Happy Birthday!
6.4.21
For my birthday, June 4, I wanted to do something indoors,
after several days of that Western weather we know so well (cool nights and
mornings, blazing sun and hot at midday).
The Yellowstone County Art Museum in Billings was cool and modern. At least part of it was modern – the museum
was originally a repurposed prison, the Yellowstone County Jail, and was opened
as an art museum in 1964. The modern
portion, built onto the front of the original building, was opened in 1998.
The main exhibit on the first floor showcased four women
artists who lived and worked in Montana.
There were paintings, sculpture and ceramic tableware with a variety of
styles and themes. One of my favorite
pieces was called “Pepper By the Door.”
It was a painting of a Dalmatian sitting and looking reproachfully over
his shoulder, waiting to be taken out.
It made me smile because I have seen the same expression on my sister
June’s dog Gael. The artist really
captured that “pay me some attention” look. There were also landscapes, and the ceramic
dishes made by one of the artists were both beautiful and functional, something
you would be proud to eat off of.
There were also works by the cowboy artist Will James. He lived the cowboy life and went on to write
both fiction and nonfiction and illustrate his own writings. He used strong female characters in his
stories, both girls and women, showing them as romantic interests but as also
directly involved in ranch life. This
flashed me back to my childhood. We used
to play cowboys and cowgirls but deep down I was not sure there really were
such things as cowgirls, except of course for Dale Evans, and she was a TV
character. Through Will James’ work I
found there were indeed women and girls who could ride, rope and tend horses
and cattle.
Upstairs was a large gallery of art from the Santa Fe and
Taos artists’ colony, mostly from the 1920s through 1950s. The mountain and desert landscape inspired
many artists to live and work there. In
fact, one of the artists complained that the landscape sort of took over, that
it was impossible to ignore it, which does not sound like a problem exactly –
too much inspiration?? There were
landscapes, portraits of Native Americans in ceremonial dress as well as doing
ordinary activities, some romanticized depictions of what the artists saw as a
nobler, simpler way of life. There were
also some wood carvings of human and animal figures and a table and chairs
painted with colorful figures and scenes.
There was almost too much to take in and we found ourselves quite tired
by the time we had seen everything in the gallery.
The museum also had two works by a contemporary artist that
seem to fall between the categories of art and science. One was a musical installation that picks up
signals in wind speed and velocity out on the artist’s ranch, then transfers
them to pipes that play like an organ.
There was a barcode you could scan to hear the music as it was recorded
out on the ranch on a particular day. It
was eerie and peaceful for the most part, punctuated by staccato percussive
sounds, presumably made by a gust of wind.
There was also a work by the same artist in the lobby area
of the museum. This also picked up wind
speed and velocity, by means of an anemometer mounted in the museum’s
courtyard, and these cues caused water to drip onto a shallow circular pool
about 4 feet in diameter, inside the museum.
There was a baffle in a channel around the pool that flipped whenever
the wind changed and set up a wave. The
drops also made patterns and sounds on the pool. I realize many people would look at this and
say it’s not art, and indeed it seems more recording of physical sounds than
creation, but I confess I found both these works mesmerizing, easily as
intriguing and moving as a fine painting.
We went to a nice restaurant for shrimp and salmon for my birthday. It was a wonderful dinner punctuated by thunder and a darkening sky. We mentioned the oncoming storm to the woman at the museum but she said, it’s probably just noise and wind, might not be any rain at all. It certainly looked threatening but she turned out to be right – as of the time we returned to our campsite there were those threatening dark clouds, lots of thunder and lightning, but very little rain. The storm hit many hours later in the middle of the night, with much fuss and high winds, but in the end there was not a lot of rain.
Along with the good wishes I got via text, email and phone calls, it was a most satisfactory birthday.
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