After seven years of dedicated work and fundraising, Rudy Autio [1926–2007] is now remembered through a newly remade steel version of his 1966 sculpture known as Signal. The new piece stands at the entrance of the University of Montana’s Miller Hall in Missoula, where Autio,...
Life’s splendor is all around, from the luminous quality of light during a Rocky Mountain sunset, to the magnificent stance of a grizzly bear lumbering along a hillside, to the transcending moment of triumph when a wild trout hooks onto a fly. These are the...
They never knew their locomotive engine had hit a bear that night. Up in the cab, amid all the engine noise and random conversation, Slug and Dillon droned down the rails, in the dark, westbound on Burlington Northern freight number 766. They didn’t feel so...
For the last century, a quintessential Montana artist might have been known for creating traditional images of the wide-open, beautiful vistas and rugged terrain that define the region. Walk into an area gallery, and you’re likely to find oil paintings and watercolors of “big picture”...
If you believe, as Picasso did, that “the purpose of art is to wash the dust of daily life off our souls,” or, like Kurt Vonnegut, that art is “a very human way of making life more bearable,” or, as Mary Oliver wrote, that “art...
It’s a Saturday afternoon in Red Lodge, Montana, and I’m on my fourth cup of coffee as I take my seat in a small room above Black Canyon Bistro. Three songwriters — Montana’s Lena Rich and Tom Catmull, along with Nashville’s Tai Shan — tune...
For many viewers, the first thing that emerges when observing a Kenneth Yarus painting isn’t the sheer scale of the mountains, the glint of glacial water, or the depth of the alpine sky. It’s how the piece makes a viewer feel — an emotional resonance....
Growing up in Billings, Meghan Spielman and her sister were encouraged to explore every kind of art. They took classes at the Yellowstone Art Museum, studied watercolor painting during the summers, and were rarely told there was a right or wrong way to create. Today, Spielman’s...
Montana artist Mike Barlow is enamored with his subject matter. Like many artists, Barlow can be shy when talking about aesthetics. Serious artists, after all, are in the business of making art and are happy to leave judgment regarding its merits to philosophers. But when...
For Brooke Wetzel, experiences in the great outdoors inform her creativity. “We spent a lot of time outside and on the rivers,” she says of her childhood. “It’s where my love of nature came from. I’m a mountain girl. I’ve spent my life in the...