MAY 2009

Francis Davis lives in Lincoln, Nebraska with his wife Sally and their three children Tess, Max and Sam. He teaches writing and literature at the University of Nebraska, and he's won writing fellowships from The Vermont Studio Center, The Ragdale Foundation and the Millay Colony for the Arts. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Natural Bridge, The Sun and The San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. He's also had a chapbook of short fiction published entitled “Dying to be Released” by the Meridian Writers Cooperative after winning the “Discovery of New Writers” award sponsored by PennBook of Philadelphia.

At the Montana Artists Refuge, Francis will put the finishing touches on his novel, The Poet's Daughter , as well as work on a collection of short fiction entitled Working the Frog, set in Philadelphia, Montana and Seattle in the late 80s and early 90s -- a slice of time Francis finds interesting because the Cold War ended, the internet was born, and corporate culture began to change the way most people experienced arts and culture. Also, Francis simply misses those years, and enjoys dwelling within them as he crafts his stories, because he was young then, younger, had better hair, and mostly because the music was just really, really cool. He has an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska.

OCTOBER 2008

Margot Douaihy is a writer and editor based in New York City. In Montana she will complete "Ingrid Betancourt: Here, Now," a radio drama in iambic pentameter. The verse-drama was inspired by Colombian Senator Ingrid Betancourt who was held captive by FARC rebels for six years before her rescue in July 2008.

She is also a contributing editor for the magazines HD Living, Residential Systems, and Installation Europe, covering trends in the systems integration industry. She will be featured in the upcoming Life 2.0, an exploration of poetry and technology hosted in Access Space, a recycled technology lab in Sheffield, England.

Douaihy uses language as a vehicle to explore identity and the DNA of moments. She blends everyday vernacular with traditional forms to investigate where communication fails and where it transcends. Douaihy believes in the transformative strength of poetry—its unique ability to inspire, destabilize, and haunt. She believes poetry should take risks, start fires, and recreate the strange three-dimensionality of dreams.

Douaihy is a member of Stop Sharpening Your Knives, the British art collective and Arts Council England Grant winner. Douaihy has been a guest lecturer of writing at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and The New School in New York.

Douaihy received her Bachelors in Writing from the University of Pittsburgh and a Masters in Creative & Life Writing from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her work has also been influenced by her experience on Semester at Sea. In the 1999 Spring Voyage she circumnavigated the globe on a steamship, studying and volunteering in 13 countries.

Kristin Ivey is an emerging visual artist from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She is currently working towards the production of four upcoming exhibitions across Canada. At the Montana Artists Refuge she is hoping to complete production of a solo exhibition of soft sculptural work scheduled for exhibition April 3rd, 2009 at the New Gallery in Calgary, Alberta.

Since August 2008 she has been staying at the Gushul Studios in the Crowsnest Pass, Alberta. Kristin’s current production of work is focused on the building of soft sculptural constructions that are strongly influenced by both the imagination and from the natural world. Using second hand and found fabrics, Kristin re-assembles the materials into new forms.

On the significance of using second hand materials the artist says, “The use of second-hand and found fabric adds an additional layer of meaning, reference and history. Within the forms you can see pieces of your grandmother’s curtains, that old stained tablecloth or that upholstered chair you had at your first apartment. They are highly functional, banal materials, removed from their respective uses and formed into sculptural, odd landscapes.”

Central to the core of the work is the concept of soft; making sculpture that is tactile has a much different experience for the viewer than traditional sculptural materials such as bronze, aluminum and stone. Kristin’s work revolves around the human relationship with soft, tactile, sculptural forms and their relationships to the human body. As children we are given soft forms for comfort, as a surrogate for the presence of others. Kristin is interested in using our strong associations with soft as a conduit to investigate the position of ourselves within the world we have constructed and the natural world that we continue to alienate ourselves from.

Kristin Ivey earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where she fostered a love for sculpture, conceptual art, feminist theory and wearing scarves in all seasons.

SEPTEMBER 2008

Andrew Gottlieb worked on completing a novel draft while at the Refuge in September. He currently lives and writes in Irvine, California, though he was raised on the East Coast in Massachusetts and spent eight years in Seattle after getting his M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Washington.

Gottlieb has taught fiction writing and composition at both the University of Washington and at Iowa State University, where he got his M.A. in English and writing, and he’s published two chapbooks of poetry, most recently through New Michigan Press.

Gottlieb’s work has appeared in many journals including the American Literary Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Provincetown Arts, & Poets & Writers. Andrew was nominated for a recent Pushcart Prize, and has received grants from the Seattle Arts Commission and the Artist Trust Foundation in Seattle.

AUGUST, SEPTEMBER & OCTOBER 2008

Hazel Walker was at the Montana Artists Refuge for three months from August through October.

Hazel was born in Scotland. She studied at Edinburgh College of Art and Winbledon School of Art. Walker moved to Ireland in 1993, and now divides her time between the west of Ireland in Co. Clare and Scotland.

Hazel is currently on a year career break from lecturing in painting at Galway Mayo Institute in Ireland. This is time to concentrate full on her work. Walker has just recently held an exhibition in Helsinki. She has exhibited widely in Ireland, Scotland and in Boston , USA. She has work in public and private collections. This will be her second visit to Montana

AUGUST & SEPTEMBER 2008

Violeta Tauragiene was at the Montana Artists Refuge during the months of August and September. Violeta is from Lithuania and is a translator of fiction, non-fiction and theatre plays from Lithuania. Being very fond of literature, and especially American and French writers, she quit her teaching job fifteen years ago and became a freelance translator. Tauragiene translates from English and American, French and Italian into Lithuanian. Violeta’s latest translations are The Road and All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.

In her country she is most known as a translator of “golden literature,” the works of Nobel Prize winners, such as William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury and Sanctuary), Albert Camus, her preferred French writer, (The Myth of Sisyphus, Essays, A Happy Death, The First Man, Notebooks), Samuel Beckett (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable), and J.M. Coetzee. Other works Tauragiene has translated are Life and Times of Michael K, Josif Brodsky (Essays) and Harold Pinter’s plays.

During Violeta’s stay at the Montana Artists Refuge she will be working on a translation of Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog and Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams. She is very interested in Native Americans’ culture and mentality and would like to learn more about the Montana Indian tribes.

Tauragiene was awarded French Republic Government grants in 1993, 1996, 2001, 2005 for translations of French literature and the Ireland Literature Exchange grant in 2007 for translation of Irish theatre plays.

She has attended the following artists residencies: Ucross Foundation, Wyoming; Art OMI, Ledig House, NY; The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico; Chateau Lavigny in Switzerland; International Writers’ and Translators Centre of Rhodes; Maison des écrivains értangers et des traducteurs, Sain–Nazaire, France; Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, Scotland; Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators, Visby, Sweden; The Tyron Guthry Centre, Ireland; College International des traducteurs Litteraires, Arles, France; and the British Centre for Literary Translation, UK.

AUGUST 2008

Eric Moe returned to the Montana Artists Refuge during the month of August. Eric Moe (1954-   ), composer of what the NY Times calls "music of winning exuberance", has received numerous grants and awards for his work, including the Lakond Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Guggenheim Fellowship; commissions from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Fromm Foundation, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Barlow Endowment, and Meet-the-Composer USA; fellowships from the Wellesley Composer's Conference and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts; and residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Bellagio, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Millay Colony, the Ragdale Foundation, the Montana Artists Refuge, the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, and the American Dance Festival.He is the recipient of a 2008 Individual Creative Artist Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

His sit-trag/one-woman opera Tri-Stan was hailed by the New York Times in 2005 as “a blockbuster” and “a tour de force”, a work of “inspired weight” that “subversively inscribe[s] classical music into pop culture”. In its review of the piece, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette concluded, “For an audience, it is one of those rare works that transcends the cultural divide while still being rooted in both sides.” The work is now available on a Koch International Classics compact disc. Other all-Moe CDs are available on Albany Records (Kicking and Screaming, Up & At ‘Em, Siren Songs), and Centaur (On the Tip of My Tongue). Strange Exclaiming Music, a CD featuring Moe’s most recent chamber music, will be released soon by Naxos.

Also a pianist and keyboard player, Moe has premiered and performed works by a wide variety of composers, from Anthony Davis to Stefan Wolpe. His playing can be heard on the Koch, CRI, Mode, Albany, and AK/Coburg labels in the music of John Cage, Roger Zahab, Marc-Antonio Consoli, Mathew Rosenblum, Jay Reise, and Felix Draeseke, in addition to his own. His solo recording The Waltz Project Revisited - New Waltzes for Piano, a CD of waltzes for piano by two generations of American composers, was recently released on Albany. Gramophone magazine says in its review of the CD, “Moe’s command of the varied styles is nothing short of remarkable.” A founding member of the San Francisco-based EARPLAY ensemble, he currently co-directs the Music on the Edge new music concert series in Pittsburgh.

Moe studied composition at Princeton University (A.B.) and at the University of California at Berkeley (M.A., Ph.D.). He is currently Professor of Composition and Theory at the University of Pittsburgh and has held visiting professorships at Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania. More information is available at his website, http://ericmoe.net/compositions.html

Barbara Weissberger also returned to the Montana Artists Refuge during the month of August. Barbara works in watercolor and gouache on paper, wall drawing and collage and has exhibited her work in New York at PS1, White Columns, Dean Project, Capsule Gallery, the DUMBO Art Center, and Schroeder Romero; the Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and Artist Image Resource in Pittsburgh; Hallwalls, Buffalo; and the Holter Museum, Helena, MT.

Her work is included in the Pittsburgh Biennial 2008. Weissberger’s work toured throughout the US with the traveling exhibition Figures of Thinking, for which there is an accompanying catalog. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2007. 

Barbara was recently interviewed for Meatpaper magazine, Winter 2007 Issue.  Residency fellowships include the MacDowell Colony; Yaddo (Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Fellow); VCCA (Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Fellow and Vera I. Heinz Fellow); and Montana Artists Refuge. She is currently on the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh and divides her time between New York and Pittsburgh. 

Jennifer Rarick visited the Montana Artists Refuge during the month of August. She is here as a recent MFA graduate from the San Francisco Art Institute and has received a scholarship from them for her time here.

Jennifer resided in Colorado for twenty-two years, where she received her undergraduate degree in accounting from Mesa State College in 1997, before moving west to California. In 2004, after working as an auditor, she returned to college to pursue a Master in Art from the California State University – Sacramento. She then went on to the San Francisco Art Institute to gain a Master of Fine Arts degree.

Jennifer works in audio and video. The work, often in the form of oral storytelling, follows sound as the primary sensory response to our world. Jennifer is interested in the subtle experiences and stories that shape our ideas and our communities – both locally and globally.

JULY & AUGUST 2008

Reid Norris took refuge in Basin during the months of July and August of 2008.  Reid is a fiction writer and a painter who has spent the last few years practicing his craft in the San Francisco Bay area.  After graduating from California College of Arts and Crafts, he spent a year teaching in the Oakland Unified School District.  Reid taught a class for middle-school students with severe cognitive disabilities.  The challenges and rewards of teaching gave Reid ample inspiration but little time for artistic work, so he is very grateful for his time at the Montana Artist Refuge this summer.

Alice Jennings stayed at the Montana Artists Refuge during the month of July.

Alice is the Finance Director for The Chinati Foundation, a contemporary art museum in Marfa – a small, remote town in Far West Texas. She is also a frequent co-host of TALK AT TEN on Marfa Public Radio 93.5 FM as an interviewer of Lannan Foundation writers-in- residence in Marfa.

Alice grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio but after college took up the life of a nomad and has moved more than fifteen times around the United States. These experiences have led to a poetry project in which she explores the rich regional diversity of the United States but also the regionalism, stereotyping and biases that exist within and across state lines.

Through her poetry, Jennings explores our need to divide people into "us and them" – the very first stage of genocide. Alice plans to continue her work on series of linked poems with her stay in Montana – a state in which she has never lived. Alice resides on 10 acres outside of Marfa with her husband, John and Mollie, their Dalmatian. She has one daughter who lives in Austin, Texas and is a graduate student in school psychology at Texas State University.

Dietrich Maune was at the Montana Artists Refuge during the month of July. He is the Assistant Director and Professor in the School of Media Arts and Design at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He teaches foundational design, print communication design, and interactive media. Previous faculty positions include Black Hills State University in Spearfish, SD. He holds a BFA and MFA in painting and drawing from East Carolina University and lives in Harrisonburg with his wife Audrey and five year old daughter Gretchen.

Interested in a variety of subjects, the imagery in Maune’s work comes from personal experiences and observation. Animals both domestic and wild have been frequent subjects in his work, chosen as much for their raw figurative form as their expressive personalities. The depiction of these subjects is also broad, ranging from complex narratives to singular representation. Objects from the man-made environment can also be found in his work. Although these usually have a distinct relationship to nature and place what is absent is the human form. Maune instead focuses on creating an intimate view of the chosen subject allowing the viewers to place themselves into the story unfolding on the canvas.

While at the Refuge, Maune will again be focusing on the natural environment and wildlife, creating a series of paintings depicting the large mammals of the western United States.

Ren Vasiliev visited the Montana Artists Refuge during the month of July.

Ren’s passion for textile and paper arts began when she was two years old and first given a thread and needle. The daughter of “displaced persons” of Russian origin, Ren grew up in a Russian community in New York State where her family taught her the traditions of old-world fiber arts; traditions that embrace the necessities of function and the beauty of Eastern European form. When she reached school age, Ren was surprised to learn that her classmates could neither speak Russian nor make their own clothes.

Though her mother is her main influence, the fiber crafts Ren was raised to explore were handed down by her entire family. Her mother was a seamstress and needleworker while her great-grandmother, living in the same house, was a needleworker and designer. Ren’s father worked in a sewing machine factory and maintained the family’s machines in his spare time when he wasn’t building folk art sculptures. Vasiliev’s mother remembers the first time Ren pricked herself, “She was nine years old and terribly offended by that misbehaving piece of equipment.”

During Ren’s learning years, creating fiber arts was considered a cultural and economic necessity. As she continued to experiment, designing and creating fiber, and then paper; arts became an adventure of aesthetics for her. Ren grew up with that needle and thread; sometimes it was a knitting needle, other times, embroidery, but always working at something and working towards creating her own unique style, a style embracing traditions while exploring new possibilities of use and form.

From her many years of fundamentals, Ren has been using those tools of her early training to develop a fine art aesthetic. In her art, she ties together traditional old-world craft with the concerns of modern art, much in the way ceramicists did in the 1970s. With her new creations, an embroidered towel is not for drying hands, but is a work of hanging art; a pieced quilt cannot cover a bed, but is to be installed as sculpture. And handbound book is not to be read as text, but as image. And each of Ren’s creations speaks in a discrete narrative.

Ren’s involvement in experimental textile works has been to expand the conventional tessellations of textiles into the medium of art collage, both in fiber and paper, and sometimes both together. Her current work involves creating fiber art (some call them “art quilts”) on themes drawn from nature (The Solar Series) and from emotions (LoveTorn: X); creating stuffed creatures from socks and felted wool (Silly Sock Creatures); and experimenting with various surface design techniques involving paints, inks, dyes, and bleaches.

Ren belongs to the Surface Design Association, the Studio Art Quilters Association, the Rochester Area Fiber Artists, and the American Craft Council. She participates regularly on Illustration Friday: http://illustrationfriday.com and Fast Friday: http://fastfridayquilts.blogspot.com blogs, both of which are dedicated to promoting creativity by regularly providing themes from which to create art objects. Ren blogs about her artwork at http://www.thecrazyatomorbit.blogspot.com.

In Ren’s day job she is a professor of Geography at a State University of New York College. She draws much inspiration from her teaching about maps and the physical and emotional landscape of the United States.

Write to Ren at ren.vasiliev (at) gmail (dot) com.

JUNE & JULY 2008

Cynthia Hilts returned to the Montana Artists Refuge during the months of June and July. She has been a “refugee” here for four previous residencies.

Cynthia is an amazing pianist, with a beautiful voice; who writes tunes that range from sultry to hard-driving, serious jazz with compelling lyrics.

A quote from the French press: "Cynthia Hilts has drums in her fingers and a metronome in her head. Rhythm pursues her like destiny, even as her voice ignores the interpretations of her hands with superb independence." Hilts' CD, "Stars Down to the Ground," was released in 2000. Montana Artists Refuge's first release, it is music that Ms. Hilts wrote during her 1999 residency there and recorded with Montana musicians.

She recorded a free-jazz CD with Mike Ellis, George Garzone, Cecil McBee and Pheeroan Aklaff in April 2002. Her trio CD "Second Story Breeze," of mostly original compositions and a few standards, with Ron McClure and Jeff Williams, is pending release in February by Blond Coyote Records. Cynthia's Lyric Fury Ensemble, an eight-piece group formed expressly to play her avant garde jazz and new music works, has played in New York City in the Texaco, JVC and Knitting Factory Jazz Festivals.

She also performs an entirely different body of original music as CincHa - singer/songwriter - soon to be released on a self-titled CD. Ms. Hilts has performed solo and led a number of ensembles over the years, playing mostly her original compositions. Her jazz groups have included such musicians as Ron McClure, Jeff Williams, Pierre Michelot, Claire Daly, Gerald Cannon, Jack Walrath and Gene Jackson. She has played in festivals, concerts and clubs in New York City, around the USA, France, Germany, Mexico, Madagascar, and Tunisia.

Hilts has recorded with French and Swedish National Radios, The Spirit of Life Ensemble and Tunisian guitarist/composer Mamdouh Bahri. “Cincha” is Hilts’s singer/songwriter persona. In this genre she puts her beautiful voice, a silken piano, and some wicked humor, to an amazing array of original songs. Likened to Sarah McLachlan, Joni Mitchell, and Bonnie Raitt, still she has an entirely original sound that hooks every audience she plays for.

Cincha’s music ranges from mystical tenderness to the humorous groove of her award-winning "Groundhog Sunday Stroll". Her solo CD “Any Child Who Dreams” has just been released by Blond Coyote Records. Cynthia/Cincha has received a number of awards and grants from Meet the Composer, US West, and the Montana Arts Council as well as commissions from The Festival of Women Improvisers, the Montana Artists Refuge, and choreographer Bernadette Knaeble.

Ms. Hilts plays in big bands and with other songwriters, records for documentaries and serves as musical director for theatre.

JUNE 2008

Sandra Blair stayed at the Montana Artists Refuge during the month of June. 

Sandra Blair had a successful 23-year career as a graphic designer, with the notion that “someday” she’d paint.  Then, on January 31, 2000, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  “I realized I might never have another chance to pursue my lifelong dream of being a wildlife artist.”  During treatment, Sandra read every book on watercolor technique that she could get her hands on and as she felt stronger, she began teaching herself how to paint.  Sandra uses multiple glazes and realistic drybrush techniques to capture the essence of an animal and its habitat.  “I don’t want to simply depict an animal; I want the viewer to feel the texture of feathers and fur. I want to evoke the same sense of wonder that I experience when I come upon an animal in its natural environment.”

In an effort to improve upon her self-taught skills, Sandra has taken workshops with Joe Garcia, Adele Earnshaw, Julie Chapman and Andrew Denman.  Here’s what acclaimed wildlife artist Andrew Denman has to say about her work:

“Wildlife artist Sandra Blair achieves clarity of detail, crispness of line, and a density of color and value uncommon in transparent watercolor.  Her compositions range from the understated and simplistic to the boldly dynamic.  While she is able to capture a variety of subjects with aplomb, her true passion is painting birds.  Whether portraying a hawk in territorial display, a green heron poised to catch a fish, or a domestic pigeon, Blair acutely captures the particularity of form, color, and texture of each species, as well as that innate ‘birdiness’ so vital to the depiction of avian subjects.”

Sandra is a Signature Member of the Society of Animal Artists, the Baltimore Watercolor Society and the Artists for Conservation. In 2007, Sandra was invited to become a member of the International Guild of Realism.  Her paintings have received numerous awards in local, regional and international wildlife art exhibitions.  In October 2005—little more than a year after a second diagnosis of breast cancer—Sandra received the coveted Award of Excellence from the prestigious Society of Animal Artists at their 45th annual “Art and the Animal” exhibit.  Along the Fence Row—Cottontail Rabbit was selected by a distinguished panel of judges as representing the highest standards of artistic excellence in 2005.  Sandra’s painting was among only 14 works to receive this award.

Sandra lives in central Pennsylvania with her husband, a foursome of feline friends and two rambunctiously happy dogs.  Like the wildlife she paints, she is a survivor!

M. Scott Reagan found sanctuary at the Montana Artist Refuge during the month of June. In addition to recovering from a hectic final semester of undergrad, he is working on a memoir piece and writing poetry. This is his first time in Montana and he is both awestruck and inspired by its vastness and beauty.

Reagan was born in Butler, Pennsylvania, a small town in the rolling hills north of Pittsburgh. In 2001 he graduated with an Associates Degree in Graphic Design, and after a series of twists and turns he decided to pursue his passion of writing. This past May he graduated from Slippery Rock University with a B.S. in Creative Writing.

Reagan enjoys collaborating with both visual artists and musicians. During Slippery Rocks Kaleidoscope Arts Festival in 2007, he read poetry in dialogue with a group of improvisational jazz musicians in a production called Telepathy. He also collaborated with another writer and two visual artists to create Mare Desiderii: Tales of Dreamscapes and 1/2 Dozen Collisions. Both art books have been included in a traveling show called "More Than A Book: An Exhibition of Artists' Books."

In the future he hopes to pursue his writing further and possibly attend graduate school.

Tanya Andrea Stadelmann and Nicole Sketlys shook things up at the Montana Artists Refuge during the month of June.

The Jilted Brides are a collaboration between two Australian artists - Tanya Andrea Stadelmann and Nicole Skeltys. Tanya is a Swiss-Australian singer, video artist and photographer. Nicole is a song writer and producer, with a long background in electronica, and also more recently, folk rock.  They came together in December 2007 and developed a psychedelic folk/electronic act called The Jilted Brides. Psychedelic in the original Greek means 'clarifying the soul'.  Tanya sings and creates video projections for our performances, Nicole sings, plays keys and writes and produces the songs.  The Jilted Brides sing about heartache, the dark night of the soul, spiritual yearnings and desire. Our music is both sacred and profane, just like love.

Our time at MAR will provide us with much needed time and space to start to consolidate video, photos and sounds that we have recorded so far on our trip. By the end of our residency, we are sure we will be creatively and spiritually recharged for the next leg of our exciting journey."

Jane Culp stayed at the Montana Artists Refuge during the month of June.