THE ALARM CHIMES AT 6 a.m. I hit snooze for half an hour before I’m finally roused from my cot by the sound of hooves. The metal roof of the classroom, my makeshift bedroom, amplifies the soft rain. Looking out the window, I see men...
ON A COLD, CLOUD-HEAVY SPRING DAY in Southwest Montana’s Paradise Valley, a Belgian malinois named Pepin trots from one pile of elk scat to the next, tongue lolling, nose glued to the ground, intent. Not far behind, his handler, Megan Parker, follows, providing words of...
ALTHOUGH THE EVENTS TOOK PLACE NEARLY 50 YEARS AGO, I still remember them as vividly as yesterday. A warm September sun hung suspended in the endless prairie sky, reminding me why my new Montana license plates seemed so proud of the sobriquet they bore. To the...
I’M STANDING ON THE CHUNK OF MADISON LIMESTONE in a meadow filled with grass and midsummer flowers. Asters, yarrow, buckwheat, prairie smoke with its Einstein-hair stamens, lupine with pods, yellow paintbrush, buttercups, delphiniums, grass, and piles of horse poop surround the rock and fill the...
THEY VARY IN THEIR STYLES, from narrative realism to impressionistic impasto, yet the artists featured here are united in their efforts to paint what they know, especially as inspired by life in Montana. For Kenneth Yarus, often that involves trekking into the hinterlands for his...
OBSERVATION IS CRITICAL TO THE CREATIVE PRACTICE of artist, writer, and naturalist James Prosek. Observation, and what American biologist E.O. Wilson described as “biophilia,” the instinctive bond between humans and other living systems. As Prosek explains, it’s a fascination with life and its diversity, “a...
ANYONE WHO'S EVER STRUGGLED WITH RELATIONSHIPS would probably benefit from studying the dynamic between bronze sculptors and their patineurs. Because it’s a slow, complicated, and involved process, many artists prefer to turn that work over to other artisans so they can, instead, devote their time...
THROUGH HIS DEPICTION OF SIMPLIFIED LANDSCAPES, painter Travis Walker speaks to a problematic perspective of the modern West. By reducing the intricacies of peaks and crevices, solitary doorways and empty streets, Walker clears the way for a new kind of narrative — one which exchanges...
THEY'RE FAST, ELEGANT, SENSITIVE, AND STRONG, with wild manes and tails that touch the grass. At times they seem otherworldly, mythological, like the four-legged inhabitants of fairy tales. Yet here they stand, living among us, helping with the most practical of endeavors while offering emotional...
THE PROBLEM WITH INTERVIEWING JULIA GALLOWAY is that she’d rather talk about anything other than herself. Anything, that is, having to do with clay. “It’s kind of embarrassing,” she says. “I don’t really know much about anything else!” Whether entirely accurate or not, the statement encapsulates...