As an editor, putting each issue of Big Sky Journal together is like working on a puzzle. There are different components that make up the final picture, and you hope that when it’s all pieced together, it fits well and that the stories complement each...
THERE'S NO WALKING BY ONE OF ARTIST Beth Cavener’s sculptures without stopping to look. In each one, there’s an immediate story, and it’s told through hundreds of pounds of shaped and painted clay that often takes the form of an animal figure standing greater than...
AFTER LIVING IN AND AROUND the Greater Yellowstone area for some time now, I’m used to driving over a rise and being blown away by what I find on the other side. It might be a valley full of grazing elk, a peak jutting triumphantly...
THERE'S A CANOE HANGING FROM THE CEILING of Dick Idol’s art studio, and it’s not just any old boat. Purchased from a fur trade museum in Michigan more than 35 years ago, this 16.5-foot Ojibwa birch bark canoe was made between 1850 and 1880 in Northern...
ATTRACTION, ATTACHMENT, AWE — all come with having a sense of place, a strong resonance to one particular locale on Earth, which speaks to us in a language that feels tailored to our hearts. For artists, this sense of place serves as a generous wellspring...
"EVERYONE IN THE WORLD KNOWS WHAT a cowboy is,” says Nikki Todd of Visions West Contemporary in Bozeman, Montana. “You watch people come in the gallery and see his work, and they’re immediately drawn to that iconic imagery.” [caption id="attachment_16565" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Faster Silver | Acrylic...
CODY, WYOMING-BASED ARTIST MIKE "M.C." Poulsen remembers the genesis of his epic Yellowstone Waterfall Project. An accomplished painter since his early 20s, Poulsen was attending an author’s presentation of the then-newly released book, The Guide to Yellowstone Waterfalls and their Discovery, when he was hit...
An avid fly fisherman based in Bozeman, Montana, Stephen Camelio is a former editor for In Style magazine and has written for Fly Rod & Reel, The Drake, and Field & Stream, among others. He is a regular contributor to Yellowstone Quarterly, and he wrote the...
Part-time Livingston, Montana, resident and long-time writer about the Western experience, Toby Thompson turns his attention to the tradition of Western art and the artists who have created it in his latest book Fired On: Targeting Western American Art (Bangtail Press, $22.95). Through more than...
I’m driving the long way home. Meandering along a backroad meadow where I’ve stalled to breathe and watch the horses play. Let their blood and flesh, grazing knee-deep in fireworks of wildflowers, lift me. Why do I say “play?” Horses I’ve known up close shudder and twitch with nervous alert. Poor brutes, fenced to boredom, plagued with...