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Podcast Episode: Resounds: Arts And Culture On The High Plains
Yellowstone Public Radio

Lecture: “Chromatic Scale: Herbert Bayer and the Atlantic Richfield Company”
6 pm, 26 Jan 2024
Imagine Butte Resource Center, 68 West Park St. Butte, MT

I will speak about my current research project of the last two decades of Herbert Bayer’s life. This writing project tells the story of the final chapter of Bayer’s career following the passing of his patron, Walter Paepcke, in 1960. During 1966-1985, he continued to synthesize architecture, environmental sculpture, installation design, and brand identity in service of an explicitly environmental mission tied, somewhat surprisingly, to a petroleum company. Atlantic Richfield discovered the Prudhoe Bay oil field on Alaska’s North Slope, which is still the largest oil field in North America. Bayer met its Chairman, R.O. Anderson, in Aspen, where Anderson served as President of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies 1957-1963 and chairman of the Board of Trustees 1963-1987. Bayer would go on to design the Anderson Chapel in New Mexico, oversee art acquisitions for ARCO Plaza, create public sculptures, a visual identity for the company, and décor for ARCO offices in Denver, Dallas, Los Angeles, Anchorage, and Mexico City.

Bayer’s work with ARCO occurred during a harrowing time for the oil industry, beginning shortly before the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, which made international headlines and triggered concerns over fossil fuels’ impact on the natural world. His tenure also coincided with the oil and gas crises of the 1970s and 1980s, resulting in increased public scrutiny of energy resources. Throughout this troublesome era, Bayer helped generate a cohesive visual identity for the company and helped think through problems of the energy industry’s public image. He was especially concerned with making oil’s infrastructure visually coherent with its natural or urban surroundings.

I look forward to hearing Butte, MT citizens' feedback for this project, as they live in a landscape irrevocably changed by ARCO’s acquisition of the Anaconda Copper Company in 1976.

This research is sponsored by Humanities Montana and Montana State University.

Lecture: “Robert Fulton, Reality’s Invisible”
6 pm, 16 Nov 2023
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University

I will be speaking as part of the CCVA’s 60th-anniversary exhibition, “This Machine Creates Opacities: Robert Fulton, Renée Green, Pierre Huyghe, and Pope. L,” curated by Dan Byers, John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director, with Danni Shen, Curatorial and Public Programs Assistant.

About the exhibition:

On the occasion of the Carpenter Center’s 60th anniversary, This Machine Creates Opacitiesrestages four major works by artists Robert Fulton, Renée Green, Pierre Huyghe, and Pope.L that examine the ways buildings choreograph, shape, and control social life, learning, and cultural structures. With its title borrowed from statements the artist Pope. L. made about navigating the Carpenter Center building upon an invitation to make a new commission, the exhibition reflects on the program, effect, history, and various complexities of Le Corbusier’s iconic architecture. Each one of the included film-based works was created directly in response to the Carpenter Center as an institutional site and explores architecture through the lens of experimental cinematography and the expansive formal, technological possibilities of video installation to excavate a building’s aesthetic and social functions. This Machine Creates Opacities is divided between two floors of the building and presents Pierre Huyghe’s video This is Not a Time for Dreaming (2004), alongside documentation of the performance and sculptural elements from Pope.L’s Corbu Pops (2009) on level 3, while Reality’s Invisible by Robert Fulton (1971), and Renée Green’s Americas: Veritas (2018) are screened on level 1.

Educational Events: “Writing Beyond the Page” with Layli Long Soldier

14-16 August 2023

Screening and Reading, Thursday, August 14 @ 7:00pm–9:30pm, Rialto Theater

Acclaimed poet Layli Long Soldier will present her feature film Lakota Nation vs. U.S. at the Rialto Theater. The work explores the Lakota claim to the Black Hills and includes archival material, on-the-ground footage, and interviews with young leaders and veteran activists.

Workshop, September 16, 2023 @ 10:00am - 12:00pm, Tinworks Art

While we often think about content first when learning to write expressively, form is just as crucial to the emotional experience of words. Long Soldier will begin by discussing her practice, including writing and visual art. Following her talk, participants will work with Long Soldier to create pieces that use language's visual and spatial aspects to create meaning.

This free 2-hour workshop is open to all ages and experience levels. Space is limited; please reserve your seat. www.tinworksart.org

photos by Ben Lloyd

Visiting artist: Matt Fluharty from Art of the Rural
12-15 Sept 2023

Public Lecture: Wednesday, September 13th at 6 PM
American Indian Hall, room 166, Montana State University

In addition to his visits with MUS art students, Matthew Fluharty will deliver a public lecture. Matthew Fluharty is a writer, curator, and visual artist whose work meditates on the connections and divergences between land, cultures, and communities. He lives in Winona, Minnesota, a town in Dakota homelands along the Mississippi River.

Matthew is the Founder and Executive Director of Art of the Rural, a member of M12 Studio, and a faculty member of the Rural Environments Field School. His work flows among art, design, humanities, policy, and community development. He has previously served on the boards of Common Field, the Wormfarm Institute, and Visit Winona, as well as on the Steering Committee for the National Endowment for the Arts’ Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design. He was also a cohort member of National Arts Strategies’ Chief Executive Program.

His poetry and essays have been published widely, and his work with his colleagues in the American Bottom region of the Mississippi River has been featured in Art in America. Matthew is the organizing curator for High Visibility: On Location in Rural America and Indian Country, a long-term collaboration with the Plains Art Museum. For this ongoing work, he recently received a Curatorial Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Matthew holds a PhD in Literature from Washington University in St. Louis, a Masters in Literature from Boston College, a Masters in Creative Writing from Poet’s House/Lancaster University, United Kingdom, and a Bachelors in Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Journalism from Beloit College. He is the co-editor of anthology Breaking the Skin: 21st Century Irish Poetry and he has contributed to the Éire-Ireland journal.

Event: Louis Still Smoking Mural finds new home

25 August 2023

Tinworks is pleased to announce the installation of a new artwork on the facade of our grain building on Cottonwood near N Wallace: I don't trust nobody but the land (2023) by Layli Long Soldier. 

The vintage lightbox sign illuminates a quote from a poem by Long Soldier entitled “Steady Summer.” Originally published in her book Whereas, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2017, the poem recounts Long Soldier's experience of walking through the grasslands during a summer visit to her ancestral homeland on Pine Ridge Reservation. The quote on the lightbox acknowledges the land as a renewing and reliable force within Lakota culture.

I don’t trust nobody but the land joins Long Soldier’s first large-scale sculpture, Day Poem: Sun Mirrors, displayed in the Tinworks courtyard as part of our current exhibition, “Invisible Prairie”, on view through October 14. Additional poems by Long Soldier can be read here. 

The facade of our grain building previously served as the location for Louis Still Smoking's mural Native Fashion (2022), which has been on view at the site since last summer. I am thrilled to share that the Helena Indian Alliance recently acquired Native Fashion (2022). It will be installed at their location on Euclid Ave in Helena, MT, a ribbon cutting and blessing ceremony on August 25. The mural acquisition celebrates the opening of the Leo Pocha Memorial Clinic. Special performances by Acosia Red Elk and Supaman will accompany the event.

Tinworks Art 2023 theme announced!
28 Jan 2023

The theme for Tinworks Art 2023 has been announced! I’m thrilled to announce our upcoming summer 2023 exhibition, Invisible Prairie. This multimedia art show will offer a unique opportunity to connect with the beauty, fragility, and mystery of America’s grasslands from the Tinworks Art warehouses at 719 N. Ida in northeast Bozeman. The exhibition will be open for public viewing from July 8 through October 14, 2023.

Invisible Prairie will feature the work of seven artists, each exploring the sensory experience of the prairie with a focus on sound — and the cultural acts of speaking and listening. Intimate and thoughtful, these works will encourage meditation, contemplation, and close attention to the place we call home.

Visit www.tinworksart.org for more information and sign up for our eNewsletter for updates.

Tinworks Art 2022

The 2022 Season for Tinworks Art has been posted! This year’s exhibition focuses on events rather than a large-scale installation while we work on our site and complete an Executive Director search. Read about the site at Bozeman Daily Chronicle and check out the event listing on the Tinworks website:

As we enter our fourth year serving the Bozeman community, we were thrilled to announce in the spring of 2022 that the old industrial complex at 719 N. Ida — a former sheet metal manufacturing warehouse, our namesake, and the home of Tinworks Art 2019 and 2020 — is now our permanent home.

“It’s an exciting time to be a part of Tinworks Art,” said Greg Avis, Co-Founder. “We know that people want cohesive community more than ever these days, and we believe that making exceptional art accessible to all — art that inspires and brings people together — is an important piece of that puzzle.”

In light of the move to the industrial site, this year’s program, Montana: Culture Industry, celebrates artists and designers who are notable for their innovation and entrepreneurialism. Tinworks Art Consulting Curator Melissa Ragain explained, “Montana produces many forms of culture besides the traditional fine arts. Our region contributes to the film, design, fashion, design, and music industries in a way that has yet to be acknowledged.”

Curator, Dr. Melissa Ragain
Assistant Curator, Jennifer Woodcock-Medicine Horse
Curatorial Assistant, Angela Yonke
Intern, Greta Patterson

Participating Artists:

LOUIS STILL SMOKING; GINA STILL SMOKING; NERVOUS THEATRE; DAUGHTER OF A LOST BIRD; KENDRA MYLNECHUK POTTER; LAURA ORTMAN; LAUREL SPARKS; PLACED PROJECTS; THE COTTONWOOD CLUB

 Robin Gammons: Superposition
Helen E. Copeland Gallery

Jan 22-Feb 17 (gallery hours: 9am-5pm M-F)
Closing Reception: Feb 17, 6-8pm

Gammons will present a suite of new paintings on wood panel that use sensual form and intense color to project emotions outward with force. Pairing a lexicon of abstract organ-like forms with romantic decor such as hearts, ribbons and bells,  Gammons uses colloquial symbols of love as a conduit for more complicated emotions. The title expresses the idea of emotional force: “In the study of quantum mechanics, ‘superposition’ is a term that refers to a particle which, when it is not observed, remains in a state of simultaneous positive and negative spin. In this same way, I can feel the charge of my emotions pushing and pulling in all directions at once.”

About the artist:
Robin Gammons is an emerging Canadian-American multidisciplinary artist, working primarily in large-scale ceramic sculpture and acrylic painting. Gammons received her BFA from NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2019 and completed the Special Student program in ceramics at Montana State University in 2019-2020. Her practice is inexorably linked to the body, using abstraction, vivid color, and often symmetry to interpret the physical forms of myriad emotional states. She is pleased to be returning to MSU with this exhibition.

Tinworks Art 2021 @ Story Mill closes September 5.

Only 3 weeks left to catch Part II of Tinworks Art 2021. Look out for special events by Nervous Theatre and Raison D'être Dance Project

Robert Rohyl: Hard-Used Earth, 1998-2021 open now!

Opening August 16, 2021 at the Helen E. Copeland Gallery, at Montana State University. This exhibition focuses on recent work by the painter Robert Rohyl including works on panel, canvas and paper, as well as works in progress.

Closing Reception: 6-8pm Sept 30.

Book Promo from University of California Press!

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