CURATORIAL PROJECTS

TINWORKS ART
Bozeman MT

Melissa has led curatorial projects at Tinworks Art from 2020-present. The first two years, she shared this responsibility with Eli Ridgway, owner of Eli Ridgway Gallery in Bozeman, MT.

Established in 2019, Tinworks Art is a Bozeman-based nonprofit providing welcoming and immersive art experiences in underutilized spaces. Our mission is to nurture diverse artistic voices and support the creation of ambitious, thought-provoking works of art.

Tinworks Art began in a defunct industrial space, featuring the work of six artists and a community art project in collaboration with the Northeast Neighborhood. It has since grown to include a granting program and summer exhibition of around a dozen artists each year.

TINWORKS ART 2023

Here in Montana, the dramatic landscape of the Rocky Mountains looms large in our regional identity. Nevertheless, it is prairie that accounts for nearly two-thirds of our state’s land mass. These areas are defined by large swaths of mixed- and short-grasses and are maintained by grazing animals like elk, cattle, and bison. An undervalued ecosystem, prairies are especially important for their role in storing carbon, keeping topsoil healthy, and providing habitat for native plant and animal species.

For millennia, the prairie has also been home to the rich cultures of the Plains Nations. The region’s astronomy, weather patterns, plants, and animal life have been woven into Traditional Ecological Knowledge. Despite this abundance, newcomers have frequently characterized the prairie as unoccupied or featureless. The eight artists in this show counter the idea of the prairie as an empty place.

Instead, they forgo traditional landscapes, depicting the plains as rich in sensory experiences and cultural heritage. As the show’s title indicates, “Invisible Prairie” prioritizes senses other than vision – the feel of the wind on the body, the smell of a prairie rose, the sound of sage grouse – but also the stories, patterns, and poetry that animate the grasslands’ cultural landscapes.

The show includes work by A.K. Burns, Abigail Flanagan, Suzanne Kite, Tracy Linder, Julie Ann Nagle, Layli Long Soldier, Laurel Sparks, and immersive soundscapes by Jeff Rice from the Acoustic Atlas sound archive. Featured performers include Roots in the Sky, Local Earth Collective, and Montana Insite Theatre.

The exhibition will be open to the public July 8 – October 14, 2023, on Fridays and Saturdays from 10 am-6 pm and Sundays from 10 am-2 pm. There is no charge for entry.

LINK TO FULL PRESS RELEASE >>

LINK TO FULL CATALOG ESSAY>>

Graphic Identity by Justin Santora; photos by Blair Speed and Ryan Parker

TINWORKS ART 2022

“MONTANA : CULTURE INDUSTRY”

The 2022 program, “Montana : Culture Industry,” is a series of place-based special events that will take place during four weekends this summer at 719 N. Ida in Bozeman.

SAVE THE DATES

• July 8-9: Fashion spotlight, with Louis and Gina Still Smoking

• July 14-16: Theatre spotlight, with Nervous Theatre

• July 22-23: Film-music spotlight, with Brooke Pepion Swaney and Laura Ortman

• August 6-7: Design spotlight, with Coryander Friend and Laurel Sparks

• Sept 2-3: Local artists spotlight, with Dalton Brink and the Cottonwood Club 

As Tinworks Art enters its next phase as a permanent part of the Bozeman community, we are celebrating by highlighting our region’s already vibrant community of makers, and welcoming the Bozeman community to our now forever-home on N. Ida, the former Tinworks manufacturing space that gave us our name. 

This year’s program is unencumbered by nostalgic or mythic images of the West. Additionally, it rejects the idea that the fine arts are wholly separate from the industrial arts, i.e., forms of art-making associated with commerce, such as fashion, film, music, and design. This season’s featured artists and designers are notable for their scrappiness, entrepreneurialism, and socially conscious practices. 

We honor their commitment to producing a new artistic culture for 21st-century Montana.

Please join us on July 8th from 4:30-6:30pm at 719 N. Ida in Bozeman for the Tinworks Art 2022 kick-off event, featuring the unveiling of a beautiful new mural by Louis Still Smoking. Your family, friends, and neighbors are all welcome to help ring in this new phase of Tinworks Art.

A full list of events will be available shortly. In the meantime, we encourage you to sign up for our eNewsletter. It’s the best way to stay up-to-date about Tinworks Art artists, exhibitions, and events.

TINWORKS ART 2022 WAS ORGANIZED BY:

Consulting Curator, Dr. Melissa Ragain

Consulting Assistant Curator, Dr. Jennifer Woodcock Medicine-Horse

Photos by Blair Speed, Gem DeCreme, and Clay Bolt

TINWORKS ART 2021
with Eli Ridgway

Tinworks Art is pleased to announce the participating artists for our much anticipated third season. The annual summer exhibition is entitled, “The Pursuit of Happiness” and will open in two phases from July 9–September 5, 2021 (July 9–August 13 at the Rialto and July 30–September 5 at Story Mill). 

This year’s summer exhibition features thirteen exhibiting artists as well as performances and dynamic programming installed in the historic Rialto Theater and the Story Mill, as well as a public mural on the corner of Cottonwood and Wallace. 

The exhibition will explore topics such as unity in democracy, individual and collective wellbeing, lateral power structures, and more. Community programming—from workshops to interactive experiences—will activate the static works of art and transform them into catalysts for conversation about what it means to be happy in a democratic society. 

Showcasing the immense pool of talent in our region, the summer exhibition series encourages artists to work ambitiously at new scales and in new mediums with support from the curatorial team. The 2021 roster of artists has been carefully selected from the Montana arts community set in conversation with artists working nationally and internationally. 

Exhibiting artists in alphabetical order:

JESSE ALBRECHT
ROLLIN BEAMISH
GREGORY CREWDSON
KAROLINA HALATEK
RAVEN HALFMOON 
MOVEMENTS4MOVEMENTS 
TUCKER NICHOLS
WENDY RED STAR
MACON REED
JAY SCHMIDT
JIM ZIMPEL

With special performances by:

THE CROSSING
NERVOUS THEATRE
RAISON D'ÊTRE DANCE PROJECT

TINWORKS ART 2020
with Eli Ridgway

Months of anxious social distancing have created an undeniable appetite for culture and fellowship. Tinworks Art 2020 features the work of thirteen artists and collectives, both local and non-local, working in a diversity of mediums, and at all stages of their careers. What they have in common is their capacity to weave together our solitary experiences of the pandemic into a shared one. The artists have been selected for their challenging ideas and unique perspectives.

Some address the novel coronavirus directly. Avram Finkelstein’s installation, for example, explores the relationships among three public health crises: AIDS, COVID-19, and widespread poverty. Criticism of the federal government’s pandemic response, as well as the unevenness of its physical and economic impacts, have added momentum to decolonial and anti-racist movements against police brutality, immigrant detention centers, and mass incarceration. Artists like Kota Ezawa and the collective Paintallica employ the visual language of protest so central to this summer of political action.  

Others take a sidelong approach to this extraordinary moment. Space, but especially negative space, is a persistent theme of the exhibition. The work of Cristina Marian and Anthony Discenza considers the increasing importance of open public space during a health crisis that keeps people homebound. The Einstein Collective fabricates astronomical spaces that transport the viewer to the expanses of outer space, while Chris Fraser’s Asterisms uses the building’s architecture to create a solar observatory. Still others explore the emotional highs and lows that accompany social distancing. 

Each installation in this summer’s exhibition has been conceived with the safety of the public in mind by maximizing our outdoor venues and minimizing the temptation to congregate. We are holding fewer public events, with limited attendance, and no grand opening. We have opted instead for a fazed opening, one that embraces the disturbances of our current moment, as incitements to consider what we do and do not value in our homes, communities, and nation. 

HELEN E. COPELAND GALLERY
Montana State University

The Helen E Copeland Gallery in Haynes Hall, is the main gallery on MSU’s campus for contemporary art, and is in fact it is the largest gallery space in Bozeman for contemporary art exhibitions. During the years 2020-2021 Ragain co-directed teh space with painting adn drawing professor Rollin Beamish. The Helen E Copeland Gallery is complimented by the School of Art’s second gallery, the Waller Yoblonsky Gallery; located at the Melvin graduate art studios.

To view content from the MSU art galleries Instagram, please click here  http://instagram.com/msuschoolofart.

Robin Gammons: Superposition

January 22nd - February 17th, 2022

Robin Gammons is an emerging Canadian-American multidisciplinary artist, working primarily in large-scale ceramic sculpture and acrylic painting. Gammons received her BFA from NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2019 and completed the Special Student program in ceramics at Montana State University in 2019-2020. Her practice is inexorably linked to the body, using abstraction, vivid color, and often symmetry to interpret the physical forms of myriad emotional states. She is pleased to be returning to MSU with this exhibition.

“Pairing a lexicon of abstract organ-like forms with romantic décor such as hearts, ribbons and bells, I use colloquial symbols of love as a conduit for more complicated emotions. My images celebrate and amplify the simultaneous presence of joy and pain within oneself and allow for the candid expression of both. I like to think of each of my works as a trophy which symbolizes a large or small victory in a constant battle for self-understanding and internal transcendence.”

Photos by Montana State University School of Art and Robin Gammons

Feral Times: Tom Thornton & Tina DeWeese

October 18-November 17 2021

About Tom Thornton

Tom Thornton is a self-taught artist who has painted and made drawings since he was a child, and created bronze sculptures for the last thirty-six years. While he does not have an university art degree, Thornton is grateful for the time he spent at MSU, as it opened the door to the world of bronze. He operated his own foundry for over twelve years. Recently his attention has turned to painting.

Ranching, farming, hunting, and logging have also made up many of Thornton’s years. From this, he has found inspiration in wild and domesticated animals, as well as undomesticated humans occasionally.

“It’s sort of an alchemy of transformation to coax these memories and flights of fantasy onto a flat surface without interfering with the energy that generates the image. Sometimes I feel like a conduit for this energy to make a mark.”

About Tina DeWeese

Tina DeWeese explores ideas in different mediums – including jewelry, bronze casting, wire sculptures, and abstract painting and drawing. DeWeese was a student at the University of Montana, and a graduate of Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. She taught elementary art at the Cottonwood School for twelve years.

DeWeese has been inspired by many things in her life including “line drawings” in her own class notebooks, her father who made paintings of neckties, her mother who painted landscapes, and even memorable college roommates. She knows herself as the activities and environments that make up her days.

“Materials are relatively irrelevant. I work with what attracts me to the moment. Image and form both have a voice. Words and images are appeasements, re/minders…memories of the presence of each moment.”

Photos by Montana State University School of Art

Hard-Used Earth: Robert Royhl, 1998-2021

H.E.C. Gallery, Montana State University : Aug 16 - Sept 30, 2021

Foreground Gallery, Imagine Butte Resource Center: Oct 11 - Nov 30, 2021

About Robert Royhl 

Robert Royhl is a painter who has been living and working in Bozeman, Montana for the past thirty four years. Born in NYC in 1949, he grew up in Tucson, Arizona and has lived and traveled all over the West. Currently he is working on a series of paintings called “Across the Wide Missouri.” This is his meditation on what we have wrought in the far west landscape and about the new realities we are creating in our trajectory through the 21st century.

Widely exhibited since the early 1970’s, Robert has shown his work in numerous galleries and museums in California, Arizona, Japan and Montana. Most recently, he had two pieces in the Art Auction Show at the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings. He has also been creating books and his “Catalog Raisonne - 400” was finished in 2019. In the last year, he has been working on a series of books based on his sketchbook journals.  “Kyoto, Journals 1996-2001” a book on his art adventures in Japan which came out in March and most recently “Sonora, Journals 1981/82” which will be out this summer. Next year, he will show his newest work at Aunt Dofe’s House of Memories in Willow Creek with his wife, artist Gesine Janzen.

He taught painting, drawing and printmaking at Montana State University from 1987 until 2006. Robert pass away January 12, 2022. Read remembrances here. A posthumous show expanded from “Hard-Used Earth,” entitled “Voids and Blooms” was organized by curator Lisa Ranallo for the Yellowstone Art Museum, July 14 -August 24, 2022.