the nature surrounding her home in the woods, travelling often to explore new environments, through her amateur research in various sciences, and learning from the people she knows and meets.

Suzanne Hackett-Morgan


AT THE HISTORIC CLARK CHATEAU

Suzanne F. Hackett-Morgan earned a Master's Degree in Art (Painting) at California State University Northridge in 2003 and a Bachelor's Degree in Creative Writing from Western Washington University. She received recognition in 2007 from the Nevada Arts Council’s Artist Fellowship Program. Hackett-Morgan is a founding director of the Goldwell Open Air Museum and Artist Residency in Nevada and is its current Executive Director. A leader in the Nevada arts community, she is a consultant to other arts organizations through the Nevada Circuit Rider program. She was appointed to the City of Las Vegas Arts Commission in 2021. Her landscape paintings have been exhibited in Montana, Nevada, Wisconsin, and California, and she has completed several public art commissions in Clark County, Nevada. Her downtown mural, “Here it is,” was featured in The Killers’ CD, “Sam’s Town.”