Harvest Fest Art Auction

• Clint Loomis
  • http://www.cloomisstudio.com
  • Bio: Clint was born in a small town outside of Chicago to a newspaperman and opera singer. After attending Northern Illinois University for both a Bachelor and Masters of Fine Arts, Clint studied for six years with renowned painter, Robert Kaback. Clint has lived in and worked in Montana for more than forty years, as an artist, teacher, and community member.
  • Work: Clint’s work explores color and spatial relationships. A single painting may contain multiple views of an area, from small details to vast distances. He finds it interesting to discover ways of merging different views within the paintings to leave the impression that this is the natural way a scene would be viewed. Although Clint has been working with mixed mediums of watercolor, gouache, ink, pastels, and colored pencils for years, he has expanded into three-dimensional work in the form of carved gourds and miniature sculptures. This has developed out of an interest in exploring the actual, tactile sense that comes with carving.
• Felton and Ferguson
  • https://www.jiferguson.com
  • Harry Felton is a traditional woodworker with over thirty years of experience. Jessica Ferguson is a 30-year old with a background in interior design. What do you get when you combine their talents? Beautiful furniture with designs as artistic as they are functional – a collaborative blend of old-fashioned integrity and modern style. As business partners, Felton and Ferguson collaborate on all of their designs. Often Felton will craft half the piece while Ferguson crafts the other. The result is functional art that says something. “ Our attention to each piece’s intention is what sets us apart,” says Felton.
• Kate Loose
  • https://www.kateloose.com/
  • Bio:
    • Kate says, “Portraits are my true passion!  I rarely hike alone because of the missed opportunity for a portrait with the Montana landscape behind.   It was easy for me to adapt to the ranching lifestyle because of my background with horses and cattle in upstate New York.  I love combining the simplicity of the relationships with animals, with the stunning backdrops of the ranches I have photographed on over the years.  In my opinion, without the people as part of the image it just isn’t as good!   Portrait photography has only deepened my love for the West.  I love to capture the elements of the lifestyle and landscape into one image.  That is my passion!”
• Gerri Campbell
  • http://www.ballyhooprinting.com
  • Gerri Campbell started sewing as a young 4-Her and began quilting in the 90s.  Then came babies, starting a business, and broken bones, making sewing a rarity for many years.  When her world turned upside down with divorce five years ago, returning to quilting is what kept her feet on the ground.  An added bonus was the quilting community and great friends made through thread - there’s nothing like sharing stitching time with a group of women!  A graphic designer by trade, creativity has always played an important role in all she does.  Quilting offers new challenges and a varied mind-set from computer work.  Her first collage quilt, a new technique at the time, was a 54” x 40” elephant made of hundreds of flowers individually cut from fabric.  This led to art quilt and thread painting classes, which opened the door to new ideas and unbounded artistry.  Gerri has created some pieces she’s keeping, including a wolf, the Circle Bar barn, and an owl gracing her journal cover.  She’s donated a meadowlark and also stitched the iconic Hobson grain elevators for a fundraising auction to keep them standing.  This is a treasured hobby at this time, yet she’s looking forward to accepting custom commissioned work.
    
    “Messenger” is an art quilt created entirely of fabric and thread.  Gathering inspiration from a photo by Dave McGee, fabric pieces were collaged to create the base of this Swainson’s hawk.  The bird was brought to life with details thread painted by free-hand on a regular sewing machine.
• Shawna Crawford
  • https://www.facebook.com/pg/Shawna-Crawfords-Quilt-Creations
  • Bio: Shawna has been long arm quilting since 2014, and is recognized statewide for her colorful and precise quilts. Shawna created the Montana themed tree skirt called “Montana Treasures: Oro y Plata to Feeding the Nation” to surround our Nation’s Christmas tree at the Capitol in 2017.
• Julie Logan
  • No Website
  • Logan grew up on Smelter Hill. She's the daughter of James Russell Logan, who founded and was the first president of the Montana Institute of the Arts and actress/director Eleanor Clausen, who directed plays and taught at West Junior High School and then at Charlie M. Russell High School. Clausen was "The Story Lady" at the library and "Playtime Lady" on KRTV in the 1960s, reading children's stories on the radio and television. Logan left Great Falls to live on Haight Street in San Francisco. She studied art at University of California, Davis (U.C. Davis). “The art has always been my true vocation and the others are a means to an end," she said. Logan started with brimless hats 25 years ago. Along the way she's developed a style with brims, and her hats have become more labor intensive and polished, though she aims to keep a raw element about them.
• Dan Palagyi (Pa-Lah-Jee)
  • Dan Palagyi was born in Lewistown MT and raised in nearby Roundup. He became interested in art at an early age when he spent most of his time drawing pictures during math class in grade school. While enrolled at Montana State University he took a beginning painting class as an elective. He felt an immediate connection to painting and soon changed his field of study to fine arts. Palagyi’s current work draws it’s inspiration from internal and external stimulus. “Painting is an emotional response to a particular moment in time, and any collective memories which linger in the mind. I also find inspiration from observation; one never knows what ordinary events or objects may spark a new idea.”
• Lee Silliman
  • Silliman was a high school physics, chemistry and mathematics instructor for forty-three years. He is now retired and living in Missoula. He was also the part-time photo archivist for the Powell County Museum and Arts Foundation in Deer Lodge for twenty-six years.
    
    He began the craft of photography in 1979, built his own darkroom in 1983 and began using a Wisner 8 x 10" Technical View Camera in 1989. The great photographic master Ansel Adams was Silliman's artistic inspiration, as well as the source of important technical information. Utilizing his own photographs, the historic photographs of the Smith-Hartley-Thompson Collection of the Powell County Museum, and historic artwork that he has purchased, Silliman has assembled and circulated fifteen different exhibitions that have been displayed in more than ninety institutions throughout Montana and ten other states since 1988.
• Michael Peterson
  • My first eleven  years were spent in Red Lodge Montana.  I spent 25 years of my adult life living and working in Billings.  I retired in 2004 and have enjoyed may activities in the outdoors, kayaking, backpacking, biking, fishing and hunting around Montana and the West.  
  • I started digital photography in 2005 and have traveled the southwest, and  northwest including Alaska, taking photographs which I really enjoy!  My wife is from Lewistown, she grew up on Beaver Creek, and we moved back here three years ago.  We love this town and are starting to explore many places around Central Montana, finding it beautiful and exciting. The experience of being out in the natural landscape and wildlife has always moved me deeply.  Thanks for letting me share it with you.
• Shakinah Brzezinski
  • www.madebeautifulstudio.com
  • Shakinah Brzezinski is a self-taught fine artist local to Bozeman, Montana. She was the coordinator for the Youth Art Walks in the summer of 2016. And a featured artist in The Art Of Surviving: 1,000 Strong, an invitational art show sponsored by Haven in the spring of 2017. She specializes in 2-D modern impressionism. Her medium variation includes watercolor, acrylic, and oil paints, as well as photography, and charcoal, graphite, and ink drawings. Her subjects also vary, however, she consistently focuses on using color, light, and shadow to convey emotion and meaningful messages. Art is a way of expression and storytelling for Shakinah. It also became an ongoing personal therapy that is key to her living with a chronic illness. She is now spending her life in the pursuance of impacting lives through lovely and meaningful artwork.
• Linda Tullis
  • Born in Montana in 1955, Tullis spent her childhood on a cattle ranch outside of Lewistown. She cultivated a love for the natural world, and used that connection to greatly influence her art.
  • After earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Arizona State University, she found her career niche in visual display and special events for nine years in Phoenix and San Francisco along with her artist husband, Fred Tullis. In 1990, she began monoprinting, showing and distributing her work throughout the country and in Europe.  Her subject matters focused on florals, as well as neoclassic sculptures and vessels.  Linda and Fred moved to Montana in 1993, and have made the Lewistown area their home since then.
  • Tullis' work evolved steadily and she continued adding new imagery and format to her collection. Her current works remain focused on both realistic and abstracted florals and still lives, with a strong, rich palette.  Her art is shown in fine galleries and in private collections throughout the world.
  • With the extensive background in visual display, marketing, special events, and being a professional artist, Tullis took those skills to the Lewistown Art Center and became the executive director in 2013.  In addition to her vast and varied creative background, Tullis utilizes her lifelong relationships with the citizens in Central Montana.
• Jacqueline Mercenier
  • Bio:
    • Jacqueline was born and raised in Brussels, Belgium. Some of her best childhood memories are from summers spent roaming the courntyside. These deeply etched memories, the cuture offered in her native city, and her parents’ impressionist paitnings around the house gaven her an early passion for the natural landschape. The Rocky Mountain West, with its vastness and wildlife appeared to her young mind as a shimmering dream. When it thus became a reality, Jacqueline had to put brush to paper, to express something of the awe and love she feels for the beauty and diversity of the western landscape and wildlife.
• Patse Hansen
  • https://artistpatsehansen.com/
  • Bio: Patse Hansen is an emerging artist whose unique style continues to gain recognition in national juried exhibition competitions. Hansen’s art has been accepted at the American Royal Livestock Art show in Kansas City and the Coors Western Art Show in Denver.  She has won awards the Manhattan Women’s Show in New York, the Western States Horse Expo in California, Wild Horse & Western Art Show in Wyoming, Carbon County Arts Guild in Red Lodge and has won the Irene Muir Creativity Award in Butte.  Hansen continues to exhibit her artwork at galleries in Montana and surrounding states and is generous with her special, creative abilities to help raise money for many philanthropic causes and organizations. 
• Susan Lohmuller
  • Bio: Susan Lohmuller has had a long love affair with weaving and currently resides in Central Montana.
• Rachael Marne Jones
  • www.rachaelmarnejones.com 
  • Rachael Marne is a ceramic and Mixed Media Collaborative artist, born and raised in Helena, Montana.  Her work has taken her to many exciting places such as the Bayou of Louisiana, the rainforests of Brazil and the Glacial Fields of the Andes in Peru.  The diverse ecologies of these places have influenced her deep connection to the land, which has ignited an intense interest in advocating for peoples’ agency within the places they call home.  She is the founder of The Seed Bank Project (2017-ongoing) and was the first artist Fellow  of the Global Sustainability Fellows Program participating  the summer of 2018 at the Arava Institute for Ecological Studies in Israel. She is a Visiting Professor in Ceramics and Drawing at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York. 
• Marcia Losh
  • Bio: Marcia Losh does not consider herself a writer. She is more of a visual artist, manipulating images, rather words. But she has enjoyed playing with rhyme-making and story-telling since she was a child. She never shared her work until she took a college course in digital storytelling. Using her computer to create illustrations for her own tales encouraged her to write stories for her daughter. Marcia is a visual artist producing these unique kaleidescopic prints, made from digitally manipulated photographs. She is also the illustrator of If Everybody Did It, a children's book written by her sister, Runi Arnold. 
• Tobie Liedes
  • www.artsbytobi.com
  • Bio: Tobie has been painting from more than 40 years. Her work has won numerous awards and she has been written up in magazines, such as Western Horseman.
    She paints primarily miniature Western landscapes that are 80 square inches or smaller. Her style is Impressionism and she paints in heavy body acrylic with palette knives. Her painting surfaces range from watercolor paper to gallery-wrap canvas. Paintings done on paper surfaces are backed by archival quality foam board.
• Patty Thompson
  • Patricia Kenney Thompson (Patty), is a Professional Freelance Photographer, living in Lewistown, Montana. She was raised rurally, in Arizona, on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation. Her work includes landscapes, still life, people and wildlife. The focus of her work is mainly natural, drawing attention to the things that happen around us.  Occasionally, she will digitally enhance her photography. The techniques used can give the photograph a softer feel, or a stronger, bolder influence Regardless of enhancement, her work always originates as a raw capture photograph. She spent 25 years taking images as Radiographer and Mammographer, which she feels has profoundly impacted her ability to capture fine images in photography. She earned her certification as a Professional Photographer from The Photography Institute in 2014. She has also studied under the direction of the Rocky Mountain School of Photography.
• Susan Gellner
  • Susan was born in the Pacific Northwest and began her career as a wax and fire artist about a decade ago after a career in a corporate job. In tandem with her passions of art, interior design, and gardening, Gellner crafts works that are aesthetically pleasing and materially rich. She is inspired by the solitude and contentment of her studio, and begins working by asking, “What color palette inspires me today?” Rather than begin with a product in mind, Gellner allows color and texture to guide her design and content, relying on aesthetic intuition and mood. The final products vary in size and style, but each rely on the depth of encaustic as a practice, and Gellner’s unique interpretation of the process.
• Gesine Janzen
  • https://gesinejanzen.com/home.html
  •  Gesine Janzen's recent work is focused on the waterways of the American West. She is inspired by the changing personalities and characteristics of rivers, and wonders at the contrasting beauty and extreme engineering of great reservoirs and dams. She hopes to raise questions about her relationship to water in the landscape. Her hand-colored wood block print, Madison River, Madison Dam, is based on a drawing and photograph of the point just below the dam that creates Ennis Lake, Montana.
  • Gesine was born and raised in Kansas. She studied art at Bethel College, and the University of Kansas, and received an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Iowa in 1998. Her artwork has been exhibited extensively across the US and abroad. She currently works as Associate Professor and Head of Printmaking at Montana State University in Bozeman, where she lives with her husband, children, and dogs.
• Mary Frieze
  • Bio: Over the years, Mary has spent many happy hours with Clint (Loomis) hiking the mountains and prairies of Montana. As they explore forests and meadows or skid down badland gullies, ideas for paintings tumble through her mind. For Mary, Montana’s wild lands are an artist’s paradise.
  • Recently, Frieze has become delighted by the abundant -and often wild - beauty of our local gardens and yards. The glorious colors and shapes of Lewistown’s foliage and flowers are a rich addition to her painting portfolio.
  • Frieze’s watercolor paintings express my enchantment with the Wild Plants of Montana, whether they grow in town or in the country.
• Jo Jones
  • https://www.etsy.com/people/JoJonesJewelry
  • Bio: I'm originally from England, which was where I took a course in silver-smithing. I’ve since takes other classes at Rio Grande, Albuquerque to refresh and learn some new techniques.
    
    We've lived in the U.S.A for 14 years, starting in Seattle then to the wide open spaces of Montana. Now w e are living northeast of Seattle in Snohomish. We are enjoying exploring our local area.
    
    I've been making jewelry for 26 years, starting with basic beading and slowly building up my designs into more intricate ones using both beads and sterling silver.
    
    I have a busy life, 3 children, all getting older and independent now, so I can devote more time to being creative, and a dog who loves exploring and hiking with my husband and I.
    We also love to travel, it’s great to experience different cultures.
• Cassie Stone
  • https://www.cassiestonewares.com/about.html
  • Cassie Stone grew up in Havre, Montana and received her BFA in ceramics from the University of Montana in 2013. She has worked with the Clay Studio of Missoula and the Lewistown Art Center, and currently attends the Cranbrook Academy of Arts in pursuit of her Masters of Fine Art in Metals.
• Gordon McConnell
  • Bio - Born in 1950 in La Junta, Colorado, and raised in rural Southeastern Colorado, Gordon McConnell studied art at Baylor University in Waco, Texas (B.A. 1972) and California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, and art history at the University of Colorado, Boulder (M.A., 1979). McConnell is best known as a postmodernist western painter. His work has been included in exhibitions all across the country, including Mountain Trails Gallery, Jackson, Wyoming; The Arts Center, St. Petersburg, Florida; and the Meridian International Center, Washington, D.C., in an exhibition that traveled to the National Art Gallery, Beijing, and other museums in China.
  • gordonmcconnellstudio.com
• Brooke Atherton
  • BrookeAthertonArt on Facebook
  • Brooke Atherton (b.1953) is an award-winning textile collage artist. She is a native of Springfield, Ohio, who now maintains her studio in Billings, Montana. She has a BFA degree from Wright State University in Dayton, OH, and has also lived and worked in Arizona and Texas.
• Carol Woolsey
  • In Carol’s own words: “I realized art was my path at a very young age, I believe around eight years old...I still have drawings I did at that age of horses, chickens and other barnyard friends. I have spent my life on that path and am amazed at how rewarding it has been. I have indulged in many art disiplines and have been thrilled at the results I have achieved. I will never stop living art.”
• David Wharton
  • Bio - David was born in Wichita Falls, TX, to Raymond Wharton and Jane (Neeley) Rudd on November 19, 1951. He graduated from Thomas A. Edison High School in 1970, earned a B.F.A. at Oklahoma University, and an M.F.A at Cranbrook Academy of Art. He worked as a full-time artist since 1977, including university teaching and work in the the non-profit world. His love of the wilderness and the West is shown in his paintings, lithographs, and prints, which are in collections throughout the country. David resided in Lewistown, MT until his death in May of 2019.
• Bill Stockton –
  • Bill Stockton was many things: artist, sheep rancher, soldier, sign painter, performer, storyteller, husband, father, grandfather, and Modernist. Despite long hours spent ranching, Stockton profoundly influenced the arts in Montana, along with a handful of his friends such as Isabelle Johnson and Bob and Gennie DeWeese. Like Jackson Pollock, one of his artistic heroes, his early paintings combine nonobjective abstraction with the colors and patterns of the Western landscape. The canvases stress the flatness of the surface and the truth of the edge. They are objects shorn of illusion.

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