Missoula Art Museum Contemporary Ceramics in Montana: Persistence in Clay by Missoula Art Museum

persistence in

co n t e m p o r a r y c e r a m i c s i n m o n ta n a

persistence in clay

persistence in

co n t e m p o r a r y c e r a m i c s i n m o n ta n a

with essays by H. Rafael Chac贸n, STEPHEN GLUECKER T, & RICK NE WBY

contents

foreword Laura Millin

clay and the classroom The Ceramics Program at the University of Montana

H. Rafael Chacón 12

home, home, on the range Contemporary Ceramics in Montana

Stephen Glueckert 19

montana’s archie bray foundation for the ceramic arts Origin and Impact

Rick Newby 25 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 65

exhibition catalog Dean Adams Adrian Arleo Stephen Braun Josh DeWeese Hannah Fisher Shanna Fliegel Julia Galloway Robert Harrison David Hiltner Trey Hill Sarah Jaeger Steven Young Lee Beth Lo Richard Notkin David Regan Alison Reintjes David Smith Tara Wilson Rosalie Wynkoop

artist biographies

foreword by L aur a M i l l i n

he breadth of this timely project has been realized in partnership with two fabulous granting agencies, Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) and Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, whose relevant approach to programming is rooted in an acute sensitivity to the field and the needs of arts organizations and artists. The Allen Foundation, aware of the Autio/Voulkos legacy in Montana, was keenly interested in supporting a project that looks at what the next generation of ceramic artists in Montana is creating. Indeed, assessment of this web of connection has come into focus lately, due to the influx of new artists, professors, residency directors to the scene as well as the impending 60th anniversary celebration of the Archie Bray Foundation. The difficulty and expense of traveling ceramic art has held MAM from this undertaking until the WESTAF Visual Arts Exhibition Touring program provided the assistance (made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Montana Arts Council). MAM is proud that a tour of the Persistence in Clay exhibition will begin with venues at the Crossroads Fine Arts Center, Baker City, OR and at the Nicolaysen Museum, Casper, WY. WESTAF’s VAT program required and supported the creation of an interactive web component to attend the

exhibition, which has been creatively realized by artist Geoffrey Pepos, resulting in an excellent and lasting document of the 19 artists involved (disc enclosed). The project heralds the continued spirit of collaboration by which the ceramic art community is characterized. We acknowledge the leadership and vision that Julia Galloway and Beth Lo brought to MAM in initiating this project. Stephen Glueckert, MAM Exhibitions Curator, demonstrates his deep knowledge and love of art in Montana with the resulting exhibition. It is our honor to publish the first scholarly document that details the legacy of ceramic art at The University of Montana, appropriately written by the brilliant art historian, Dr. H. Rafael Chacón. We acknowledge also with gratitude the committed work of Rick Newby, in acutely recording the resounding history of the Archie Bray, first published in A Ceramic Continuum: Fifty Years of the Archie Bray, now out of print. This project has served not only as a celebration, but as a teaching moment. For no matter how many times we experience the collaborative phenomena so necessary in the arts, it is through such an endeavor that we find confirmation in our mission. In Persistence in Clay we hear the voice of support for future collaborations and praise the vitality of the arts in this region.

clay and the classroom The Ceramics Program at the University of Montana b y H . R a fa e l C h a c ó n

ontana is known globally as a place for the study of modern ceramics, in no small part because of the strengths of its academic institutions. Ceramics at the University of Montana is a model academic program with an international reputation and a rich history. The arts have been a part of the University of Montana’s curriculum since the establishment of the state’s flagship educational institution in 1895, with the first drawing course offered in 1896. Clay first appeared in 1903 as a subject of instruction, alongside the crafts of rug design, lettering, book covers, basket weaving, and metallurgy. In 1926, after the retirement of long-time chairman Frederick D. Schwalm, the crafts were eliminated from the curriculum only to be restored in 1948 under Chairman Aden Arnold. Professor Walter Hook taught pottery as an “Elementary Craft,” in the ground floor of the Fine Arts building, the former Student Union building, until 1957. That year was a turning point for ceramics as it became a distinct area within what was then known as the Fine Arts Department. As part of President Carl McFarland’s push to modernize the burgeoning university in the aftermath of World War II, ceramics became the new face of art at the university with new facilities and Rudy Autio as the full-time head of the area. No person was more responsible for the creation of this academic program than Autio. For close to three decades, he exemplified the shared values of teaching and artistic production as well as a tenacious vision of ceramics as modern art. Generations of students and colleagues attest to how this artist-teacher encouraged them personally, certainly through persistent modeling, mentoring, and sometimes subtle cajoling, and how he subsequently transformed the landscape of ceramics in contemporary America.

Autio came to Missoula at the instigation of the visionary President McFarland. In 1952, while shopping in Helena for bricks for his new campus buildings, McFarland found Autio working at the Archie Bray Foundation. Initially hired to design an architectural mural for the exterior of the new Liberal Arts building, Autio eventually accepted McFarland’s invitation to create a bona fide ceramics program at the university. In fall 1957, Autio began throwing, firing, and glazing pots and making sculptures in a retired World War II barracks building and later the warming hut of the university’s Ice Skating Rink below Mt. Sentinel; these were not the best facilities, but a step up from the soda fountain on the ground floor of the former Student Union building. Convincing students to matriculate in the new classes was a struggle in the first year, but it did not take long for ceramics to be seen as a worthy art form and enrollments increased. Ceramics at the University of Montana quickly rose to international standing. By the mid-1960s, Montana was among the first-tier institutions in the United States, a list that also included Alfred University, the University of California at Berkeley and at Davis, Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, Scripps College, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The curriculum was decidedly modernist in orientation, reflective of Autio’s own education and orientation. What gave this program its open outlook was intimately tied to Autio’s personality as an artist, his pedagogy as a teacher, and a university that indulged his idiosyncratic teaching style. Functional pottery was balanced with sculpture. Autio taught the vessel and mural as staples—yet he nurtured experimentation with sculptural form, abstraction and figuration, glazing and firing techniques, and surface decoration, drawing, and painting. According to Martin Holt, the thrust was “to take the work wherever direction captured your interest.”

Students Sue Beckman, Dianne Pepper, and Jim Stephanson in the ceramics studio in 1967. All photographs in this section courtesy of Doug Grimm.

Autio’s classroom was characterized by its informality. Students, initially loyal to other studio arts, were increasingly drawn to the ramshackle ceramics studio because of its freedom from convention and openness to novel ideas. Autio introduced teaching with color slides of both art history and contemporary art. He inspired students with his discipline, affability, and sense of humor. He worked tirelessly, spending countless hours “knocking off pots alongside his students in the evenings; he taught by osmosis.” He invited international artists from as far as Finland and Japan to workshops and lectures in Missoula and encouraged cross-pollination with state-wide institutions such as the Bray. The Autio home in Missoula was a hub of constant artistic dialogue and exchange between professional artists, students, and friends. Autio’s own trajectory as an artist was on the rise; in his first two decades of teaching, he traveled and exhibited extensively; everywhere he went, he recruited the best students to Montana and sought out commissions and job opportunities for them. The Autio legacy carried on in alumni Jim Stevenson and Dave Dontigny at Pennsylvania State University, Fred Wollschlager at the San Francisco Art Institute, Martin Holt, Dave Askevold, and Ron Matthews at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School,

and Doug Baldwin there and at the Maryland Institute of Arts. These artists not only established successful academic programs of their own, but also helped create national professional organizations such as Supermud and later NCECA. UM’s faculty and alumni also created private studios, ceramicsbased projects, and schools such as the Clay Studio of Missoula, founded by Clare Ann Harff and Mike Kurz in 1998.

In the last quarter of the 20th century, the program expanded greatly in both the number of undergraduate majors, masters degree students, and faculty. Maxine Blackmer, Ken Little, Miska Petersham, Dennis Voss, Beth Lo, Tom Rippon, Trey Hill, and Julia Galloway joined the full-time faculty, each developing their own themes and styles, but always maintaining that atmosphere of a relaxed, communal, and supportive studio environment. Voss was especially known for encouraging experimental approaches and the engagement with a variety of materials, a tradition that continues today. Faculty members assigned to other areas, including Jim Leedy, gravitated to the medium and a younger generation of talented part-time faculty, including Tapio Yli-Viikari, Eddie Dominguez, Kris Nelson, David Smith, and David Regan, also contributed greatly. For close to three decades, the program has been under the direction of Professors Lo and Rippon (d. 2010), who nurtured all attitudes to clay, from the vessel to conceptual work. More recently, experimental and expressive approaches to functional ceramics have re-emerged as an important thread in the studio. In 1984, UM ceramics was among the first academic programs in the nation to build an Anagama kiln. The annual loading and firing of the kiln at Lubrecht Experimental Forest has become a ritual for students and faculty and a central part of

Above: Autio’s legacy reached far from Montana: alumnus Doug Baldwin and his students at the Bedford YMCA in New York City, 1966. Top: Rudy Autio with a ceramic sculpture on the university campus in 1959.

the curriculum. The camaraderie of ceramic students in the School of Art is legendary. The year-end sale of the Starving Students Ceramic Society (now UMECA), for example, is not only a consistently successful fundraiser, but also an annual ritual. In 1995, ceramics hosted “Woodstack,” an international symposium on wood-fired pottery that brought together many of the players who had moved pottery into the mainstream of contemporary art in the second half of the 20th century, including Don Bendel, Pete Callas, Josh DeWeese, Ken Ferguson, Torbjorn Kvasbo, Jim Leedy, Don Reitz, Dave Shaner, David Smith, and Yukio Yamamoto. Perhaps most rewarding for the participants was watching Rudy Autio and Peter Voulkos reunited in the studio after half a century. What became apparent at that

significant gathering was the fact that ceramics had matured, not just as an academic subject, with its doors open to countless men and women in universities and colleges around the country, but it had also blossomed as contemporary art. It was also evident, in just about every workshop and panel discussion, that faculty, students, and alumni of the University of Montana had played central roles in that history. Modernism has been replaced by post-modernism and the debates between craft and concept, functional pottery and fine art, and theory and practice continue in the field. UM’s program in ceramics, to the benefit of its students, is no less engaged today than it was fifty-four years ago when it gained its decisive independence from the “Elementary Crafts.”

Hipólito Rafael Chacón is Professor of Art History and Criticism in the School of Art at the University of MontanaMissoula. He received his B.A. in art from Wabash College and Ph.D. in art history from the University of Chicago. He researches, teaches, and lectures on a variety of art historical and critical subjects, and has published on architectural history, historic preservation, as well as regional history and its intersection with the visual arts, particularly the development of modern and contemporary art in Montana.

Rudy Autio working on the Polson bank Mural, 1971.

home, home, on the range Contemporary Ceramics in Montana b y S T E P H EN G LU E C K E R T

n 2008 the MAM Board of Director’s adopted the following as its governing mission: Missoula Art Museum serves the public by engaging audiences and artists in the exploration of contemporary art relevant to the community, state and region. MAM’s exhibitions are driven by this governing mission. This calling makes clear our responsibility to broadly represent that which reflects the essential cultural fiber of this place. Undeniably, Persistence in Clay: Contemporary Ceramics in Montana is not only the result of an institutional responsibility, but also of the groundswell of a home grown movement. I would be negligent if I did not mention that the germ of this exhibition was brought to the institution’s exhibition review process by two local ceramic artists and University of Montana Art Professors, Julia Galloway and Beth Lo. They appealed to MAM to host an exhibition celebrating the importance of the clay medium alive today in the region. These two individuals helped identify most of the contributing artists, and were sensitive to step back and allow the institution to do what museums do: select work, conduct studio visits, interview artists, and pontificate about the importance of the story to the identity of place. Significantly, the exhibition is intended to coincide with two important regional events. First, the milestone 60th birthday for the Archie Bray Foundation and second, to draw attention to something unique to our region at a time when NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) is meeting in the Pacific Northwest. The stars have aligned in the sky, allowing us to draw these 19 artists together for this very special exhibition. Education Curator Renée Taaffe and I visited each of the selected artists to conduct interviews

and choose works for the exhibition. The purpose of these interviews was to gather important information for an interactive element for the exhibition and beyond, recorded and edited by video artist Geoffrey Pepos. In all of these visits, not one artist failed to mention the Archie Bray Foundation. Since the 1940s the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts has had a tremendous impact on the region. The first two residents were Peter Voulkos and Rudy Autio, who in turn had a profound influence on the American Crafts-as-Art movement. “Pete” and “Rudy” as they are commonly known saw the Bray as a touchstone for the beginnings of their careers, and subsequent visiting artists have cemented in their collective conscious a proud history that can seem at times infectious. The author Rick Newby has spent a great deal of time highlighting the legacy of the Archie Bray Foundation over the years and continues to address this with his essay included in this catalogue. Additionally, MAM is grateful to Rafael Chacón for graciously writing about the important world class ceramics legacy perpetuated at The University of Montana School of Art. But I wish to focus on some additional thoughts about clay in Montana. Persistence in Clay: Contemporary Ceramics in Montana is intended to celebrate not only the Bray’s milestone birthday and The University of Montana’s legacy, but to confirm a sense of pride in a regional artistic strength. The exhibition also celebrates artists who have worked and continue to work outside of any institutional legacy. One must not forget that the clay history in the state is deep and rich. The Plains Indian and Métis cultures have a long tradition of low fire ceramic vessels. Charlie Russell’s small clay figures show he experimented with firing ceramics. In fact,

Adrian Arleo and Stephen Glueckert in Arleo's studio, 2011.

Frances Senska, the influential Montana educator who introduced Rudy Autio and Peter Voulkos to ceramics.

his family roots were in the brick business in St. Louis, and he clearly understood the vitrification processes of firing clay. According to Frances Senska during an interview in 2001, the first kiln specifically for ceramic use was brought to Montana by Sister Trinitas in the 1930s. Trinitas, originally from Missoula, was a versatile artist educated at the University of Washington, St. Catherine College, Chicago Art Institute, and Catholic University in DC. Trinitas shared the design of a basic blast furnace with Frances Senska who incorporated the process into her educational program. Trinitas later worked with engineers from the Anaconda Copper Company to build a railcar walk-in kiln which was significantly ahead of the times. These early clay pioneers experimented freely, and had to be part engineer, part scientist, part historian and part visionary. There were no artist’s catalogues or online web sources for information. Artists wandered far and wide, shovel in hand, searching for the materials necessary for art making. This spirit of resourcefulness and freedom to explore has never gone away and was certainly carried on by Senska and passed on to her students Pete and Rudy.

lay artists have found a home in Montana for myriad reasons. Importantly, this region has a welcoming art community and many resources readily available. The natural environment is wide open. The hills and valleys, and the plateaus and river breaks are constant reminders of the make up of the earth, and the elements of a clay body. While mining and other extractive industries are ever present so too are the traditions of “getting your hands dirty,” working the land, an identity cemented in labor and soil. Strong, independent and forward thinking individuals brought ceramics to this place, and worked hard to ensure that it had a future. The 19 very different artists featured in Persistence in Clay carry on this spirit of visionary autonomy. Incredibly, there is not a characteristic look to this Montana school, if I dare call it that. There is no remnant of an “Autio look” or a “Voulkos look.” The only characteristic that seems to tie everyone together is the integrity of creative independence, or what I like to call, “Montana eclectic.” There is dignity in finding your own voice, and perhaps Montana is a great place to make the discovery. Clay just happens to be the most readily available and regionally identified medium. So while many other regions of the country are known for the mastery and influence of other mediums, in Montana, the ceramic arts are the centerpiece of arts and culture. Persistence in Clay identifies some of the disciplined clay artists who are also currently recognized leaders in their communities. Keep in mind that solid clay programs have existed outside of the Archie Bray Foundation and The University of Montana for years. Marcia Selsor labored for over 20 years at Eastern Montana College in Billings establishing and supporting ceramic artists in eastern Montana. In addition to mature programs at The University of Montana and Montana State University, many small college institutions such as the University of Great Falls, Flathead Valley Community College, and The University of Montana, Western in Dillon have nurtured thousands of students. Extensive high school art programs with clay elements exist in Great Falls, Helena, Billings and Missoula. Museums throughout the state have been creative in their support of the medium. The Custer County Museum in Miles City developed a remarkable program in which a resident artist conducts outreach to rural schools using

Spring 2011 residents with director Steven Lee at the Archie Bray Foundation.

a raku kiln hauled on a trailer. At one time, the Yellowstone Art Museum and Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art hosted extensive clay programs. At Paris Gibson Square, Dean Borchers had a faithful following for years. Ceramic studios and classes have thrived in art centers and community centers throughout Montana. This does not even take into account the private studios which exist in every corner of the state. It is undeniable that we live in a time when the interest and passion for clay in Montana is intense and growing. In recent years The Clay Studio in Missoula and The Clay Center in Red Lodge have carried on a creative presence which is such an important part of this place. They have helped establish important residency programs which are a significant part of the sharing of an international language, and helped promote the notion that the arts are essentially about community as much as they are about individual expression.

fter surveying the participating artists, it is easy to see that many, while working here, do not frequently exhibit within the region, often relying on commercial support and attention from engaged galleries and collectors outside the region. Drawing these artists together and celebrating their local connection

to community provides an educational platform to affirm their creative contributions. The group of artists selected for the exhibit is not exclusive. This exhibition could easily be tripled or quadrupled in size with ceramic artists who are equally vital and competent. This profound fact speaks to the strength of the medium in the state and the legacy of the pioneers who laid the groundwork for the future generations of many clay artists yet to come. Persistence in Clay: Contemporary Ceramics in Montana is as much a challenge as it is an exhibition, and that challenge seems obvious: “Support one another and the world will support you.” The works included in the exhibition by 19 celebrated ceramic artists run the gamut of content and approach. The expertise of Sarah Jaeger and Julia Galloway confirm the roots of clay in the “utility” of the medium. Both produce refined, wheel thrown works, with surfaces that are richly informed by study and research. Both readily articulate a deep understanding of the complex and rich American ceramic history. The works of Alison Reintjes and Rosie Wynkoop reference tradition and utility, yet explore sophisticated pattern and design approaches as part of their language. Reintjes uses cast porcelain vessels which are then assembled into a

composition, each a part of a greater whole, while Wynkoop uses wheel thrown forms as a canvas for engobes (glazing technique) and intense, low fire glazes. Both Josh DeWeese and Tara Wilson have a distinctive aesthetic language that is uniquely their own. Each produces works that have a characteristic form, coupled with an often experimental surface. Both artists produce wheel thrown vessels which are then manipulated to an expressive end. They have a clear understanding of the wood firing process in the production of their work. Using the vessel as a point of departure, David Hiltner, Steve Lee and Beth Lo, stretch these larger traditional forms to tell more of their own story. Each artist applies a combination of wheel thrown and hand built techniques; they incorporate metaphors into their works such as agricultural legacy and cultural identity. Their surface choices include Lee’s non-traditional automotive paint and incised cobalt blue lines, Hiltner’s texture of the furrows of farm fields, and Lo’s use of a celadon glaze to suggest water levels. While working within the clay medium, Robert Harrison, Trey Hill, and Hannah Fisher have a purely sculptural approach. Their wheel thrown, hand built, and assembled works include powerful references to architecture, furniture, figure, and in the end to a psychological tension in the space in which we live. Dean Adams and David Smith also have a sculptural approach, yet carry their works into another realm by adding media besides clay into their expressions. Adam’s hand built sculptural

forms stretches clay through the inclusion of steel rods. This allows him to increase the volume and presence of these fantastic machines. Smith’s cast porcelain incorporates backlighting which dramatically changes the appearance of the media. Adrian Arleo, David Regan, and Shanna Fliegel’s works include suggestive narratives and stories. By using powerful hand built forms and combining and contrasting related symbols, these artists provide an experience for the viewer that is both real and surreal. There is no doubt where Steve Braun's and Richard Notkin's work lies, nor what their intent conveys. The magic of their hand built work is that their content dictates not simply the message, but the form. They are both driven by a polemic in an attempt to make a statement. Each has a strong point of view that leaves no mystery as to how they feel about the injustices in the world. The diversity of these very different artists, their strengths and approaches, in this space, at this time testifies that perhaps there is something in the Montana water that has created such an opportunity. Each artist has a willingness to share and be part of an exhibition and educational milieu, and more importantly see themselves as part of a larger community of clay artists. Thanks to the support of the WESTAF (Western States Arts Federation), the National Endowment for the Arts and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation MAM has created an extensive educational outreach program and exhibition with a regional touring capacity. The exhibition will travel to the Nicolaysen Art Museum, Casper, WY and the Crossroads Carnegie Art Center, Baker, OR in 2012.

Stephen Glueckert was born in Missoula, MT and received a BFA from the University of Idaho and an M.Ed in Art Education from Western Washington University. He has taught throughout the Northwest, the University of Papua New Guinea, and The University of Montana. He has been a recipient of a Montana Individual Artist’s Fellowship. In addition to being a practicing studio artist, he has written extensively about contemporary artists of Montana. He has been Exhibition Curator at the Missoula Art Museum since 1992.

montana’s archie bray foundation for the ceramic arts Origin and Impact b y R I C K NE W B Y

Archie Bray, Sr., did not build a monument to himself. He built a workshop for potters. —David Shaner

place, an idea, a set of experiences shared by hundreds, if not thousands, of ceramists: The Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts— affectionately known as the Bray—has had a profound impact on the development of ceramics in Montana, in the United States, and around the world. As preeminent ceramics historian Garth Clark has written, “The Bray was without doubt the incubator for . . . the ‘new ceramic presence,’” the modernist revolution in ceramic arts that emerged in the 1950s, primarily in the western United States. Montana’s own Rudy Autio, one of the founding artists at the Bray (together with Peter Voulkos), once noted that “it all began in Montana,” and specifically at the foundation headquartered in an old brickyard in Montana’s capital city. The Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts was launched in October 1951 by Archie Bray, owner of the Western Clay Manufacturing Company, together with Peter Meloy, a Helena attorney and potter, and Branson Stevenson, Montana branch manager for Socony Vacuum Oil, a potter, painter, and printmaker. The foundation had been the brainchild of Bray, a hardheaded businessman who supported the arts and loved to garden, a member of Helena’s cultural and business elites who delighted in meeting visiting celebrities dressed in his dusty brickyard clothes. Archie expressed his vision for the foundation in an undated letter to Branson Stevenson: "Somehow let’s keep it all on the plane we dreamed. A place to work for all who are seriously interested in any of the Ceramic Arts. Each time we walk in the door to walk into a place of art, of simple things . . . lovely people all tuned to the right

spirit. That somewhere through it all will permeate a beautiful spirit . . . carrying on and forwarding the intentions, the aims and the life of the Foundation. Can we do it? What a joy it is to do it." In the intervening sixty years, the Bray has carried forward its founder’s vision intact, particularly the notion that the foundation is a fine “place to work” for ceramic artists of all persuasions. In those first years, the Bray established several other qualities that continue to distinguish it today. Almost by happenstance, Archie Bray invited two students from Bozeman’s Montana State College (MSC) to spend the summer of 1951 at the brickyard, making pots in the drying shed, building kilns, and helping to lay brick for a new pottery building. As luck would have it, these young Montana natives, Rudy Autio and Peter Voulkos—the first in a long line of talented resident artists at the Bray— proved to be two of the greatest ceramic innovators of their generation. World War II veterans Autio and Voulkos, having studied with MSC’s Frances Senska (whose own teachers included Bauhaus masters László MoholyNagy and Marguerite Wildenhain), embodied the diversity of interests that remain a signature of the Bray. Autio saw himself as a sculptor, not a potter, and while in Helena, he created large-scale ceramic sculptural reliefs for architectural projects throughout Montana. Voulkos was a masterful potter—winning numerous national awards during the early 1950s—who would spend the summer of 1953 at renowned Black Mountain College in North Carolina (another incubator for American modernism). There (and in New York City) Voulkos encountered Abstract Expressionism, and upon

his return to the Bray in 1953 and subsequently during his enormously influential teaching career in California, he devoted his talents to a profound exploration of the expressive sculptural qualities of clay. Meanwhile the founders of the Bray, Archie Bray, Meloy, and Stevenson, remained passionately committed to time-honored pottery traditions. Branson Stevenson was particularly influenced by the work and thought of Bernard Leach, the British artist-craftsman whose A Potter’s Book introduced many westerners to the pottery traditions of Great Britain, Japan, and Korea. In early 1952, Stevenson learned that the British potter, together with Shoji Hamada, Japan’s leading potter, and Soetsu Yanagi, director of Tokyo’s Museum of Folk-craft, would be touring the United States later that year. Stevenson promptly invited Leach, Hamada, and Yanagi to visit the new Archie Bray Foundation in Helena and present lectures and demonstrations. The trio agreed, adding the Bray to an itinerary that included Black Mountain College, St. Paul (Minnesota) Gallery and School of Art, and

Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles. While the impact of that first workshop at the Bray has been hotly debated, one thing is clear: It established, at the very beginning, traditions of bringing acclaimed ceramic artists to teach workshops and of extending the foundation’s reach to the full range of international ceramics. Autio and Voulkos, though they didn’t think much of Leach’s stuffy Arts-and-Crafts approach, were inspired by Soetsu Yanagi, who introduced them to a cultural tradition in which, as Autio noted, “pottery making has been for centuries regarded as a true art, of equal dignity with the fine arts” and by Shoji Hamada, who demonstrated prodigious technique at the wheel.

ith Archie Bray’s death in 1953, with Peter Voulkos departing for Los Angeles, where he started a new ceramics program at the Otis College of Art and Design, and with Rudy Autio coming to Missoula to teach at The University of Montana, the Bray entered the next stage of its development.

In the following decades, a series of enormously accomplished and hard-working resident directors left their marks on the place. Ken Ferguson (director 1958– 1964) developed community classes and made many thousands of pots for sale, keeping the Bray alive during its leanest times. David Shaner (director 1964–1970) did much to professionalize the Bray, relying upon the very first artist grants from the National Endowment for the Arts to bring nationally known ceramists, Left to right: Archie Bray, Branson Stevenson, and Peter Meloy in the Foundation pottery building, including Val Cushing, Wayne November 1951. L.H. Jorud, photographer (ABFA). Higby, and Jun Kaneko, to work at the Bray. Heroically, Shaner also managed to Comprehensive Kiln Project, introducing an purchase the pottery grounds when the brickyard even wider range of firing options, including a went bankrupt. 110-cubic-foot sculpture kiln, and it is currently David Cornell (director 1970–1976) and Judy hosting its 60th anniversary celebration, entitled Cornell (associate director) continued the residency From the Center to the Edge: 60 Years of Creativity program and sought, in a short-lived effort, to and Innovation at the Archie Bray Foundation. extend it to other arts, including glassblowing and weaving. Kurt Weiser (director 1976–1988) lthough the Bray will always be known for its brought more international artists to the Bray, origin as a key source for ceramic innovation, expanded the clay business, under manager Chip perhaps its most important impact has been to Clawson, to support the foundation’s programs, offer artists the time, space, and materials to and managed to raise the funds to purchase the develop their singular voices in clay, whether as old brickyard in its entirety, dramatically extending potters, as sculptors, or on occasion, as artists in the Bray’s footprint. Weiser also started the Bray’s various media. Art historian Patricia Failing has sculpture garden, allowing residents to place large- noted that the Bray is not simply an art school scale architectural and sculptural works on the (though it offers classes and workshops); it was “not established to nourish and preserve a local Bray’s grounds. Carol Roorbach (director 1989–1992) developed craft tradition” (if anything, the Bray ceramic an endowment and brought more women artists tradition—and by extension, the recent Montana than ever before to the Bray. Josh DeWeese tradition—has been, from the start, pluralist, (director 1992–2006), together with Development globalist, truly postmodern in its openness to Director Marcia Eidel, garnered strong financial the multiplicity of traditions); and it is not just a support from the local community and a retreat for the already famous. Instead, as Failing national constituency of collectors and ceramics writes, it has been “an institutional anomaly . . . an enthusiasts. With this support, DeWeese oversaw unstable conglomeration of educational services, a the construction of a spectacular, 12,000-square- small business, and a venue for major artists,” both foot new studio building, named after David and established and emerging. Many artists become Bray residents soon after Ann Shaner, and expanded the Bray’s technical offerings, including new electric, gas, and wood- completing their undergraduate or graduate fired kilns. Steven Young Lee (2006–present), studies, and these young artists note that the with his strong ties to Asia, has furthered the Bray offers them a supportive, relatively nonBray’s international presence and continues to competitive, wide-open, but highly rigorous improve the foundation’s facilities. Under Lee’s atmosphere in which they can work out their leadership, the Bray has completed its $250,000 own ideas during one- and two-year stays. Often

it is only after their stays at the foundation that many Bray residents become “major” artists, underscoring again the aptness of Garth Clark’s characterization of the foundation as an incubator—a “gentle kiln that warms young life until it becomes independent.” The Bray influence has been, and continues to be, positively viral, elaborating a vast (and intimate) network. Several past directors have become influential teachers, spreading the Bray spirit: Peter Voulkos (Otis Art Institute and UC Berkeley), Rudy Autio (University of Montana), Ken Ferguson (Kansas City Art Institute), Kurt Weiser (Arizona State University), and Josh DeWeese (Montana State University). Among other former Bray residents included in this exhibition who also teach in university ceramics programs are Julia Galloway, who is currently a Bray board member, and Trey Hill (both University of Montana), and Bray board members often teach: Patti Warashina (formerly University of Washington), Akio Takamori (University of Washington), Chris Staley (Penn State), John Balistreri (Bowling Green State), Sally Brogden (University of Tennessee), and Beth Lo (University of Montana). Former residents have started Bray-like residency programs as far afield as Berlin (Kaja Witt and Thomas Hirschler’s Zentrum für Keramik) and Joseph, Oregon (Chris Antemann’s LH Project, founded with her husband Jacob Hasslacher); other past resident artists now direct a variety of non-academic ceramics programs, including Wally Bivins (Pottery Northwest, Seattle), Bobby Silverman (the Ceramic Center at New York’s 92nd Street Y), and Michio Sugiyama (Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Japan). Former Bray resident (and past director of Helena’s Holter

Museum) Peter Held has become one of America’s most influential ceramics curators through his position as director of the Ceramics Research Center, Arizona State University, Tempe, and as publisher of important monographs on such former Bray stalwarts as David Shaner, Kurt Weiser, and Akio Takamori. From a Montana point of view, perhaps the most beautiful aspect of the Bray contagion has been the enrichment of Big Sky country’s ceramic culture. Thirteen of the nineteen artists in the current exhibition, Persistence in Clay: Contemporary Ceramics in Montana, are former or current Bray residents, most of whom first came to Montana specifically to immerse themselves in the Bray experience—and decided to stay. Missoula, Bozeman, Helena, and the Flathead have flourishing ceramic communities, and Montanans are truly fortunate to have local access to a panoply of world-class ceramic objects, whether they are superbly handcrafted pitchers, cups, and bowls (by such national figures as Sarah Jaeger, Josh DeWeese, or Julia Galloway), or astonishing sculptural expressions (by such luminaries as Richard Notkin, Robert Harrison, Adrian Arleo, and Beth Lo). In 1966, David Shaner claimed, “What New York is in communications, Hollywood in the film industry, and New Orleans in jazz, Helena is becoming in the field of creative pottery. In this field you can’t go any higher than the Archie Bray Foundation.” At the time, Shaner may have overstated his case, but by the second decade of the twenty-first century, his claim rings true. The Missoula Art Museum’s Persistence in Clay: Contemporary Ceramics in Montana offers incontrovertible proof.

Poet and independent scholar Rick Newby is co-author of A Ceramic Continuum: Fifty Years of the Archie Bray Influence (Holter Museum of Art/University of Washington Press, 2001) and The Most Difficult Journey: The Poindexter Collections of American Modernist Painting (Yellowstone Art Museum, 2002). He has also published, in exhibition catalogs and international journals, essays on several artists in this exhibition, including Adrian Arleo, Stephen Braun, Robert Harrison, Beth Lo, and Richard Notkin. His essay on the life and art of Stephen De Staebler will appear in the catalog accompanying the sculptor’s retrospective at San Francisco’s De Young Museum, December 2011. Newby serves on the Montana Arts Council and, in 2009, received the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award.

Branson Stevenson (right) and Peter Voulkos build the downdraft gas kiln in 1951 (ABFA).

exhibition catalog

Dean Adams, Spiral Cogs, wood soda oil fired ceramic, 14 x 42".

Adrian Arleo, Two Bas. Consort and Console, clay, glaze with encaustic, 23 x 32 x 9".

Stephen Braun, Guardian Angel for Oil, rakued clay, 48 x 22 x 8". Opposite: Stephen Braun, Addiction, rakued clay, 30 x 9 x 9".

Josh DeWeese, Platter, wood-fired stoneware, 17 x 2â&#x20AC;?. Opposite: Josh DeWeese, Flower Basket, wood-fired stoneware, 20 x 8 x 8".

Hannah Fisher, Filter, porcelain, 10 x 9.5 x 10â&#x20AC;?. Opposite: Hannah Fisher, Siva, porcelain, 16 x 11 x 18".

Shanna Fliegel, Beast on the Lawn, detail.

Shanna Fliegel, (from top) Heron Predator, earthenware, 6 x 13 x 3". Beast on the Lawn, earthenware, 14 x 14 x 1". Peacock and Space Satellite, earthenware, 13 x 6 x 3".

Julia Galloway, 20 Dessert Plates, porcelain, 7" dia. Opposite: Julia Galloway, Pitcher, porcelain, 15 x 4 x 6".

Robert Harrison, Yellow Dragon House, glazed terra cotta tiles with decals & lusters, 11 x 8 x 8".

Robert Harrison, Butterfly House, glazed terra cotta tiles with decals & lusters, 11 x 8 x 8".

David Hiltner, Platter, wheel thrown, hand carved, soda fired, 16.5 x 2". Opposite: David Hiltner, Jar #1, stoneware, hand carved, soda fired, 20 x 12".

Trey Hill, The Divide, sandblasted ceramic, gold leaf, 32 x 26 x 10". Opposite: Trey Hill, Rack and Pinion, ceramic, wood & lead, 35 x 32 x 15".

Sarah Jaeger, Tea Set, porcelain, 12 x 24 x 6". Opposite: Sarah Jaeger, Jar, porcelain, 14 x 9â&#x20AC;?.

Steven Young Lee, Platter #2, porcelain, 18 x 2". Opposite: Steven Young Lee, Blue Jar, porcelain with auto laquer, 14 x 20".

Beth Lo, Flood (and detail), porcelain, 14" high.

Richard Notkin, Cup and Saucer #17, porcelain, 4 x 6 x 6". Opposite: Richard Notkin, Ancestral Memories, porcelain, 6 x 7 x 7".

David Regan, Tea Pillow Pot, glazed porcelain with oxide pigment, 12 x 10 x 6". On loan from Robert and Ellen Knight.

Alison Reintjes, Shimmer, slipcast, 42 x 35 x 1â&#x20AC;?.

David Smith, Little Nut, porcelain mounted on light fixture, 24 x 11 x 6". Opposite: David Smith, Little Nut with light on.

Tara Wilson, Pitcher, wood-fired ceramic, 13 x 6 x 6â&#x20AC;?. Opposite: Tara Wilson, Vase, wood-fired ceramic, 13 x 6 x 6".

Rosalie Wynkoop, Plate, tin-glazed terra cotta, lusters, 14 x 2".

Rosalie Wynkoop (top to bottom), Teapot, tin-glazed earthenware , 8 x 7 x 5". Platter, terra cotta and lusters, 8 x 14".

artist biographies

Dean Adams Dean Adams is an artist and educator in Bozeman, MT. He is an Assistant Professor of Art and the Foundations Coordinator for The School of Art at Montana State University-Bozeman. He is cofounder, with Josh DeWeese, of the International Wild Clay Research Project at Montana State University. Dean has been a resident artist at The Archie Bray Foundation (MT), The Banff Centre (Canada), and Watershed (ME). He is a founding board member and has worked at The LH Project in Joseph, OR. He has been working with wood-fired kilns since 1984 and has taught, exhibited, and fired kilns throughout the U.S., and in Finland, Canada, and China. Raised in Billings, he attended the University of Montana, Montana State University, and University of New Mexico while pursuing his undergraduate degree. From 1988-90 he worked in the studio of Jun Kaneko in Omaha, NE. He earned his MFA at the University of Iowa.

Adrian Arleo

Adrian Arleo is a studio artist living in Lolo, MT. She studied Art and Anthropology at Pitzer College earning a BA in 1979, and received her MFA in ceramics from Rhode Island School of Design in 1986. Her sculpture is exhibited internationally, and is in numerous public and private collections, including The World Ceramic Exposition Foundation, Icheon, Korea, The Museum of Arts and Sciences, Macon, GA, The Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, WI, Yellowstone Art, Billings, MT, Microsoft, Seattle, WA, Gloria and Sonny Kamm, LA, Ruth Kohler, Kohler, WI, and Candace Groot, Chicago, IL. In 1991 and 1992, Adrian received 2nd place and recognition awards from the Virginia A. Groot Foundation, and in 1995 was awarded a Montana Arts Council Individual Fellowship. Most recently, her work was featured in The Figure in Clay; Contemporary Sculpting Techniques by Master Artists, book published by Lark Books, 2005, and Ceramics; Art and Perception, magazine issue #62, 2005.

Stephen Braun

Stephen Braun lives in Whitefish, MT, and has traveled and exhibited extensively. He studied at the University of Montana and graduated with a BA in Anthropology. He is currently represented by the John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis, CA. His figurative and narrative sculptures often address environmental, political, social, and consumerism concerns. The raku glazing process used to finish his sculptures gives the work a patina of age that is timeless. The contemporary images look as if they were just excavated, which allows one to see the present as already the past. He states of his work, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I first started playing in clay over thirty years ago and I am still at it. In the summer of 1979 I attended a 6 week seminar at the University of Montana with many prominent clay artists including Pete Voulkos, Rudy Autio, Robert Brady, etc and I was hooked by the many possibilities and approaches there are of clay!â&#x20AC;?

Josh DeWeese Josh DeWeese is a ceramic artist and educator. He is an Assistant Professor of Art teaching ceramics at Montana State University in Bozeman, where he and his wife Rosalie Wynkoop have recently built a home and studio. DeWeese served as Resident Director of the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, MT from 19922006. He holds an MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred, and a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute. DeWeese has exhibited and taught workshops internationally and his work is included in numerous public and private collections.

Hannah Fisher

Hannah Fisher, originally from Western New York, finds herself in love with the Rocky Mountain ridgelines and big skies of Montana. Her past residencies include The LH Project, The Clay Studio of Missoula, and Guldagergaard - International Ceramic Research Center. Fisher received her BFA from the Oregon College of Art & Craft in Portland, OR. After four years as Executive Director of The Clay Studio of Missoula, she moved on to devote more time to her own artistic pursuits. Using high fired porcelain and knit copper wire forms, Fisherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s current work is abstractly inspired by agricultural tools, natural formations and patterns. The artworks reproduced were created in the Resident Artist program of the LH Project, an international residency program promoting the growth of the ceramics arts, privately funded by the LH Project.

Shanna Fliegel

Shanna Fliegel grew up in Northwest New Jersey with a ferret, horse, dog, cat, bird, iguana, lizards, snakes, fish, turtles and rabbits. After graduating with her BFA in Ceramics from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA in 2001, she went on to complete two residencies at the Cub Creek Foundation in Appomattox, VA and Greenwich House Pottery in NY. Drawing and painting were her first loves and she continued to search for the perfect marriage of image and clay while completing her MFA in Ceramics in 2008 at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. After graduate school Shanna had the opportunity to work as a resident artist and teacher at the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, NY and as a summer resident at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, MT. Shanna is currently teaching Ceramics at Montana State University in Billings.

Julia Galloway

Julia Galloway is a studio potter, professor and Director of the School of Art at the University of Montana. She earned her undergraduate degree from New York State School of Ceramics at Alfred University and Graduate degree at the University of Colorado in Boulder. For nine years Galloway taught at the School for American Crafts at RIT. She has exhibited and lectured across the United States and Canada and has work in the collection of the Los Angeles County Art Museum, the Smithsonian, and the Ceramic Research Center at ASU, Tempe, AZ.

Robert Harrison Robert Harrison holds Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Ceramics. He has taught ceramics at the university level, and held administrative positions in ceramic programs. He served on the Board of NCECA as President and the Board of the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts as President. Well known for his large scale architectural sculpture he continues to evolve and exhibit smaller scale studio works. His interests in history and world cultures have provided numerous opportunities to work and travel abroad. His work is represented in many public and private collections, nationally and internationally. In 2001 he was elected to the International Academy of Ceramics (IAC ) and in 2007 he was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA). In 2008 Harrison was awarded the Meloy Stevenson Award of Excellence from the Archie Bray Foundation, and in 2011 was honored as an NCECA Fellow.

David Hiltner

David Hiltner is currently the Executive Director of Red Lodge Clay Center in Red Lodge, MT. In the summer of 2005 David and his family moved to Montana to establish the Red Lodge Clay Center. Prior to moving to Red Lodge Hiltner was an Assistant Professor of Ceramics at Wichita State University in Wichita, KS. Before joining the faculty at Wichita in 1999, he taught at Syracuse University, Northwest College, and at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. He received his BFA in Ceramics from Wichita State University in 1993 and completed his MFA at Syracuse University in 1997.

Trey Hill

Trey Hill is a studio artist living in Missoula, MT and an Assistant Professor of Ceramics at the University of Montana. In addition to teaching, Trey has traveled and worked at different residencies, including two years at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, MT where he was a Taunt Fellow and later at the LH Project in Joseph, OR. His international experience includes time spent in Latvia building a public commission and also China, where he built work for the Fu Le International Ceramic Art Museum in Fuping. Hill grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. He received a BFA from Bowling Green State University and an MFA from San Jose State University.

Sarah Jaeger

Sarah Jaeger, a studio potter in Helena, MT, was a resident artist at the Archie Bray Foundation, and has been awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Montana Arts Council (1996), a $50,000 unrestricted Target fellowship from United States Artists (2006), and was one of the artists profiled in the PBS documentary Craft in America (2007). She has taught at schools and art centers in the US and Canada, and her work is in public and private collections and, most important, in many kitchens throughout the country.

Steven Young Lee Steven Young Lee received his MFA in Ceramics from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2004. In 2004-5, he lectured and taught at numerous universities throughout China. While there, Lee created a new body of work as part of a one-year cultural and educational exchange fellowship in Jingdezhen, Jianxi Province. He has taught at Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, the Clay Art Center in New York, the Lill Street Studio in Chicago, and Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, BC. Lee is currently the Resident Artist Director of the Archie Bray Foundation. “My current work examines the process of recognition–how individuals draw realities based on experiences and environment. Through functional pottery and sculpture, I challenge pre-conceptions of style, form, symbolism, superstitions and identity.

Beth Lo

Beth Lo was born in Lafayette, IN to parents who had recently emigrated from China. She studied art under Rudy Autio and assumed his job as Professor of Ceramics when he retired in 1985. She has exhibited her work internationally, and has received numerous awards including The University of Montana Provost’s Distinguished Lecturer Award in 2006, a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship Grant in 1994, the Montana Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship in 1989, and an American Craft Museum Design Award in 1986. Lo was selected as one of the 2009 USA Fellows for United States Artists, a fouryear-old organization, which includes supporters such as the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Prudential Foundation, and the Rasmuson Foundation.

Richard Notkin

Richard Notkin is a studio artist who lives in Helena, MT. Richard Notkin’s teapots and ceramic sculptures have been exhibited internationally and are in more than 50 public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Japan. Among his awards are three artist fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and the Hoi Fellowship from the United States Artists Foundation.

David Regan

David Regan, a Montana-based ceramist, began working professionally in 1991 and has quickly become well recognized for his distinctive vessels. Regan’s porcelain animal forms, covered in intricate sgraffito drawings, invite close observation. Although they appear to be decorative and sculptural, many of them are actually entirely functional. Addressing themes of human and animal consumption and the natural cycles of life and death through his illustrations, Regan links these ideas to the function of traditional serving containers like soup tureens and casseroles. Regan has not always worked in this style. During a residency at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, MT in the late 1980s, he was making platters with figurative elements saturated in bright glazes. Struggling to find meaning in his work, he was advised by fellow resident Akio Takamori to “do what you are really good at.” This was a turning point for Regan and he soon set out on a new path.

Alison Reintjes Alison Reintjes recently began a residency at the Clay Studio of Missoula where she is developing a new body of wall-based installations. She returned to Montana in 2009 with her husband and twin children after three years in Ohio and Kentucky, where she worked as an instructor for the Kentucky Museum of Art & Craft. She first moved to Montana in 2001 for a residency at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena and completed additional residencies at Greenwich House Pottery in New York, Jentel in Wyoming, and Mount St. Francis in southern Indiana. She has exhibited at the Oregon College of Arts & Crafts in Portland, AKAR Gallery in Iowa City, Museu de Ceramica de l’Alcora in Spain, ASU Ceramic Research Center in Tempe, and the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, among others. She is currently represented by Turman Larison Contemporary in Helena and the Lill Street Gallery in Chicago.

David Smith

David Smith is originally from Spokane, WA, although he has also lived for extended periods of time in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Louisiana. He received his MFA from Louisiana State University and worked for several years at Southern Louisiana University teaching ceramics and 3-D design before moving to the Flathead Valley. He has been featured several times in Ceramics Monthly Magazine, most recently in February, 2010 with the article: David Scott Smith: A Bricolage of Light. He currently resides in Kalispell, MT, where he teaches ceramics and design at Flathead Valley Community College.

Tara Wilson

Tara Wilson is a studio potter living in Montana City, MT. Wilson received a BFA from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and an MFA degree from the University of Florida. She has been a resident artist at The Archie Bray Foundation and The Red Lodge Clay Center. Wilson was selected as an emerging artist for the 2006 National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts conference and was a presenter at the 2006 International Woodfire Conference in Flagstaff. She has given lectures and workshops throughout the United States; and her work has been exhibited internationally.

Rosalie Wynkoop

Rosalie Wynkoop is currently a studio artist working in Bozeman, MT. She spent 14 years as a resident artist at Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, MT. She received BA degrees in Art Education and English Literature at Montana State University in Bozeman and a BFA in Ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, MO. She has taught numerous workshops on majolica techniques around the country and exhibited her work nationally. She received an Artist’s Fellowship Award from the Montana Arts Council in 1999. Her work appears in many publications including A Ceramic Continuum, Cups, Pitchers, Best of Pottery (Volumes I and II) and Susan Peterson’s, The Craft and Art of Clay.

Thanks to the support of the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), MAM will tour this exhibition regionally to the Nicolaysen Art Museum, Casper, WY and the Crossroads Carnegie Art Center, Baker, OR. The exhibition is funded through the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, WESTAF, Montana Arts Council, and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Thank you to Geoffrey Pepos for many of the photographs used in this book.

Persistence in Clay: Contemporary Ceramics in Montana Travels to: Nicolaysen Art Museum // Casper, WY // Spring 2012 Crossroads Carnegie Art Center // Baker, OR // Summer 2012

Persistence in Clay on the Web An interactive component, created by Technologist Geoffrey Pepos, accompanies this exhibition. It features interviews with the artists in their studios and can be viewed at missoulaarmuseum.org. Published by the Missoula Art Museum 335 N. Pattee, Missoula, MT 59802 The Missoula Art Museum is an accredited member of the American Association of Museums. Cover Image: Undergraduate Steve Kelly throwing a pot in the Art Annex, circa 1993. Photograph by Julie Zankner. Courtesy of the School of Art Archives. All photographs reproduced by permission. Book Design: Yogesh Simpson

Missoula Art Museum Mission

MAM serves the public by engaging audiences and artists in the exploration of contemporary art relevant to the community, state and region.

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