2006 Residents

August 2006 MFA Residents

Joshua D. Kanies – Harvard, IL; MFA Filmmaker and Visual Artist from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Originally from the rural plains of Illinois and now living/working in the city of San Francisco.  He holds an MFA in Filmmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BFA in Computer Art & Design from Iowa State University. He has studied under and worked with influential filmmakers such as George Kuchar and Ernie Gehr.  Best described as "poetic documentary," his filmmaking style focuses on personal expression, landscape and nature.  His work has been exhibited locally and internationally.

Mark Matthews – Writer from the University of Montana, Missoula.
Mark grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts, and attended Brandeis University where he played basketball for coach K.C. Jones and earned a degree in literature in 1974. After working as an equal opportunity assistant with the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in the mid-1970s he moved to South Freeport, Maine, where he lived in a small shack down by the harbor and made wooden sculptures. In 1988 he moved to Montana to work on a ranch and eventually traded sculpting for writing. After earning an M.A. in journalism at The University of Montana in 1995, he worked as a freelance correspondent for such publications as The Washington Post, High Country News, Engineering News-Record, and Indian Country Today. He returned to UM last year to earn an MFA in Creative Writing, and this year he plans to finish off an MA in literarture. Eventually he hopes all the training will lead to a teaching position at the college level. His first book, ''Smoke Jumping on the Western Fireline: Conscientious Objectors during World War II,'' (University of Oklahoma Press-2006) is fresh off the presses.  His second book, ''A Great Day to Fight Fire: Mann Gulch, 1949,'' is already under contract with the U-OK Press and is due out in Fall, 2007. Mark has also completed a novel based on the experiences of the World War II conscientious objector smoke jumpers. This summer he plans to work on a new novel at the Artists Refuge in Basin, Montana.

General Residency
January - July 2006

Ariana Kelly – Poet from Seattle – July 2006. Ariana Kelly grew up in rural New Hampshire and graduated from Yale University in 1999 with a B.A. in Literature.  After graduation, she lived in Ireland, Colorado, and then Utah, where she taught English Literature and Composition at a private high school for three years.  In 2005, she earned an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Washington in Seattle, where she currently lives and works.  She has poems out or forthcoming in journals such as Crab Creek Review, Bellingham Review, and Filter.  At the Montana Artists Refuge she is working on a book-length manuscript of poems entitled Sea Level.

Barbara Weissberger - From Pittsburgh – July 2006
Barbara’s comic, grotesque gouache and watercolor drawings of hamburgers, meat, and blob-like bodies mix painterly gestures with pop iconography. Inspiration for the drawings is equally wide ranging, from fast food advertising to Breugel’s Seven Deadly Sins.  “Supersize Me” meets the hungry ghost of Tibetan Buddhism.  While at MAR she is working on a series of watercolor drawings derived from collages made up of pieces from muscle magazines and her own photographs of hamburgers, flowers, fabrics and more. Each watercolor drawing is based on a specific collage.

Recent activities include a one-person exhibition at Capsule Gallery, NYC;  “Gestures”, a group exhibition at the Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh, PA;  the traveling group exhibition “Figures of Thinking” which will open in October at the McDonough Museum of Art, Youngstown, OH; and an upcoming one-person exhibition at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh, PA. Past exhibitions include Watch What We Say, Schroeder Romero Gallery, 2004, Brooklyn, NY; Terrible Danger Ahead, Pelham Art Center, 2004, Pelham, NY; Repulsion, Illinois State University, 2004, Normal, IL; Man Walks Into a Room, DUMBO Art Center, 2002, Brooklyn, NY; Outer Boroughs, White Columns, NYC; and 100 Drawings, PS1 Contemporary Institute of Art, Long Island City, NY.  Artist's fellowships include residencies at the Montana Artists Refuge, at Yaddo (recipient of a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Fellowship 2000) and repeated residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Virgina Center for the Creative Arts (recipient of a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation grant, 2000 and Vera I. I Heinz Fellowship 2005). 

Eric Moe - From Pittsburgh – June and July 2006
Eric Moe is a composer of what the NY Times calls "music of winning exuberance." He 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, and the American Dance Festival.

All-Moe CDs may be found on the Albany, Koch, and Centaur labels. His recent ”one-woman opera” Tri-Stan was hailed by the New York Times as “a blockbuster” and “a tour de force”; “the evening’s biggest event”, a work of “inspired weight” that “subversively inscribe[s] classical music into pop culture”; it will shortly be available from Koch International Classics. 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 electroacoustic music studio. More information is available at his website, www.ericmoe.net.

This summer at MAR, he is writing a work for the New York New Music Ensemble, using generic superhero narratives as a programmatic template. He is also composing a work for flutist Tara O'Connor and pianist Peggy Kampmeier, who are members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the New Millennium Ensemble.

Barbara Blatner is a playwright, poet and composer from New York.  Her verse play, “No Star Shines Sharper,” produced in 2003 by Mystic Theatre Company, was published by Baker’s Plays (1990), aired repeatedly on National Public Radio stations and acquired by New York’s Museum of Television and Radio.  Recent readings at the Abingdon Theatre in New York include “Clearing” and “White Ashes.”  “Grassy Knoll” was produced in New York’s Turnip Theatre’s Short Play Festival (1997);  “Shadow Play” received a workshop production at the Cleveland Public Theatre (1993).  Barbara’s adaptation of Borowski’s “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” was commissioned by New Voices and presented at the Boston Public Library (1992). 

Plays staged at Boston’s New Theatre include “Betty and Mortie, Years of Sky”  (Honorable Mention, Actors/Writers Short Play Contest), and “Marilyn Monroe in the Desert.”  “Clearing” and “White Ashes” were finalists in the O’Neill contest.  Music compositions include songs for Boston Shakespeare Company productions, and scores for Rosanna Alfaro’splays “Pablo and Cleopatra,” “Mishima” and “Dimsumzoo.”

Barbara’s poetry chapbook, “The Pope In Space,” was published by Intertext Press (1986).  Poems and plays have appeared in Poetry Northwest, The New York Quarterly, Lift, Apalachee Quarterly, 13th Moon, and most recently in Big Scream, House Organ and Shampoo. 

At the Montana Artists Refuge, Barbara has been revising two full-length plays, “Marilyn Monroe in the Desert,” which had a reading at New York’s Abingdon Theatre in June, and “Years of Sky,” a story told backwards in time about a biracial couple who witness John Kennedy’s assassination on the grassy knoll.

Painter Charlotte Abernathy, from Ashland, Oregon is an award-winning signature member of several artists’ societies, and has had her work in many competitive national exhibits, in addition to invitational exhibits and six solo shows in the Northwest.  She specializes in landscapes, using oil or pastel for studio work, and oil when working on site.  Charlotte’s work reflects her fascination with sunlight, and her skill in capturing its effects on the landscapes she paints.  As a participant in Plein-Air festivals and as a member of Alla Prima International, she travels around the country to paint on location.

During her stay at the Refuge, she is experimenting with acrylics in the studio and getting out most days to paint local landscapes.

May 2006

Poet Sean Patrick Hill, from Portland, Oregon used his time at the Refuge to write and make final revisions to 50 pages of poetry for his M.A. Thesis at Portland State University. 

Writer Anne L. McDuffie, from Seattle, Washington worked on a series of lyric essays about three generations of her Irish immigrant family in Butte.  She is in her second year in a low-residency MFA program through the Rainer Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University, Parkland, WA.

Painter and Mixed Media Artist Valerie Powell, from Pullman, Washington used collage approaches to shrinkable plastic, fabric, wrapping paper and acrylic paint to create 3-dimensional forms. Her stay at the Refuge gave her time and space to take her work to a new level and explore new approaches to material, surface and mark making.  She is finishing her MFA at Washington State University and is a Graduate Instructor in Painting and Design.

Fall 2005 - Spring 2006

Christiane Buell, painter from Zurich, Switzerland (November 2005 – April 2006) is back for her second winter at the Refuge.  Christiane is working in a larger format (5'x 6') this winter.  Her paintings come from a desire to decode new environments and place herself in new locations.  Each painting is built up in a slow process and layer upon layer is created which eventually will be sanded, over-painted or scraped away.

Simon Hemingway, scriptwriter, filmmaker, writer (November 2005 – March 2006), originally from Alberta, Canada, came to the refuge and decided to stay in the area. Simon has BFA, MA, and Ph.D. degrees in Cinema and Communications. In the year since his last residency at the Refuge, he has lived in California, Washington, and Alberta. His writing resume encompasses biography, academic writing, technical writing, grants, and screenplays. His safaris in the screen trade have resulted in grants, a development deal, a development loan, the sale of screenplay options, and WGA membership. Most of Simon's fiction writing falls somewhere on a continuum between horror and surrealism. Simon's current project is a novel that chronicles a woman's disintegration after her husband is lost at sea.

Former Refugee (winter 1996) Karen Land--artist, writer and sled dog musher (November 2005 - May 2006)--is working on a nonfiction book about her experience training dogs and running the Iditarod Race.  In January she ran the Elkford Wilderness Classic in Elkford, British Columbia.

Michele Weinstein, pen and ink artist from Connecticut (January - April 2006), has been making pen and ink drawings and watercolors that both embody and dissolve the insidious discomfort of living in a world that is better suited to corporations than individuals. While in Basin she plans to begin a new series of abstracted forests.  In fairytales forests are simultaneously an escape and a new threat.  These drawings will be allegories of the belief in a safe place, where the new dangers arrive from a freedom of the mind.  The Refuge is a perfect place to embark upon this series – a perfect combination of wildness and safety. She has shown her work in New York City, New York State, New Jersey, Connecticut, Virginia and Maine.  In September 2006 she will be a resident of the Vermont Studio Center.

Sculptor and Painter Douglas J. (DJ) Garrity works within a variety of mediums, which include marble, granite, bronze, oils and acrylics.  He is at the Refuge from March - May 2006. His stylistic approach ranges from stark realism to pure abstraction as his work explores the essence of personality, emotion and nuance of the human condition. The artist divides his time between Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota and Taos, New Mexico. Garrity’s work has been exhibited in Boston, South Dakota, Ireland, the Island of Nantucket and New Mexico. He also devotes a portion of each year to living in South Dakota, as the Sculptor-in-Residence, of Mount Rushmore National Memorial. www.djgarrity.com

ach Keeting came to Montana as the first recipient of the Amici Scholarship, funded by a group of friends in Helena! A painter, experimental musician, and photographer, he has been "painting, drawing, making short films, recording albums, and photographing the world. To make visual what is within, and to share what surrounds."

A resident of New Haven, CT, and a graduate of Alfred with an MFA from Boston University, Zach drove cross country to be in residence for the month of November, during which he focused on photography.

In his words, "It was an intensely productive period. I shot with a frenzy all month long. There was so much to see: kids out skating on the lonely streets of Butte, bundles of twisted barbed wire against cliffs of ochre earth, abandoned tunnels and heavily logged hills, white plastic flowers in dry white snow, an animal's spine nailed to a telephone pole. It was an incredible trip of long walks searching. I have two large freezer bags full of film awaiting development."

To see more of Zach's work, visit http://www.zacharykeeting.com/

Poet, Raina J. León – Carrboro, North Carolina

Raina J. León, Cave Canem fellow and member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective and the Friday Noon Poets, is currently a doctoral student in education at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.  A graduate of Teachers College Columbia University (MA in Teaching of English, 2004) and Penn State University (BA in Journalism, 2003), her poetry has been featured in New York City through the LouderArts Project Cave Canem spotlight at Bar 13, Cornelia Street Café, the Nuyorican Poets Café, and Bowery Poetry Club. 

She has also been featured around the country at bookstores, festivals and conferences such as the Quail Ridge Bookstore in Raleigh, Virginia Festival of the Book, and the College English Association Conference 2006.  She has been published in Poetic Voices without Borders, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade, Growing Up Girl: An Anthology of Voices from Marginalized Spaces, AntiMuse, Farmhouse Magazine, Furnace Review, and Constellation Magazine, among others. 

Her first collection of poetry, Canticle of Idols, was a finalist for both the Cave Canem First Book Poetry Prize (2005) and the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize (2006).  She founded and curates the open mic and reading series, Touchstones.

Poet, Laurelyn Whitt – Spanish Fork, Utah

Much of the poetry I have written to this point explores various types of interstitial spaces: those brought into existence by efforts to assimilate indigenous peoples and cultures; by the experiences of immigrancy and the tension between new and old worlds; by the co-existence of the natural world and the spirit world (i.e. of life and death); and by the constant mending and rending that is so often the stuff of love. More generally, my work addresses what is at stake (personally, politically and culturally) in the drawing and crossing of boundaries. Boundary-drawing, like boundary-crossing, is a process riddled with subtleties, ambiguities and hesitancies. The poems acknowledge this, respect it, but also resist it. They attend to various things: to the spaces that interstitial beings make for themselves within boundaries; to their diverse transgressions of them; to their unique responses to mediating what is bounded; and to the ways their own existence sustains, even as it challenges, the existence of boundaries. These themes continue in my current work.

Academic, or scholarly, research tends to play a significant role in my work. When writing poetry about a particular phenomenon, I frequently steep myself for long periods in various studies (legal, historical, scientific, etc.) of the topic. I do not, however, try to import these into the poems; they are what bring me to the poems. And often what carries me through them. So I tend to end up bringing shelves of strange books with me to residencies: Black's Law Dictionary, histories of immigration and of imperialism, research on animal behavior and cognition, texts on endangered languages, and studies of death and dying.

Writer, Michael Sandoval – New York, NY

Michael grew up in a town just north of Detroit, and currently resides in New York City. He works freelance in film but loves teaching, and for part of the year serves as administrative director for one of the largest prep school film programs in the country. Michael has done extensive work directing and shooting. A documentary he directed, “The Good Son,” was one of twenty films selected to compete in the Berlin Film Festival. Michael’s narrative short, “Ariana,” was awarded Best Screenplay at the Arivano y Corto Film Festival in Italy. Last November, Michael had the pleasure of traveling to Japan to produce and shoot the documentary, “Out of Home,” which is screening at art galleries in Tokyo and Berlin. In November, 2007, he will shoot an independent film funded through the New York State Council on the Arts.

Along with a feature script, Michael is currently working on a novel about a young girl colliding with myth and magic in the Old West. There are rumors that a giant robot appears in the novel, but these have yet to be confirmed. When he returns to New York, He will continue his current work putting together educational collaborations with New York Museums.

Michael is the recipient of an MFA in Film Directing from New York University, where he was nominated for a Director’s Guild of America student award and won the Ang Lee Fellowship. He also received a Rackham Merit Fellowship for graduate studies at the University of Michigan, where he attained his MFA in Creative Writing.

Marietta F. King – Blackfeet - from East Glacier Park, Montana

Painter Mari King is a member of the Blackfeet Nation, Browning, MT.  Presently she serves as an adjunct instructor to the University of Montana,  School of Curriculum and Education, Missoula, and the Education Department of the Blackfeet Community College, Browning, MT.  She holds a Masters in Human Services: Counseling Psychology, and a BA in Criminal Justice; both from the University of Great Falls, Mt.  She is highly knowledgeable in the field of visual arts, Blackfeet traditional arts, and is the author of  Native American Food is Medicine and its companion Journal, Renewal of Life, (2002), published by J & M Publishers, Fargo, North Dakota.  Mari has served for the past 12 years as the Senior Blackfeet Honorary Advisory Council Coordinator for the Blackfeet community.  She served as the Dean of Academics and as a faculty member at the Blackfeet Community College.  Mari actively participates in and promotes Blackfeet traditional life-ways through education, ceremony, plants, and arts and crafts.

Trevino L. Brings Plenty – Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Eagle Butte, South Dakota.

Poet and Musician Trevino L. Brings Plenty currently lives and works in Portland, Oregon.  Trevino describes himself as an American and Native American; a Lakota Indian born on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, SD.  Some of his work explores the American Indian identity in American culture and how it has through genealogical history affected indigenous peoples in the 21st century.  He writes of urban Indian life; it’s his subject.  He has been published in Cold Mountain Review, Alchemy Literary Magazine, Portland Lights: a poetry anthology, Playing with a Full Deck: Anthology, Down in the Dirt, Open Wide Magazine (UK).

Mary Black Bonnet – Rosebud Sioux Tribe, South Dakota.

Writer Mary Black Bonnet lives in Vermillion, South Dakota with her husband where she received her BA in English at the University of South Dakota.  Mary has been writing much of her conscious life and won a young authors award in the seventh grade for a fiction story.  While in college she began writing nonfiction and ethno-historic essays.  She has published Poetry in Nagi-Ho Journal, Tribal College Journal, Potomac Review, and the Native Law and Policy Textbook: Native Women Surviving Violence. Her Essays have been published in Frontiers: a Journal of Women’s Studies, and Genocide of the Mind: New Native Writing.

Victor A. Charlo – Bitterroot Salish, member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai, Dixon, Montana

Writer Vic Charlo lives in Dixon, Montana and is the great-great grandson of Chief Victor Charlo of the Bitterroot Salish.  Through lineage, he is recognized as a spiritual leader.  He was born and raised in Evaro, Montana on the Flathead Reservation and attended high school in Missoula.  He then entered the seminary and studied to be a Jesuit for seven years.  After leaving the seminary he became passionately involved in Native causes through a variety of social justice venues, most notably The Poor People’s Campaign.  While pursuing further education at the University of Montana he met and befriended famed regional poet, Dick Hugo.  He received his Masters degree in Curriculum from Gonzaga University and returned to the Flathead reservation to co-found and principal the first all Indian Grade School, Two Eagle River School.