DECEMBER AND JANUARY

Michael Willing (see photo, right) was at the Montana Artists Refuge during the month of January.  He collaborated with Adam Nordell (left), Nate Pope (center) and two other musicians (see Events page) from around the states; creating fiddle music, doing some concerts in Helena and Butte and playing for a Contra Dance in Basin on January 19th.

Michael was born into a long line of Montanans.   The land and culture of the region are evident in his music.  Studying philosophy and music at the University of Montana and then Carroll College, Willing went on to do masters work in environmental ethics at Bard College. 

Viola is his primary instrument – having played since grade 5.  Currently Michael plays with the the AM String Band, Great Falls Symphony, Glacier Orchestra, Butte Symphony, Billings Symphony, and the Brandhout Ensemble.  The roots of Willing’s influences as a violist lie primarily in the classical world.  His great-grandma introduced him to folk music as a young boy with the ballad, “The Lakes of Ponchatrain.”  Ever since then, Michael has listened to folk music and finally, 2 years ago, he started actively exploring the genre.  Today, he uses both viola and violin (fiddle) when composing and playing.

The melding of American folk music with classical music interests Willing.  In his playing you hear melodic lines reminiscent of classicism; fiddle tunes, on a foundation of formalism, rise to integrate the genres.  While at the Montana Artists Refuge Michael’s work will focus more directly on fiddle tunes and improvisation from those tunes. He will use both viola and violin in this work.  Likewise, with Adam Nordell and guest musicians, they’ll be working with these folk traditions and their contemporary manifestations.

June Oechler Underwood was at the Montana Artists Refuge during the months of December 2007 and January 2008.

June Oechler Underwood, Portland, Ore., taught English language and literature in Kansas, Wyoming, New York, and Virginia during the waning decades of the 20th century.

During her tenure in Kansas, she also worked in educational TV at Emporia State University. Her TV productions included an award-winning docu-drama, “Blessed, Blessed Mama,” set in rural Kansas. She served for a time as associate dean of E-State's college of liberal arts and sciences. After moving to Portland in 1989, she began to work as a studio-quilt artist with strong interests in oil painting, watercolor, and textile sculpture.

The botanicals and landscapes of June’s art are “realistic” but only as her mind works on them. June sees meanings in particular geologic formations, then brings those meanings to her visual art. Her landscapes range from on-site paintings with identifiable or named features to studio work from imaginary terrains of her mind. She uses traditional painting and stitching techniques, working with paper, canvas, and silk. She often presents the same motif in different media to test how meanings vary as the medium changes; she works both abstractly and representationally. A brooding vision lurks behind her apparently outgoing nature and informs her art with depth, complexity, and shadow.

The specific subject she is working with currently is the landscape encountered in the John Day Fossil Beds in Eastern Oregon. The John Day River area, a range and badlands region, exposes the origins of the land, showing in its rawness the volcanic explosions, wind, water and other land-mass forming forces that brought it into being. These landscapes convey quite specific meanings to June – meanings dealing with life forces, with intimacy and generation, with aloof force and rocky stoicism. At the Montana Artist’s Refuge, she will be working on further geologic time structures, painting on canvas and silk.

 June is a member of Studio Art Quilt Association, the Surface Design Association, and the American Society of Crows and Ravens. She has exhibited locally at ONDA and the Guardino Gallery. She has also been part of many group exhibits, showing, for example, at the Sedgwick Cultural Center in Philadelphia, Pa., Quilt National at the Dairy Barn in Athens, Ohio, and the Chandler Center for the Arts in Chandler, Ariz.

Her husband of 40-plus years, Jerry, a writer of satire; daughter, Jan, winner of the 28th Annual International 3-Day Novel Contest; and one grandchild also live in Portland.

DECEMBER

Melissa Bangs was at the Montana Artists Refuge in December. Melissa is a fourth-generation farm girl from Montana. She was born and raised in Missoula on an organic subsistence farm. Melissa has dedicated much of the last decade and a half of her life to social change and activism.

She has worked with immigrant communities as a labor organizer in textile factories. She trained young labor organizers on campaigns in the Flathead Valley through the AFL-CIO’s Union Summer, and as the Development Director of an international human rights and women’s empowerment organization, The SHARE Foundation.

As a painter, Melissa is self-taught. Her works have followed in the same vein as her activism, social change. In 2005, Melissa developed the show VETERAN VOICES. It is a collection of cut-watercolor paper and mixed-assemblage collage portraits made of burnt wood and metal. Each piece is accompanied by the words of an Iraq veteran that returned from a tour of duty and refused to redeploy – some ending up in prison, others with a dishonorable discharge and restriction to base – all of them with something utterly powerful to say about freedom.

Other recent works include: a collection of water-color/cut-paper collages focusing on U.S. Imperialism – shown in Brooklyn, New York at Naidre’s (June 2004); a series of shows at City Art in San Francisco, touching on issues ranging from bio-engineered food to mad cow disease (2000-2002).

In 2005, during the 25th Anniversary Commemoration of the Assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero – Melissa’s original painting of Romero was dedicated to the nuns that care for the humble home that was once his. This painting will hang in Romero’s home in perpetuity. Thousands of people from around the world travel to Romero’s home each year. Once there, they pay homage to his living spirit and to his willingness to speak out against U.S.-backed violence and oppression in El Salvador, even in the face of certain death.

Check out the Events page for information about her exhibit on March 7 in Missoula.

NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER

Janet Christenot was at the Montana Artists Refuge during the months of November and December.

She says: "Drawn to the outdoors and the beauty of the wheat fields at harvest time, I hand gathered stalks of golden grain and found that weaving wheat was a natural creative expression for me.

As an explorer of this ancient art form, my goal is to let the possibilities present themselves whether it is through intricately woven designs or enjoying the challenge and sense of excitement that comes with creating an original and unique work of art.

The remoteness of the expansive prairie provides me with daily inspiration and has helped me as an artist to develop my own style and techniques.

Wheat weaving has origins that have been dated over 8,000 years to the Egyptians. Many ancient cultures believed that a spirit lived in the grain and the weaving provided a trap for the spirit of the field, hoping to ensure a good growing season in the spring.

AUGUST

Nancy Glover was at the Montana Artists Refuge during the month of August. She worked on "bringing together the intuitive, process - oriented abstractions and her interests in the tradition of botanicals." Glover is interested in painting in the presence of her childhood landscape (Montana) rather than in its absence.

Glover received her BA at the University of Montana, Missoula and her MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York. In 2005 she received her certificate in Botanical Illustration from the New York Botanical Gardens. Glover has taught high school and college art classes in New York and Portland, Oregon. She has exhibited her work in several solo and group exhibitions in New York. In 2004 Nancy received the Talas Award. She has participated in several other residency programs.

Angela Zammarelli was at the Montana Artists Refuge for the month of August.  She planned to do a lot of puttering in her studio but mainly focused on work for "When I go Like This, You Will Know it is Time."

Zammarelli's current works focus on exploration through play, mainly in domestic interior spaces. Here she comes into contact with different beings and learns about their lives and functions in regards to each other.    She is interested in the space that one can get to through play and how vivid and "real" it becomes.  She recieved her BFA from UMass Amherst in 2003 and her MFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design in the spring of 2007.

Casey Charles was at the Montana Artists Refuge during the month of August.  He planned to complete his poetry manuscript and work on new poems.  Casey also plans to revise some previous fiction writing as well.

Charles is Professor of English at the University of Montana, where he teaches law and literature, gay and lesbian studies, and Shakespeare. The Sharon Kowalski Case: Lesbian and Gay Rights on Trial (Kansas 2003) was nominated for a nonfiction Publishing Triangle Award in 2004. His poetry chapbook, Controlled Burn appeared in 2007 (Pudding House Press), and his manuscript, Writing it Out, was a finalist for the May Swenson Prize in 2006.  Most recently Charles is the author of “Our Homo Town” in the Missoula Independent (July, 2007) and “Patricia, la Poeta” a poem in Neo (July, 2007).

JULY

Mulderry is a scholar of U.S. history who is currently working as a lecturer and assistant director of the Social Studies undergraduate program at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  She holds a Ph.D. (’06) in American History from Brandeis University.  What unites Darra’s teaching and writing is her passion for telling life stories and her interest in revealing changing ideas of “the good” as expressed in political thought, literature, theology, psychology, and education in the 19th and 20th centuries.  Prior to her graduate studies, Darra worked as a Jesuit volunteer in Great Falls, Montana (1981-82); taught secondary school in Albany, New York; led intercultural adult education programs on nonviolent conflict resolution in India; worked as a program evaluator for the New York City Board of Education; and taught in a G.E.D. program for women on public assistance in Boston.

Daniele Lambrechts was at the Montana Artists Refuge during the month of July.  She planned to “absorb and paint the great western landscape, its broadness and particular drama as opposed to the tightness and closeness of the Eastern landscape.” Through her landscape work she explores shapes and colors.

Lambrechts was born and educated in France. She has lived in California and New England.  Daniele attended classes at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts; Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine and Art Student League of New York City.  She has also studied with a number of Maine artists.  Lambrechts worked 25 years in the museum world before she came to live in Maine, settling in Bath, on the Kennebec River.  She started painting seriously 7 years ago.

Eric Moe resided at the Montana Artists Refuge during the months of June and July with his wife Barbara Weissberger.  Eric planned to spend this time composing a Concerto for Percussionist Robert Schultz and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.

Eric, 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, 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.

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 will soon be available on a Koch International Classics compact disc. Other all-Moe CDs are available on Albany Records (Kicking and Screaming, Up & At ‘Em), Koch (Sonnets to Orpheus and Siren Songs), and Centaur (On the Tip of My Tongue).

Also a pianist and keyboard player, Moe has performed works by hundreds of composers, from Anthony Davis to Stefan Wolpe. His playing can be heard on the Koch, CRI, Mode, and AK/Coburg labels in the music of John Cage, Roger Zahab, Marc-Antonio Consoli, Mathew Rosenblum, and Felix Draeseke. 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 was educated at the University of California at Berkeley (M.A., Ph.D.) and at Princeton University (A.B.) He is currently Professor of Composition and Theory at the University of Pittsburgh, where he directs the graduate program in composition and the department's electroacoustic music studio. More information is available at his website, <www.ericmoe.net>.

Barbara Weissberger resided at the Montana Artists Refuge in June and July with her husband Eric Moe.  She worked on drawings that explore the themes of “consumption and the body, and how these intersect with ‘supersize me’ America.”

Weissberger  investigates the continuum between nature and culture by constructing images from fragments of muscle magazines and her own photographs of hamburgers, crocheted blankets, butterflies and other natural and artificial imagery. Each work is based on a preliminary collage and takes its final form as a watercolor drawing. Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma have both informed her muscle-meaty inventions. Recent shows include PCA, Pittsburgh, PA (solo April/May 2007); Capsule Gallery, NYC (solo); SPACES Gallery, Cleveland, OH; the Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; and the traveling exhibition Figures of Thinking. Numerous residencies include MacDowell, Yaddo, VCCA and MAR. Weissberger is the recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2007!

Susan Rushing Adams was at the Montana Artists Refuge with her family during the months of June and July.  She planned to complete and revise her short stories, take photos of places around the Basin area, and work on her novel.

Susan is working on her PhD in literary studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she is editor of Sojourn, A Journal of the Arts.  Her interests include creative writing, contemporary American fiction and poetry, and medical humanities.  Her writing experiments with blending poetry with prose, text with image.  Adams most loves being in mountains and forests, so Basin is now one of her favorite places.

Tim Willey resided at the Montana Artists Refuge in June.  He spent his time writing poems and stories.

Born 1955 in Bird Island, Minnesota, and raised on the family farm, Tim is the eldest of nine children.  He received his BAA (applied arts) in education, with majors in Theatre, English, and Communications, from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, in 1978.  Willey earned his MFA in Theatre (directing) from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1986.

As a teacher, Tim has survived two states, four high schools, nine principals, and 25 years in the classroom.  In theatre, a life-long passion, he has designed, built, directed, and managed stage productions (occasionally even performing) for three decades.  Venues range from high school to university, community to semi-professional (he was paid).

In writing, a relatively recent pursuit, Tim is working on a collection of poetry and autobiographical tales based upon a five-generation tradition of family gatherings and heritage entitled Making Sausage.  He is also writing The English Teacher’s Guide to Survival in an NCLB Era (or Passive Resistance in the Active Voice).  Tim currently resides in Great Falls, Montana, teaching at C.M. Russell High School.

Josh Goldman was at the Montana Artists Refuge during the months of April and May.  He composed a few electroacoustic sound works for computer/CD generated playback and for computer/CD generated playback with guitar.  He will submit these pieces to competitions and festivals and as part of various PhD applications.

Catherine Morgan resided at the Montana Artists Refuge during the months of April and May.  She worked on a rough draft of her next novel. Morgan is a writer who currently splits her time between Berea, Kentucky and Cambridge, Massachusetts where she is pursuing a Masters degree at Harvard University. Her undergraduate degree is from Berea College, a tuition-free labor college founded to educate students from the Appalachian mountain region. Her writing is concerned with presence and absence, and the silence which is found even in the most intimate of relationships. Often set in Kentucky, Catherine’s writing focuses on a wide range of topics, including:  bluegrass and country music, tobacco-farming, horse-racing, and familial relations, etc. while incorporating motifs from Biblical texts and Classical mythology.

Barbara Mehlman was at the Montana Artists Refuge during the months of April, May and June.  She worked on the “contemporary portrait”; a combination of traditional and digital media, sculpture, painting, digital painting , and video.  She will explore “how one could keep with the structure and idea of a painting but still have it move”.

Mehlman received her M.F.A from Claremont Graduate School in Painting and Installation Art.  She continues to teach at the college and university level in both the Digital and Art Divisions. Barbara is inventive in her ability to work with multiple mediums including traditional paint materials, sculpture (plaster, wire, paper) and digital media (painting, photography, animation). She leverages one medium with another to create a work that integrates live action and imagery together with her strong painting style.  Mehlman founded VIA/Visual Intelligence Artists to develop the technology and process for creating Artitorials, (Art + Editorial) or the ability to go on-site to an event and create digital short stories in real time.  She received a grant (titled Random Portraits) to create Artitorials of the people of Sicily, Italy. Barbara is looking forward to creating new work at the Montana Artists Refuge this year. She continues to maintain an active studio, invent new combinations of media, and seek out new adventures in teaching, traveling and painting.

Eliza Martin spent the month of April at the Montana Artists Refuge.  Martin writes, “Human interactions are what make life worth living”.  She plans to create an art installation which highlights her study of people “who do not fit into the normal description of success.”  This installation will include:  photographs, sound bytes, large scale oil paintings and books, all developed to invite the viewer’s interest in a person’s story.

Martin was born in Los Angeles, California and raised in the mountains of rural Virginia.  She focused on black and white photography in high school.  She began painting in The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Eliza transferred to the University of Virginia to study at the Curry School of Education.  She graduated with a Bachelors degree in Studio Art with a concentration in Painting and Photography and a Masters degree in Education.  Since graduating Eliza taught middle school art for two years and then left to pursue her art fulltime.  She currently lives and paints in Scottsville, Virginia.

In her art, Martin draws inspiration from the natural world, and the stories and faces of the people around her.  Her main focus in painting is to create a feeling or emotion to connect with the viewer.  There is a look in the eyes of the subject, or a feeling conveyed by the mood of the painting that seems familiar.  The idea is to find those universal human truths that create a connective tissue that draws all people together.

2006 Residents

MORE INFO ON 2006 RESIDENTS

Charlotte Abernathy
Susan Adams
Sean Bennett
Barbara Blatner
Christiane Buell
Erika DeVries
Simon Hemingway
Sean Hill
Ariana Kelly
Karen Land
Eric Moe
Bill Rau
Michele Weinstein
Douglas (D.J.) Garrity
Annie McDuffie
Valerie Powell
Barbara Weissberger

2005 Residents

MORE INFO ON 2005 RESIDENTS

Winter/Spring

Vanessa Renwick
Sean David Bennett
Doug Lawder
Rebecca Roush

June
Monica Regan
Jeff Stautz
Darlene H. Johnson PSA

July
Mark So
Tseten Dorjee
Gyurme Sonam
Ngawang Choephel

August
Diane Hoffman
Sara Tabbert
Carol Dysinger

September
Priscilla (Pat) Hanson
Mei-Tsung Lee
Rae Ellen Lee

• Heywood Big Day Sr., Crow historian and story teller, bead and feather artist
• Mary Lou Big Day, traditional Crow doll maker
• Derek Big Day, hides and beads, saddle bags and parflecheli
• William Big Day, painter
• Debra Magpie Earling, Salish poet and fiction writer

2004 Refugees MORE INFO ON 2004 RESIDENTS (coming as soon as we can get to it)

January - June
Laura Taylor - painter

February
Linda Hanson

March
Gina Greene - painting and drawing

April
Bently Spang & Bert Benally - filmmakers/performance artists

May
Genya Turvosky - poet & translator
Jan Beatty - poet
Joel Lang - writer

June
Helen Solmes - black and white landscape photographer

July
Chanda Feldman - poet
Joyce Koskenmaki - painter

August
Don Shewey - writer

June - August
Eric Moe - composer
Barbara Weissberger - visual artist

September
Ron Surak - musician/composer

September - December
Christianne Buell - painter
Sung Hong Min - visual artist

October - December
Simon Peter Hemingway - screenwriter/filmmaker
Rory Golden - illustrator/painter

December
Fei Lui - playwright

2003 Refugees

December 2003 - March 2004

Chris Rowland - painter
Recipient of American Indian Artists' Residency, 2003-4
Recent Press Coverage
Website

November - December
Adam Parker Smith - dollmaker and painter
Laura Taylor

October - November
Jill Ballard - photographer

October
Delaney Henderson - painter

September
Carson Ellis - visual artists
Scott Muskin - writer
Brian Hoxha - visual artist

August
Jen Richardson
Bill Fiorella

July
Rachel Abraham
Barbara Weissberger
Eric Moe

June
Shaun Cassidy - sculptor
Ralph Barton
Nathan Peck

May
Jaime Snyder - painter
Lois Williams - writer

April - May
Margaret Baldwin
Melissa Brewer

March - April
Benny Alba - painter/photographer

March
Steve Luber
Kathleen Beusoleil

Winter/Spring 2002
Benny Alba - painter
Monica Bauer - painter
Leslie Carper - writer
Rachel Davis - visual artist
Kristi Hager - painter, dancer, performance artist
Elaine Pawlowicz - painter/quilter
Harold & Cathy Hoy - painter & sculptor

Summer 2002
Cynthia Hilts - pianist, composer, and vocalist (also 2000, 1999, 1998)
Eric Moe - pianist/composer (also summer 2001)
Harvey Stein - playwright, screenwriter, film and stage director, performance artist and teacher (also Fall 2000).
Ben and Anna Stroud - painter and flamenco dancer/painter
Barbara Weissberger - visual artist (also summer 2001)

Fall 2002
Myrna Massey - sculptor
Louise Diedrich - videographer, drawer and multimedia artist.
Sara Eckel - writer

Fall 2002 - American Indian Artists Residency
William Big Day - painter
Jeneese Hilton - painter
Bently Spang - conceptual, performance, and video artist

2001 Refugees

Winter/Spring 2001
Gabrielle Daniels - novelist
Timothy Hassenstein - sculptor
Liu Xinping - fashion designer
Dan Robbins - alabaster stone sculptor

Summer 2001
Jennifer Cady - photographer
Sarah Dunn - novelist
Martha Hayden - landscape painter
Janette K. Hopper - landscape and figure painter

Fall 2001
Pamela Alexander - poet
Kim Bendheim - writer/poet
Annie Heminway - writer
Roland Iselin - photographer
Carol Mauriello - writer

2000 Refugees (more to come!)

Judith Arcana - writer/poet
Rebecca Bailey - writer/poet
Miroslaw Rydzak - wood sculptor
Nikki Schrager - sculptor
Celeste Sotola - painter (visit sotolaart.com and montanadreamwear.com)

1999 Refugees

Carolyn Graye - Winter
Lloyd Van Brunt - Winter/Spring
Bridget Raggio - Winter
Diane Corson - Winter
Mary Rodgers - Spring
Prudence Horne - Spring
Cheryl Strattman-Bubier - Spring
David Harmon - Spring
Judy Elsley - Spring
Eileen Torpy - Summer
John Reynolds - Summer
Niki Kriese, painter - Summer
Marianne Weil - Summer
Bongi Bengu - painter/sculptor - Summer
Carol Dysinger - Summer
Nancy Collins-Warner - Fall
Timothy Hassenstein - Fall/Winter
Amy Peterson - Fall/Winter
Sarah Tabbert - Fall/Winter
Jason Noble - Fall/Winter
Natalie Reid - Winter

1998 Refugees

Lloyd Van Brunt - Winter - Fall
Melinda Scully - Winter
Stephen Page - Spring
Sara Tabbart - Spring
Rene Westbrook - Spring
Michael Haykin - Summer
Cynthia Hilts- Summer
Victoria Carlson - Fall
Karen Klein - Fall
Lori Batcheller - Fall
Natalie Reid - Winter
Carolyn Graye - Winter

1997 Refugees

Nathan Perry, Painter -Winter 1996-1997
Jacqueline Nolte - art historian, art critic and sculptor - Spring/Summer
Antoinette Zanda - anti-racism activist, women's rights advocate, and writer - Spring/Summer
Jeannie Brehaut - Spring
Jo Going - Spring
Michael Haykin - Spring/Summer
Terry Millikan - Summer
Jeffrey Gustavson - Fall
Prudence Horne - Fall
Lloyd Van Brunt - Fall/Winter

1996 Refugees

Nathan Perry, Painter - Winter (1996-1997)
Cynthia Handel - Winter
Michael Haykin - Summer
Iiona Granet - Summer
Don Kurka - Summer

1995 Refugees

McCarthy Coyle - Winter/Spring
Pat Thomas - Spring
Holly Fisher - Summer
Mary Carouthers - Summer
Margaret Baldwin - Summer/Fall
Karen Land - Fall
Nathan Perry - Winter

1994 Refugees

Martha Shade - Summer.
Pamela Hartvig - Winter