Art Bozeman

Artists George Dunbar, Sally Jo Hand, and Mary Penberthy, will be featured during the month of August at the Artists’ Gallery in the Emerson, 111 S. Grand Ave, Bozeman. An artist’s reception will be held during Art Walk on Friday, August 8th from 5:00 - 8:00 PM.

George Dunbar, a Bozeman potter who has just joined the Artist’s Gallery, will be displaying his hand-thrown vases and pots. Many of his glazes are from naturally occurring materials from the local area.

Sally Jo Hand is a Bozeman artist who works primarily in pastel, watercolor, oil, and acrylic with themes inspired by nature, the human form, and a broad spectrum of human emotion and experience.

Mary Penberthy will be showing acrylic paintings of aspen trees and painted feathers of animals and Indians.

For further information, call: 406-587-2127.

Noellynn Pepos and Jerry Rankin will present: “…resonance, when vowels fall” at Aunt Dofe’s Hall of Recent Memory, 102 Main Street, Willow Creek from August 15 until September 14, with an artists’ reception
from 5 until 9 PM, Friday August 15.

Meanwhile, until August 10, the work of Kathryn Yelsa is on view. A reception with Yelsa will be held July 18. See earlier post for more about Yelsa.

Phone 285 6996 for information or an appointment.

Ever think about painting your best furry friend?  Well here’s your chance.  Award winning artist Kaytee Esser will show you how to get started.  This class is for adults 18 on up with a willingness to give it a try.  Please come if you are a beginner or intermediate painter.  The workshop will be held at the Emerson Center for the Arts and Culture in the Studio Boone classroom for 3 mornings beginning August 27, - August 29, 2008 from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm.  So drop off the kids and come to class!

Ms. Esser will focus on pets as the subject so please bring the medium you can work with the best, pencil, charcoal, pastel, watercolor, acrylic, or oil.  You will learn how to use guidelines and shapes to develop portraits of your pets.  Ms. Esser will demonstrate how to begin the process using your medium of choice.  The students are encouraged to bring photos of their pets as subject matter.

Kaytee Esser is an award-winning artist who lives and works on her boat in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.  Ms. Esser’s commission portraits of animals captures both the personality and essence of the pet.  She is known for her colorful representations of life in the South.  She has a B.F.A. in Painting from Kutztown University, Pennsylvania and has been a professional animal and people portrait artist for the past five years and has taught many workshops in both North and South Carolina.  To see more of her work, please go to www.KayteeEsser.com.

The cost for this workshop is $150 per student and will be limited to 8 students so please register early.  To register make a check out to at the Stephen Boone gallery today!
Please send checks to:  Stephen Boone, P.O. Box 1732, Bozeman, MT 59771.

Materials: Please bring your sketchbook (no smaller than 9X12) painting materials, photos and a great attitude!

Contact information:  Kaytee Esser, P.O. Box 23105, Hilton Head Island, SC 29925; Email:  Kaytee@KayteeEsser.com; phone: 843-476-9059.

Opening Reception - Artwalk
Friday, July 11th 5-8 p.m.

Award winning local artist Adair Peck has been busy hunting paper tigers,and bear, and moose… Her whimsical and yet noble creatures seem to wink at you as they look down from the wall. Stop by to see her menagerie of big-game paper trophies and a flock of paper sheep. This show will be on display June 28th through July 22nd.

Sculptures by Adair Peck

The Sweet Pea Juried and Open Art Shows will be displayed in the Bozeman Public Library from July 31st and Friday, August 29th. All artists and the public are invited to the opening reception on Thursday, July 31st at 6 p.m., in the Public Library’s Large Conference Room.

Information and an application form (PDF) about submitting artwork is available at the Sweet Pea Festival web site. The entry fee is $20. Following are selected excerpts:

Eligibility
The Juried & Open Art Shows are open to all artists. Artists may only enter one piece of work. In an effort to allow greater participation in the shows, hanging artwork shall not exceed the size of 4 feet x 4 feet (48 inches x 48 inches). Only original artwork designed and executed within the last two years, and not previously shown in past juried shows, is eligible for the Juried Show participation. The Open Show is a non-juried and non-competitive exhibition. Artwork in any media is acceptable, but acceptance is also conditional upon examination for extreme fragility or size. Please keep in mind that artwork will be located in an area heavily frequented by the public. Artwork also must be finished and ready for professional hanging. If artwork requires special handling, it must be accompanied by the artist’s written instructions. All artwork must remain on display for the duration of the exhibition.

Delivery & Deadlines
Hand Delivered: Artwork must be hand delivered to the Bozeman Public Library, 626 East Main Street, Bozeman, on Monday, July 28th between 12 and 5 p.m. Application form and entry fee will be collected at that time, as well as the optional artist statment. If the artist is unable to hand deliver on July 28th, the work must be shipped to arrive by July 21, or special arrangements must be made with the Art Show Chair.

See the application form for further details.

Artists Dede Christman, Barbara Allen Dillon, and Bonni Glock will be featured during the month of July at the Artists’ Gallery in the Emerson, 111 S. Grand Ave, Bozeman.

The Gallery invites the public to a wine and cheese reception on Friday, July 11th, from 5:00 - 8:00 PM.

Dede Christman is presently exploring and creating variations of surfaces using textures to create animal forms in relief. In addition she will present her Yellowstone bowls which evoke landscape forms of the paint pots. Dede is also exploring combinations of shapes and surfaces in maquette form to ultimately become outdoor sculptures.

Barbara Allen Dillon’s show inspired by “Climate Exchange” will consist of new paintings, flameworked glass sculptures and mixed media, visualizing the ‘upside’ of global warming.

Bonni Glock, an abstract painter, will be showing a series of ideoforms, influenced by Paul Klee and Joan Miro.

Contact number: 406-587-2127

Kathryn Yelsa is a Saint Ignatius sculptor who works with what she calls “opulent local materials” She showed work at the first Butte Phantom Galleries in 2004. Her older work proved her to be an accomplished sculptor, but she was also showing some of her newer work that took her insights a ways farther. In that work, Ms. Yelsa was treating “simple river stones” as if they were precious gems, and so, in her hands and eyes, they became precious gems. And simple river stones will never be simple again.

And neither will red dogwood bark, wire, and found doll parts after you see her Garden Goddess standing in the gallery. She has the rare sophistication to never allow her technique to overpower the materials so the bluebird on a chipped piece of found crockery is allowed to sing its clear, pure notes without the artist’s interference. Kathryn Yelsa will be showing some of her older work as well as her latest sculpture and wearable art at Aunt Dofe’s Hall of Recent Memory, 102 Main Street in Willow Creek from July 18 until August 10. She will be attending a reception during The Willow Creek Art Walk from 5 until 9 PM on Friday July 18. Please call Aunt Dofe’s at 285-6996 to arrange other viewing times while her show is up.

The Helen E. Copeland Gallery announces its second summer exhibition in a series showcasing 3 different high schools. This exhibition, from Bozeman High School, features Pat Hoffman, Mark Sullivan, Kerry Corcoran, Stacie Smith, and Beth Plaff. Their work will be on display June 23rd through July 18th. An opening reception will be held Monday, June 23rd from 5:00 – 7:00pm.

A variety of different mediums make up the exhibition. We have two potters, Hoffman and Plaff who demonstrate two very different points of view in their work. Hoffman’s wall forms are inspired by the shape of seeds that developed from his recent investigations of organisms as “containers of life”.

Pfaff’s pottery demonstrates her mental energy and critical analysis of the external world. Mental alertness and self exploration define her process as an artist.

Smith’s metalwork and paintings are described as being funky, fun, elegant, and confident. She uses them to demonstrate her plethora of life experiences that have helped to develop her as a person and artist.

Sullivan’s paintings and drawings take on the construction of “guardian angels” that serve to teach, comment, protect, and keep him honest. He encourages you to not be told what the works mean, rather create your own sense as the viewer.

Corcoran’s drawings and prints reflect her studies of nature. Working with a combination of print mediums, Corcoran creates monotypes with woodcuts and collaging with multi-layering techniques.

The Helen E. Copeland Gallery is located in Haynes Hall on the MSU-Bozeman campus. All exhibitions and receptions are free and open to the public. For more information call Erin W. Anderson at 994-2562.

Well, not in total number of fine artists, but we do lead in fine artists per capita, a statistic that I, personally, much prefer. We beat out California, as well, trailing only three states known for their artist colonies: New Mexico, Vermont, and Hawaii. We also rank high in photographers (slightly below New York), the other category encompassing visual artists, and in writers and announcers. The data is in the just-released “Artists in the Workforce” report from the National Endowment for the Arts (PDF document here).

For those concerned with economics, the New York Times noted the following:

“It’s easy to talk about artists in lofty and spiritual terms,” said Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “Without denying the higher purposes of the artistic vocation, it’s also important to remember that artists play an important role in America’s cultural vitality and economic prosperity. Artists have immense financial and social impact as well as cultural impact.”

Following are all the job categories in which Montana appears in the top 10. The numbers represent artists per 10,000 population.

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Anne Menge just graduated from MSU with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in painting (and a minor in Psychology). Originally from Billings, she plans to pursue a MA in Art Therapy and a Master of Fine Arts with an interest in glass blowing and metalsmithing in the future at an out-of-state university.

I am primarily an oil painter and in recent years, I have switched to painting on much larger canvases. I enjoy painting the figure and also have a lot of fun with abstract imagery. My technique is always using thick and juicy impasto strokes and I have recently moved beyond the limitations of the brush and palette knife to literally squeezing my mixed paint onto the canvas in various ways. I work with huge mounds of paint on my palette (often 5 and 6 cups of paint at a time) and this is one of the most delightful things I think an oil painter can experience. Oils have a saturation that is unparalleled by any other medium and their creamy consistency only adds to the wonderful sensation.

Also, I have developed my own abstract process of using various types of thick textures, then overlaying them with very thin paint. As the thin paint drips down my paintings it tends to follow the contours of my textures. Finally, I always bring my hand back into the equation by adding finishing touches, often finding interesting shapes in the drip and accentuating them.

See the Bozeman artists page for Anne’s contact information.