The Emerson Center for the Arts & Culture is pleased to host its newest shows featuring emerging artists from our community.
Montana State University artists feature as part of student exhibition In Good Company in Galleria Hall. The show brings together a wide range of artistic voices working across diverse media and approaches.
The exhibit highlights students at different stages of their practice, creating a space where experimentation, process and polish coexist. Painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, photography and hybrid forms are presented side by side, emphasizing conversation rather than hierarchy. In Good Company celebrates being in dialogue, with peers, materials and ideas, while capturing a collective moment within the MSU art community.
Montana photographer Christopher Campbell showcases Caldera in the Lobby and Weaver Room galleries. A selection from a much larger series, he comes up with projects or series as he works, not the other way around. He discovers his intention through the photographs.
“My method is slow, but once moving through the land I work assuredly and intuitively, I find there is little equivocation over what to photograph. I question little when moved to expose a sheet of film. The questions come after,” his artist statement reads. “I believe there are always far more questions than answers. The heavy lifting, after I put a photograph out into the world, is up to the viewer. If I have done my job the weight should be manageable in its own way by anyone willing or able to take the time.”
Paint artist John Henry Hasteline unveils The Mountain Clown & Other Foul Animals in the Jessie Wilber Gallery. The exhibit is an irreverent jab at our cultural mythologies, specifically our Western and Pioneering narratives.
Utilizing toys, puppets, performance and comics in addition to painting, Haseltine explores how both self-produced folk art and kitsch mass production equally contribute to the legacy of western mythology. He’s interested in the parallels between historical western expansion and contemporary gentrification in the region, as well as the ways stories can be manipulated to represent local and personal identities.
All exhibits are open the public, on display through mid-April. For gallery hours and more information, please visit www.theemerson.org. Located at 111 S Grand Ave., the Emerson Center for the Arts & Culture serves as a primary resource for the arts, arts education, and cultural activities in Southwest Montana. •
