I have always loved the open prairie grasslands and coulees that form typical habitat for sharptails, Huns, and pheasants — Big Sky Country defined. An enormous swath of it lay spread out before me one cloudless September morning, running all the way north from the...
A chorus of crickets hums in the background as farmer Jody Manuel describes his latest experiment. The organic Petite Crimson lentil plants that he’s standing among reach his knees and are as thick and green as the top of the Amazon rainforest. He crouches to...
One of my favorite driving expeditions in Idaho is to follow the Salmon River from the Stanley Basin downstream to Challis. On this trip, the abundance of hot springs and mountain views are accompanied by an undeniable sense of nostalgia, a reminder of what the...
Once you’ve seen mountain sheep in their native habitat — the high passes above timberline that catch early snow and hold summer’s light — sheepless pastures seem profoundly empty. It’s the same with the scoured badlands, where bands of prairie bighorns, spooked by an intruder,...
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...