My favorites were the skylines, the museum and the war scenes. The skylines were well designed and the light coming through the windows made for good pattern & repetition. The war and museum scenes seemed to have a literary or historical quality that I liked. The way the figures are engaged in aspects that are off the page, for example, the figure in the cannon piece with his hand over his eyes looking into the distance The objects and figures in the war scenes suggest they take place during the Civil War era. I just really like the T-Rex fossil in the museum scene, but even in it there seems to be a sense of history when dinosaur skeletons were first being exhibited in museums. The large windows reminds me of Union Station in Kansas City when natural lighting was the only method to light a building. The other works here were mostly landscapes or an element of a landscape like an image of wheat. These were well crafted but lacked the conceptual & historical depth that the war and museum scenes provided.
Outside of the Catalyst we ran into members of Turning The Wheel doing street performance reminding us to let go, be creative, have fun and wake up.
Then we went to The Murphy-Jubb Fine Art Gallery, which neither Debby or I had been to before. The Gallery was on the third floor which provided some nice views, oh and there was some well done water color paintings of animals. Debby got caught up in a conversation with some folks while I was patiently itching to leave, so I mainly stared out the window. "Hurry up Debby, the well-painted, brightly colored animals are starting to give me funny looks."
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Back out to the street and we ran into this. Montana is magical and it is a treasure, but I think this would do better on a coffee mug. I think I may have liked the scribbles and poster remnants better.
The Missoula Art Museum (MAM) is having an opening, let's go. The MAM hosted a series of works by the artists, Freeman Butts (Click here for more details). The paintings in this show were all large containing references to nature, landscapes and figures.
This artists began making art in the hay day of Ab Ex and abstract painting in the U.S.. Butts' free wheeling and zen-like use of paint certainly contains the freedom that one would find in the 60s and 70s west coast culture suggesting he was more interested in the journey of painting rather than making high-priced art objects. His exploration of abstraction, landscapes, and figures reminds me of Willem DeKooning and Richard Diebenkorn. This man was certainly not afraid to wield the brush, which led to a very prolific body of work through out his lifetime. However, looking at his work in the present I feel like they were painted a bit too fast and lack in process or layering. Unlike Dekooning infinite layering/removal or Diebenkorn's atmospheric glazing, these paintings when viewed closely have little depth, but the bold gestural paint application succeeds well at a distance. Perhaps getting caught up in semantics may be irrelevant in regards to Butts' zen outlook towards life, but nonetheless it is just an observation. Also in this show we are a few sketches, some hand built clay figures, and a pair of his paint-covered overalls. This exhibition was gifted to the MAM by the family of Freeman Butts, to which his sister and granddaughter flew in from Los Angeles for the opening - they were the friendliest people I have met in a while. To learn more about Freeman Butts click on the link above and read about Steve Glueckert's first meeting with the artists.
Here is a shot of Freeman Butts' Sister and Grand Daughter - nicest folks ever.
There was also the annual Missoula Now show at the Ceretana which is curated by Patricia Thorton and Adelaide Every, of Dj Mermiad and Rooster Sauce fame. This show claims to exhibit the younger and/or lesser known Missoulians making art now. This show had some great work and I am hoping to post some pics and a bigger review later on.
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