Last October, Troy Collins received an unexpected, daunting honor that, almost a year later, “still gives me goosebumps,” the artist admits. The Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival informed Collins that he’d been selected as the Featured Artist for 2022. “That meant,” he says, his voice......
It’s widely acknowledged that nature inspires art, but the adage is rarely transposed. Yet, art through the ages has certainly left its imprint on nature: in gardens and dwellings, in water features and public sculptures, in designs and in deeds. The relationship between artists and......
For most of his life, Ott Jones has been an outdoorsman and a sculptor. As an elementary school student in Spokane, Washington in the early 1970s, he learned from his father how to hunt, fish, and camp. And both of his parents were Western art......
Their texture furrowed from heat and wax, ironed, then marked, Shawna Moore’s encaustic paintings ignite conversations between herself and the world, each a culmination of a life spent in contemplation and exploration. “My work comes from my life as an outdoors woman and trying to......
The first thing you notice is the light. The common thread running through Chessney Sevier’s art — whether etching or oil or encaustic — is her deft and masterful rendering of light. Sun illuminating a summer meadow. The neon of a country bar shining out......
Artist William “Lucky” Davis stands by the window in his restored 1920s-era cabin-turned-studio in Paradise Valley, Montana. He’s gazing out at an open meadow that leads to forested land and the Absaroka Mountains in the distance. The sound of running water — riffles from nearby......
Willem Volkersz was among the earliest contemporary artists to experiment with neon lighting. Waterfall, his first neon piece (created in Kansas City in 1969), is composed of a few long, wavy tubes mounted directly to the wall. Now in the permanent collection of the Museum......
Who owns the land? Is it the person who can afford to buy it and enjoy mountain vistas from the windows of their mansion, the person who devotes their life to working the land and pulling sustenance from its bounty, or the person who feels......
Somewhere far, far out On the Montana plains Left in the attic Of an old stone farmhouse Hangs a broken-necked fiddle With mouse-gnawed soundboard And missing strings. I hear it most nights. The scored dirt floor below Is rutted, the windows gone There’s less and......
Artist Kathryn Mapes Turner was born and raised on a ranch inside Grand Teton National Park. Surrounded by endless views and wildlife that was free to roam, those childhood memories serve as the inspiration behind her paintings to this day. “From early on, the landscape......
Photographer Tuck Fauntleroy moved West from his hometown of Easton, Maryland after earning a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bucknell University in 2000, and has been based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming ever since. Inspired by the natural environment of Maryland’s Eastern Shore and the small......
Architecture Reid Smith Architects Interior Design Envi Interior Design Studio It’s an oft-heard story in Big Sky: a Bay Area couple who owned a home in Deer Valley, but were considering a change, went to visit friends at the Yellowstone Club. “It was a bluebird......
Chris Murphy was 13 when he started washing dishes at the Continental Divide, and he went on to wait tables there through college. Back then, in the late 1980s and ’90s, it was a hole-in-the-wall, with 10 tables and a bar next door where you......
Jessica Kay Ruhle, the new executive director of the Yellowstone Art Museum (YAM) in Billings, Montana, cherishes memories of childhood visits to the Polk Museum of Art, a Smithsonian affiliate in her central Florida hometown of Lakeland. Her regular companion on those meanders was her......
I live in a land of sacred spaces. The Triple Rock sits on the bank of the historic Blackfoot River in northwest Montana, in an area known as the Crown of the Continent, one of the last contiguous untamed landscapes in the U.S. There, nature’s......
Paul Harris (1925-2018) exemplifies the back and forth between art and artist, between place and culture, and between male and female dynamics. Although his art defies categorization, Harris worked within the context of other artists and art movements. Post-war American artists bore witness to dramatic......
World-renowned fine art photographer Jeff Corwin’s traveling exhibition Guns in America will find its way to Helena, Montana’s Holter Museum of Art, June 24 through September 11. Timely and germane to chronic gun-related violence in contemporary American culture, the exhibition features Corwin’s late father’s vintage......
Currently in its fourth year, the nonprofit Tinworks Art recently returned to its former digs in an old industrial complex at 719 N. Ida, in Bozeman, Montana’s popular northeast neighborhood. In addition to securing its new permanent location, Tinworks is providing weekend public art events......
This wave of postwar artists needed to express themselves differently from the Western illustrative work permeating the state. Their experiences, their point of view, and the changing world they found themselves in required something more. As Robert DeWeese noted, “The art students in 1949 were......
For the past 57 years, the Art Association of Jackson Hole has cultivated artistic expression and creativity within the Jackson Hole, Wyoming community by providing instruction, offering studio access, and curating exhibitions, among other things. The nonprofit’s 10,000-square-foot facility includes five studios, an art supply......
The museums, galleries, and curated events that celebrate the arts and artists of the Northern Rockies offer an intimate glimpse at the life and livelihood of the American West. Upcoming calendar highlights include: May 12 – September 5 Master Leather Carving from North America &......
When Dave Kirk bought an old mercantile building in Willow Creek, Montana — about 30 miles from Bozeman — with inheritance money from his beloved Aunt Dofe, he converted it into a residence, art gallery, and woodworking studio, establishing a legacy of no-strings-attached support for......
The C.M. Russell Museum has been consigned the acclaimed Charles M. Russell watercolor High, Wide, and Handsome for inclusion in The Russell Live Auction on August 20, 2022. The 1919 painting depicts one of the artist’s most popular subjects: the timeless struggle for mastery between......
Country music singer-songwriter, Montana native, and Big Sky Music Group recording artist Stephanie Quayle has released her self-titled album, which includes popular singles “By Heart” and “Wild Frontier,” as well as brand new material, like “Hang My Hat.” “The Western imagery [in ‘Hang My Hat’]......
The fossil beds of montana have contributed more to dinosaur paleontology than those of any other state in the U.S. Indeed, dinosaur fossils have been discovered in 48 of Montana’s 56 counties, and to celebrate that legacy and promote visitation to member institutions, the Montana......
The path from here must be instinctively traced each breath avowed to relational space all thought attribution all feeling atavistic The way rain and snow dance across an interval of shadow scaling in and out of form the way stars darken toward us until our......
When an avid outdoorsman embarked on an ambitious search for a mountain property to call home, he traveled to McCall, Idaho; Telluride, Colorado; and Big Sky, Montana, before discovering a parcel at about 6,000 feet in elevation near the southwest Montana town of Livingston. It......
“Today’s anglers are looking for intelligent apps along with their favorite fly shop,” remarks fly-fishing industry veteran Scott Carver. With that in mind, he and a team of others based in Montana and Colorado created the informative, newly released onWater app that provides detailed digital......
This summer, the Hockaday Museum of Art in Kalispell, Montana is hosting a unique exhibition of work by Damon Falke — an American writer, poet, and playwright living in Norway — and Montana artist Tabby Ivy. After connecting on Facebook in 2018, the duo developed......
In 1902, the Old Saloon opened its doors in Emigrant, Montana — between Livingston and Yellowstone National Park’s North Entrance in Gardiner — serving up satisfying meals and stiff drinks to Paradise Valley locals, weary travelers, cowboys, and miners exiting the train depot located just......
After a prolonged COVID-19-induced hiatus, many outdoor concerts and music festivals throughout the Northern Rockies are back in action for 2022. From classical and jazz to country and rock n’ roll, here are some primo picks for melodies and revelry under the sun and stars......
The summer trail season is here in Big Sky Country, and, whether you’re venturing out for your first time to walk on an unpaved surface or emerging from your winter hibernation cohabitating with some Yellowstone grizzlies you’ve managed to befriend, you could probably use a......
Blackbird Kitchen has been a staple and locals’ favorite in downtown Bozeman, Montana since opening its doors in 2009. Their secret? Simply good food. Head chef Kenan Anderson stays within their formula for success by creating vegetable-forward menus that change with the seasons and feature......
Jamie Ford’s multigenerational and magical tale, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy (Atria Books, $28), has him well on his way to becoming the Gabriel García Márquez of Asian-American literature. Like García Márquez, Ford’s ability to paint a deep and vibrant story, while moving expertly......
The shrill whistle of a steam locomotive pierced the air and a passenger train thundered toward the station. The sheep dog looked on as several men removed a long, rough-cut wooden box from the back of a hearse and rolled it across the platform. As......
By most empirical measures, Doug Peacock is an undisputed winner. America’s most visible and vocal defender of grizzly bears, he has won battles over land management and prevailed in skirmishes over the fate of individual bears. His guerilla tactics have inspired environmental activists around the......
April 2015, PPL Montana shut down its Corette Power Plant, an eyesore that was one of the first sites to greet people driving into the city of Billings from the east. A few months later, a local organization I’m involved with — the Yellowstone Valley......
Landscape photographer Craig W. Hergert and award-winning poet and novelist Shann Ray have released Montana Panoramic: Transparent in the Backlight, a sweeping collection that marries Hergert’s panoramic images with Ray’s poetry and prose. The book’s literary and visual vignettes — a 15-year retrospective of Hergert’s......
Celebrated architect Diébédo Francis Kéré has been recognized with architecture’s highest honor as the 2022 laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The man behind Xylem, a 2,100-square-foot pavilion located on the Tippet Rise Art Center’s central campus in Fishtail, Montana, is both the first African......
Yellowstone National Park celebrates its 150th anniversary this year. Designated as the country’s first national park on March 1, 1872, the landscape it encompasses has a rich ecological and human history, with archaeological evidence and oral traditions dating the presence of various tribes and bands......
America has long had a conflicted relationship with its rural spaces. “It’s the rural idyll versus the rural illicit,” says Megan Torgerson, founder of the podcast “Reframing Rural,” referencing the dualistic beliefs that arrived with European colonizers. “Today, people either view rural as this kind......
A collective calm descends each spring in the Northern Rockies. The ski resorts have closed, tourists have retreated, trails are muddy, and warm sunny days are sprinkled in between rainy or snowy ones. It’s a simmering of sorts, an in-between that allows us just enough......
More than 20 years ago, rancher Vance Brash approached his friend Dick Sapa with an idea to put on a rodeo behind the Blue Moon Nite Club in Columbia Falls, Montana. Since that time, the Brash Rodeo has grown into a summer staple with a......
The Mountain West in the 2020s has been characterized by increasing crowds. In 2021, Montana’s Flathead County grew by 3.5 percent and Billings was briefly ranked as the top emerging market in the entire nation. By February 2022, the median value of a single-family home......
For Bozeman, Montana-based mixed-media artist Miles Glynn, inspiration is instantaneous. It’s a melding of color, shape, sound, and feeling. “There are moments where everything comes together visually,” says Glynn. “The lighting, the senses, maybe the music I’m listening to, it creates a moment or a......
In the summer of 1974, a senior theater major from Montana State University (MSU) named John Hosking signed on to be part of Montana Shakespeare in the Parks’ first full tour across the state. The troupe traveled to 20 locations, performing The Taming of the......
Migrating flocks of northbound geese overhead. Retreating snowlines and the first blush of green on the hillsides. Newborn calves in the fields. Not long ago, those were the Bozeman area’s reliable signs of spring, assuring us that we had survived yet another cold Montana winter.......
When Tracy and Mike Schlauch finally decided to bring the lake home they’d been dreaming about for more than a decade to fruition, it was designed to be a retreat where meaningful memories with friends and family would be made while appreciating Montana’s beauty. “Mike......
Magazine Racks by Norseman Designs West Originally based in New York, John Gallis traded in a lucrative career building custom cabinetry for Bloomingdale’s for an artisan-based way of life through his company Norseman Designs West in Cody, Wyoming. His award-winning, one-of-a-kind pieces are rooted in......
At the beginning of each year, many of the top paint companies announce the shade they believe best represents the design trends of that time, with picks that range from neutral tones to uplifting pops of color. Often driven by fashion, technology, lifestyle, and pop......