It Takes A Village; Missoula Art Museum Installation

It Takes A Village was created after an invitation from the Missoula Art Museum senior curator, Brandon Reintjes. The MAM has created an outdoor exhibition space adjacent to the museum. Each year the museum invites an artist to work with the space and create a sculptural work that stays up for a few months during the late spring, summer and early fall period. I met with Brandon and spent time in the space and proposed the It Takes A Village piece, made up of a number of powder coated steel house forms in stacked arrangements. Each house form was an empty container, that would be filled with handmade or collected ceramic objects along with local used brick and locally collected river rock from the Missoula community. Additionally, community members were invited to help fill each of the house shaped containers with the collected materials. In addition, I was asked to create two additional pieces for the front of the museum, and chose to create a Big Red House and a Big Orange House. Both of these Big House pieces were mounted on a pivot point and seemed just the right scale to highlight the beautiful classic columned entry of the original library that eventually became the Missoula Art Museum.

• 2021