In memory of Richard Roberts [1919 – 2007] The woods allow a road but only as wide as axled wheels will ride, and in the untrod center protest with tiny pines. The woods permit at noon equality of shade and light, one so black, one......
Big Sky’s Music in the Mountains free concert series brings nationally touring artists to southwest Montana each summer. Now, because of critical support from a local foundation, music fans can see more of Montana’s best up-and-coming bands as the series continues through September. The nonprofit......
Montana-based artist Dana Boussard’s Earth to Hand, Hand to Earth, a visual narrative of Gallatin Valley’s history, was recently installed in Montana State University’s (MSU’s) historic Romney Hall as a part of a $32-million renovation of the 1920s structure, which added 1,000 classroom seats and......
Jackson, Wyoming-Based Stio has teamed up with Taylor Guitars to create a limited-edition series of acoustic guitars that celebrates the mountains through brightly colored graphics designed by nine regional artists. According to Stio, the collaboration celebrates “music’s power to bring people together and the creative......
Altamira Fine Art will once again represent work by the late contemporary American artist John Nieto in its Jackson, Wyoming gallery. Nieto, who passed away in 2018 at the age of 81, is lauded for his dynamic style, which was defined by his use of......
For nearly 50 years, the Sweet Pea Festival has been promoting and cultivating the arts through a gathering held the first weekend in August in Bozeman, Montana. Though the festival has significantly grown since it launched, Sweet Pea continues to offer a range of family-friendly......
The museums, galleries, and curated art events that celebrate the artists of the Northern Rockies offer an intimate glimpse at life in the American West. Upcoming calendar highlights include: Through August 17 James Chronister: And We are Green, Greener Than the Hill, Where Flowers Grow......
These Creatures of a Day Written by Marc Beaudin Featuring 56 poems by Marc Beaudin that delve into our connection and disconnection with the natural world and each other, These Creatures of a Day is a collection that inhabits its readers. Beaudin’s pieces run the......
Four years after moving the Pavilion Project’s Town Enclosure to Bozeman’s Story Mill Community Park from its inaugural location at the Center for the Arts in the heart of downtown Jackson, Wyoming, the large-scale installation continues to engage public audiences with its inquisitive design and......
Silt, spit, soot, wheat, and the sound of railroad ties are some of the materials at play this year at Bozeman’s Tinworks Art under the new direction of Director Jenny Moore, who assumed her role at the gallery in 2023. With an extensive curatorial background......
Former Montana resident Roland W. Reed Jr. [1864 – 1934] finally received recognition for his life’s work in a gallery bearing his name almost 100 years after he slipped on a banana peel, leading to his untimely death. Little is known of the photographer —......
The West has intrigued me since I was a kid. I grew up in the Midwest, playing in the woods, observing wildlife, and discovering photography. Given my early affinity for the outdoors, it made sense that I would be drawn to the West, to the......
ARCHITECTURE | LOCATI ARCHITECTS CONSTRUCTION | ROBERT WEBSTER CONSTRUCTION INTERIOR DESIGN | COLLINS AND SWEEZEY Sometimes, bigger is not better; bolder is not more beautiful. Sometimes, the most impressive quality about a home is its restraint and intentionality. Nestled into the rolling contours of Stock......
Oh, how the waters curve and jump — fringed with willows, flickery with trout — between a big wilderness and a small town. That’s the creek, the place where I spend much of my free time. I suppose you could refer to it as a......
It’s Friday afternoon, the hottest day of the year so far, and there’s already a line outside the door at Shan in Bozeman, Montana’s northside Cannery District. We figure it will be a while. And we don’t mind. It’s not every day you get to......
Current Montana poet laureate Chris La Tray blends personal memoir and Indigenous history in Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home (Milkweed Editions, $30). Raised with only hints of the Métis and Anishinaabe (Chippewa) heritage of his father’s side of the family, La Tray......
In 2009, John Isaiah Pepion was involved in a near-fatal car wreck that left him homebound for many months. During his recovery, he began drawing daily to pass the time. Pepion had always enjoyed art growing up, starting with watercolors and whatever canvas he could......
Great art can seem transcendent, as though it was born from some higher dimension that most of us can’t quite reach. But talking with Stephanie Revennaugh, an award-winning sculptor and equestrian based in Livingston, Montana, feels like returning to earth. “I think people have this......
Born and raised in Whitefish, Montana, painter Nate Closson has always been enthralled with the state’s beauty. His art is a tribute, a way to reignite appreciation for the region’s landscapes and lifestyles. “This whole world is beautiful, but nowhere more so than Montana,” Closson......
There’s nothing Mary Roberson could be but an artist, though it seems she was the last to know. “The art field picked me; I didn’t pick it,” she says. “I have vivid memories in first grade of drawing my fellow classmates — not because I......
I’ve been making assemblage work for 50 years,” says Stephen Glueckert, an artist and educator based in Missoula, Montana. “But I draw, and I paint, and I play music, and, to me, the older I’ve gotten, the less I see lines between these things. I......
No distractions, no schedule, nobody barging into your space. That’s the beauty of an artist-in-residence program. Admittedly, it’s not for everybody, but those who do take a deep dive into creativity seldom regret it. Across the state, programs vary in the amount of time, type......
When gallery-goers encounter one of Caleb Meyer’s landscapes of the Mountain West, they tend to stop in their tracks, transfixed by the feelings of wonder conveyed by the painter. His recent piece, Full of Life, presents an outstanding example of that phenomenon. Certainly, the size......
He was the quintessential Montanan, I think. That is to say, the landscape shaped him, as it shapes all of us fortunate enough to be here in this eyeblink of time. Sometimes his music sounded like the first crack in an ice dam — that......
U.S. Forest Service fire lookouts have one of the loneliest occupations on earth. Perched atop remote peaks across the West, we spend summer days in monk-like observation, eyes roaming timbered landscapes, watching the horizon for impending storms and wisps of smoke. When I was 24,......
Editor’s Note: Retrieving antlers on public land remains a balance between opportunity, access, safety, and conservation. Last year, the Wyoming Legislature created a resident-only season on select public lands during the first week of May, with nonresidents who purchase a conservation stamp allowed after May......
I hike in the dust of Morley, my one-eyed mule guide, with each step taking me deeper into the wilderness. He saunters up the trail, slightly swaying under the weight of my food. His deliberate and practical rhythm slows my anxiousness and excitement into contented......
On a raw December day in western Montana, several dozen visitors enjoy a welcome dose of the tropics thanks to the grand opening of the state’s new educational attraction: the Missoula Butterfly House & Insectarium. Inside the main exhibit area, visitors of all ages eagerly......
Ask any author, historian, or cowboy with an eye for the great Old West, and they’ll credit Dick and Dora Randall as the heart and soul of the OTO, Montana’s first dude ranch. Situated along Cedar Creek in the Absaroka Mountains, 10 miles from the......
Still have that old canary-yellow Schwinn Varsity bicycle hanging from the rafters in your parents’ barn? You know the one: the steel-framed groaner whose tires haven’t been inflated since the Carter administration. Pull it down, grease its chain, tune its brakes, and see if those......
For Martha Scanlan Driving the backroads of Montana Gravel unspools to the horizon Fields of wheat and mountains surround me I’ve got all the good day long left to drive. My dog is asleep beside me There’s a creek up ahead that I know Where......
Dave Carty captures the spare poetry of Montana landscapes, specifically the Shields River Valley, in his poignant novel Red is the Fastest Color (Guernica World Editions, $18.95). He takes the reader through the seasonal changes that dominate life in this region, and those mirrored in......
Some 12 years before Theodore Roosevelt’s rapid rise to the U.S. presidency, he experienced a bear hunt that was more troublesome than most of his earlier expeditions. As related in Roosevelt’s book The Wilderness Hunter, he engaged a guide named Griffin, an old man skilled......
Most of us have at least a passing familiarity with the Texas longhorn. You could probably draw one right now if you had to. You or your kids may have had photos taken with one at a county fair or local rodeo. The unmistakable silhouette......
From an early age, Montana-based illustrator and painter John Potter has treated the world — the land, the animals — as family. “The trees feel like relatives, the mountains like grandfathers,” says Potter. “That’s how I look at the natural world.” Growing up, his mother......
In memory of Rick Nyhart (1949 – 2024) Sometimes we go back and see ourselves at a different time and place. We go back and look at where we started. Like the earth we inhabit, we evolve, age, live out our stories, fall into the......
Architecture Stillwater Architecture Construction Great Bear Builders Interior Design Design Associates There are two sights to behold in this particular home in northwest Montana, ones that stay in place and never fail to inspire the homeowners and their guests: views of Lake Blaine backdropped by......
As the blue light of dusk faded to an obsidian black, I gathered my gear. Upon opening the door of my camper van and stepping into the night, coyotes broke the silence and began to sing — or so it’s described by numerous Western authors.......
Drop into Hops Downtown Grill in Kalispell, Montana, and you’ll see a small, chef-owned restaurant that’s big on food, fun, and family. The atmosphere is cozy and welcoming, filled with people celebrating a range of life experiences — first dates, family dinners, birthday celebrations, and......
This summer, artist Ben Miller’s abstract works will be on display at the newly opened Oxbow Gallery in Bozeman, Montana. Curated by Gary Snyder Fine Art, Endangered Rivers features Miller’s paintings of important waterways in the U.S., including four rivers in Montana’s Jefferson Basin, Montana’s......
Wild Sugar: Seasonal Treats Inspired by the Mountain West By Lindsey Johnson with Chase Reynolds Ewald Wild Sugar: Seasonal Treats Inspired by the Mountain West is a welcome addition to the kitchen bookshelf. Artist, interior designer, baker, and photographer Lindsey Johnson of Freedom, Wyoming —......
For the past 20 years, Hopa Mountain has cultivated social, economic, and educational resilience in rural and tribal communities throughout the Northern Rockies. The Bozeman, Montana-based organization invests in “citizen leaders” — adults and youth active in developing their respective communities — to support historically......
For more than a decade, Julian MacKay, now 26 years old, has been Big Sky Country’s de facto cultural envoy to the world, hustling his way into the most storied spaces of dance. His vocation has taken him across Europe and Asia, as well as......
A true artist will never be or do just one thing. In the spirit of Bernini, Michaelangelo, and Frank Gehry, Meghan Hanson possesses the irresistible urge to create. It’s how she gets to know a place and how she shares what she loves. It’s how......
After countless vacations skiing in Big Sky, Montana, John and Vanessa McGuire made a leap-of-faith decision for their sports-minded family. In 2019, they permanently moved with their three children — two daughters and a son — from New York City to 6 acres that roll......
Founded in 2014 by principal designer Sophia Cok, Bozeman, Montana-based Sanctuary Interior Design is a full-service firm focused on turnkey interior design for commercial and residential projects. Employing over 20 years of experience, Cok and her team deliver a unique design experience curated to each......
Down to Earth: Rammed Earth Architecture Written by Sergio Asensio Renowned Spanish editor and designer Sergio Asensio’s Down to Earth: Rammed Earth Architecture features 22 national and international architects who have incorporated rammed earth in their designs and construction, including Ward | Blake Architects’ work......
PHASES BATH AND KITCHEN ACCESSORIES BY ROCKY MOUNTAIN HARDWARE Rocky Mountain Hardware collaborated with Jennifer Hoey of Suede Studio to create Phases, a versatile new kitchen and bath accessories collection that is as beautiful as it is functional. Curves and contemporary angles pair with the......
Architecture Centre Sky Architecture Construction Dovetail Construction Interior Design Laura Fedro Interiors On a sloping hillside above the banks of Ennis Lake in Montana, a jewel-box home, intentional in its design and craftsmanship, provides the perfect vantage point for Lisa and Scott Carver to take......
Architecture Thinktank Design Group Construction North Fork Builders Interior Design Envi Interior Design Studio At the nexus of building and design, neighborhood and belonging, sunlight and shelter, is a house becoming a home. A four-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath, 4,500-square-foot home in northeast Bozeman, Montana blends old ideas......