The One Defined to Be No One

Sean Chandler

On View January 19 - March 5, 2024

Baucus Gallery

Opening:

Friday, January 19th from 6 - 8 pm

Cash bar (with non-alcoholic options) and appetizers available

Artist Talk & Reception: Jan 27th 6:30 pm

Sean Chandler will be joining us (in the W) to give a talk about his current exhibition.

“Chaotic and unanswered as a painting may seem, it confirms the disorder and grim questions created by complicated relationships between two worldviews—Indigenous and non-Indigenous. Maybe it’s peace that is sought out for balance.”

Sean Chandler (Aaniiih), grew up in Glendive, Montana, and his family was among the only Native family in the community. He received his BA in Art and MA in Native Studies at Montana State University in Bozeman. He later earned an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from the University of Montana while employed as Director of American Indian Studies at Aaniiih Nakoda College on Fort Belknap Agency in Harlem, Montana. Recently, he was promoted to President of the College in August 2020. After a long hiatus, Chandler returned to creating art in 2014 and later joined the artist collective Paintallica. His pieces range from oil, acrylic, paint stick, and charcoal on large canvases to drypoint prints and drawings. He cites Blackfeet artist Ernie Pepion (1943–2005), Salish Kootenai artist Corwin Clairmont, and Bozeman-based artist Jay Schmidt as mentors. He has received awards and exhibited

at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, and the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, Indiana, with work collected by the Museum of Natural History in Paris and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts Museum, Minnesota.

This exhibition is sponsored by the Montana Art Gallery Directors Association (MAGDA), a state-wide service organization for non-profit museums & galleries, and supported in part by grants from the Montana Arts Council, a state agency funded by the State of Montana; coal severance taxes paid based upon coal mined in Montana and deposited in Montana’s Cultural and Aesthetic Projects Trust Fund; and the National Endowment for the Arts.

“Once in the mode to create, I just let the work take me where I’m supposed to go… But very often, parts of the painting that seemed to be the best expressions turn out to be better by covering them up. Maybe that is partly due to me covering myself, layer by layer. More likely, however, it is a line formed by my own contemporary experiences in mainstream society connected to the years endured by ancestral experiences of dehumanization, racism, and cultural genocide.”

Co-Flourish

Over 30 artists from Montana & beyond, offered by Open AIR Montana

On View January 19 - March 14, 2024

Bair Gallery

Opening Reception:

Friday, January 19th from 6 - 8 pm

Cash bar (with non-alcoholic options) and appetizers available

In the year 2020, humanity faced great challenges – from the COVID-19 pandemic to worldwide protests against racialized violence, environmental vulnerabilities, and growing disparities between the wealthy and the poor. 2020 upended ‘business as usual’ and prompted important considerations and questions – about the nature and importance of communication, contact, technology, the growing importance of local communities the impact of global actions, the ramifications of institutional narratives, and beyond.

CoFlourish was born from the challenges of 2020. Featuring over 30 artists from Montana and beyond, this exhibition is a wedding of two initiatives: place-based artist-in-residency sessions and an inter-artist collaborative project. The initiatives focused on opportunities for artists to connect, examine, and ultimately create with one another and place during a disorienting time.

The Last Glacier



Ian van Coller, Bruce Crownover & Todd Anderson

On View January 19 - February 14, 2024

Millikan, Nicholson & Held Galleries

Opening Reception:

Friday, January 19th from 6 - 8 pm

Cash bar (with non-alcoholic options) and appetizers available

Artist Talk: January 19 at 6:30 p.m.

The Holter Museum of Art welcomes The Last Glacier: Images of Our Changing Landscape, an exhibition highlighting the collaborative documentary project, The Last Glacier lead by visual artists Todd Anderson, Bruce Crownover and Ian van Coller. This arts and science initiative–begun in 2009 when the three friends and artists hiked together in Glacier National Park–documents the effects of climate change on Glaciers throughout the world and unites visual artists, scientists, and writers who create convergent research on specific wilderness environments that are experiencing tangible and dramatic ecological changes.

The Last Glacier includes 34 original artworks including: color photographs of glacier by Montana artist Ian van Coller; colorful woodcut prints of glaciers using traditional Japanese style printmaking techniques by South Carolina artist Todd Anderson; and woodcut prints and watercolors by Wisconsin artist and master printer Bruce Crownover.

This arts and science initiative began in 2009 when the three friends and artists hiked together in Glacier National Park, and documents the effects of climate change on Glaciers throughout the world and unites visual artists, scientists, and writers who create convergent research on specific wilderness environments that are experiencing tangible and dramatic ecological changes.

A real "Pork of Art!"

A pig meets a cow, a cow meets a pig. The pig happens to be the famous painter and sculptor Pigasso, the cow happens to be the famous visual artist Mootisse. This delightful illustrated book tells the story of an unlikely creative friendship. Can we be friends in spite of our artistic differences? This is Education Director Anna Lund’s #1 favorite illustrated book. As a kid, her parents read this book to her. Now, she keeps a copy in the Museum’s Education office for interested students.

Illustrations by Nina Laden

By way of a kick-off of sorts, here's a Nikos Kazantzakis quote from his "Saviors of God" :: "Eros blows upon {hu}mankind & merges all breaths into one violent gale that can lift the eARTh! It typically {wo}manifests as Love, Dance, Longing, &/or Religion. Call it, if you will, the Face of God. These are the Four Steeds that driVe Eros's Chariot: Hunger, Pain, Shame, & Tears. Today God rages & threatens in the cellars & garrets of this beleaguered plaNet. This is the Truth that resides at the Centre of our HeArts. I love the Hungry, the Restless, the Vagabonds. The Unbelievers are the Satisfied, the Satiated, Those Who Have Sold Their Souls to eXcess. As the LumiNous Abyss between Good & Evil becomes Vaster, AlcheMystical Celestial Fire will Purify the eARTh, for we are liVing in a critical, violent m☼Ment of his{?}tory in which All Things Will Be Made New. The Wind of DeVastation is Blowing, leaving DeS☼late Waste Lands in its Wake. There is the Road of Virtue, & the Road of Evil; We must choose between the tWo. A New Sobriety is called for. This is the New Aesthetic, the Spiritual eXercises made New! We must transmute our Matter into Spirit, & Awake. Die every Day; Be Born aNew Every Day (&/or Year)."

As that other K. author of an 'Edifying Discourse' or two might -- in fact did -- say :: "A year has passed, a new year has begun, though as yet nothing has happened . . . the past is c☼Mpleted, the present is not, only the future is, which is yet to be determined (consider in this conteXt T. S. Eliot's reference to 'Madame Sosostris, famous clairVoyant' in his "The Waste Land," 1922 -- the same year that Kazantzakis's "Saviors of God" was begun).

"On this day/or time of year we traditionally wish everyone Good & eVery Good Thing . . . (Not so coincidentally, Kierkegaard's 'Preface' to his "Edifying Discourses" was written on May 5th, 1843, his 30th B-Day, whereas the 1st of his "Edifying Discourses" eVokes 'the first day of the new year . . .' As for the c☼Mmemoration of one's 30th B-Day, Dylan Thomas's 'Poem in October' was likewise c☼Mposed on Thomas's 30th B-Day, the 3rd line of which poem speaks of 'the heron-priested shore,' his 109th B-Day having coincided with my recent stay at St. Pete's. (SynchroniCity, you say, here in The Queen City tHereof : ) Needless to say, Dylan's 30th B-Day poem played a 'Sign'ificant role in my Not Going Gentle into That Good Night, as did K. Kesey's "One Flew oVer the Cuckoo's Nest" . . . tHereby hangs a tale or tWo. 

As for the other IMPlied FiVe K.s, they are Franz KAfKA, Milan Kundera, Danilo Kis (perhaps esp. for his "Homo Poeticus: Essays & InterViews," 1995), iVan Klima, & Laszlo Kraznahorkai, all quite deserving of the 'K.' appellation, in the Wake of Kierkegaard, KAfKA & Co.. And, No, Kosinski doesn't quite merit being included in this select c☼Mpany, although, when he's on his game, K. Kesey might. Yet another ponderworthy thought that bears consideration in this conTeXt is Evgeny Dobrenko's observation in his Intro. to M. BulgakoV's "White Guard" that in spite of the notion of 'Thundering Guns & Silent Muses,' the argument could be made that 'Thundering guns beget literature, for they beget pain, & pain begets literature. The 20th century was a century of great pain, & thus of great literature as well (M. BulgakoV's "The Master & Margarita" comes ineVitably to HeArt & MInd). Another way to phrase this core-curricular conundrum is Who would you care to weigh in the scales with the likes of Gogol, DostoeVsky, Tolstoy, BulgakoV & Pasternak? And, Yes, it has everything to do with the ineRADicable fact that Russia has suffered DEMONstrably more than most, much -- but not all -- from its own hellbent perVersities & repressive regimes. All of which proVides Good Learning Opportunities for the rest of us in harm's way. This is where Madame Sosostris signs off from her all-too-human propensity to reincarnate Nostradamus & Co. May The Good flourish during the c☼Ming Year . . .

-David Spencer, Holter Historian