The sun shone a bit brighter that day. And it reminded me of something else....

"Standing in the room pictured above, not just a bit overwhelmed by the immensity of the body of work, I saw proof of the confluence of two ideas..."

[Note: The photo, take near the town of Wolf Creek between 1915 and 19219,  the rocky walls of Wolf Creek Canyon and Prickly Pear Creek.  The railroad tracks (still in place) run parallel to the [...]

In the vein of how traditional artists teach their art, Wayland had an apprentice called Flibbertigibbet...

"And so, we stitch our lives, the history behind us, and our hopes for the future."

"Or, rather does the crazy quilt's power lie in what has been accomplished stitch by stitch..."

The quilt has become bound by the Seamstress of Time ever more firmly into the country's identity and cultural consciousness.

"The landscape is the product of the divine average.”

"Too often the nearby loses value, while the faraway holds the allure."

And just exactly what does a blue horse have to do with stitching a quilt?

Seems at times that life is just one big succession of new gates...

At times, I find myself doubting a thought or perspective that pops up like a weed in the midst of what I consider the inner garden of my mind. Usually, though, if I am patient enough, multiple [...]

Before the flush of June’s greening, I grabbed some time to walk up the county road that cuts through the native grassland. As I walked, I framed a view without picking a mat color, wood molding, [...]

Early June brings the storms and their seasonal rain to central and eastern Montana. The storms also deliver something else...drama. And in drama, lies a story, complete with a setting and a plot…

Today is the day before Easter. It is a time that commercially we are told to commemorate by brightly colored eggs and chocolate bunnies. A time to gather. A time to renew. A time to celebrate [...]

We believe that in the tangle of our daily demands, we find the possible in the impossible. We understand that in the crush of surviving, we thrive most when we understand and express our unique [...]

Back in what feels like another lifetime, nearly three years ago, I had the opportunity to spend a day with a roomful of rawhide braiders – and the one person who arrived in the class to a chorus [...]

No, your calendar doesn’t have a misprint. In this first month of the new decade, the full moon isn’t until January 24, but perhaps that is where the collision started. Here’s what happens to me [...]

The press of work and expectations of what was planned seem to elbow each other sharply about now, pushing, crowding, and yelling for a better place in line in an already packed mind. In short, [...]

It is interesting how ties from the distant past follow us. Recently, I found a packet of letters from my great-grandfather to his father discussing his preparations to leave Kentucky ahead of [...]

For me that day, spent fishing with my dad, far from the drone of graduate seminars and on the edge of what was once an active volcano, I connected a horse’s whitened bones with a potential fiber [...]

A number of years ago, my family celebrated Halloween watching the sunset at Stonehenge.  Going there had long been on my “Bucket List”, but visiting on Halloween was not planned.  It [...]

Towards the end of last year’s hunting season, we answered the doorbell to see a good friend who was celebrating a day off by hunting and stopping to visit. His visit and his sharing of [...]

Yesterday, the wind blowing in from the southwest signaled the arrival of warmer weather.  It changed our world from a pristine Hallmark card image to a rippling, moving place where as a youth I [...]

Three Little Words…. But, the realist in me whispers that they may not always be “I love you.” I started out writing this piece to send love and anniversary best wishes to our son and [...]

A writing teacher once told my class about receiving an essay that began, “Cows is just like people.” Although she saw it as a great example of subject-verb non-agreement, I had been raised with [...]

Earlier this week, the day before July 4th, before snow coated the hillsides and frost visited valley gardens, our son took on the task of mowing the grass around the buildings. Rain and moderate [...]

Flying hooves sprayed sand in my face. Fetlock hair and hooves filled my viewshed as I hung upside-down and tangled in a stirrup. I remember wondering how strange the horizon looked. The day had [...]

On a hillside, near the summit of one of the highest hills in southwestern England’s Vale of the White Horse, are two examples of that could play in a debate on “what is art.” The first example [...]

What lies in a brand? Is it only an archaic artifact? Or, perhaps a name? In the case of this photo posted by artist Tom Dean, does the brand only drive a random price? What is the promise that [...]

In Montana, branding remains a ritual for establishing ownership. An animal’s brand marks clear title of ownership, while branding itself is a honored ceremony in rural areas. A brand also is a [...]

Where’s Home? Less than a mile from the place I call home lies another set of buildings, barely visible across the grass and just breaking the southern horizon line. This was always “the home [...]

The seeds of inspiration never cease to amaze me. Those seeds are planted and grow in both our physical and spiritual landscapes. Although they may find expression in a wider world, it is our [...]

Extreme could well describe my Montana — high peaks or wide prairies, temperatures above 110 degrees in the summer or a shivering -60 in the winter. Clouded in myth and mystery, Montana [...]

“When I speak of home, I speak of the place where — in default of a better — those I love are gathered together; and if that place were a gypsy’s tent, or a barn, I should call it by the same [...]

As I sit with my five-month old grandson, I often wonder what the day-to-day world would be like if our society slid into some type of dystopian existence in which we lost our collective voices, [...]

  [Note: I wrote this piece in 2012…and it goes a long way to explaining why we decided to place our family ranch in a conservation easement. The land, like art and our cultural [...]

Today our herd bull is standing in sunlit snow, energetically rooting around in his little pile of hay and looking for the choicest morsels of grass, with maybe even a sprig of alfalfa. After a [...]

  And what connection, you may ask, does our Highland herd bull have to artists diversifying their income? Start with the fact that 80.6 million beef cattle exist in the U.S., of which 75% [...]

When we look at a cottonwood tree silhouetted against a stormy sky, the drama of the moment, the play of dark against light, may cause us to overlook something deeper. What is it that makes the [...]

Creative process is a tricky discussion topic. It is easy to “get into the weeds” of the world of objectives, measurements, and arcane subjects likes intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. However, [...]

Because artists tend to do most of their work out of public view, the common perception remains that artists are different, doing their work under cover of secrecy, ala Tom Waits’ sung question, [...]

The consistent “pot-stirring” of hobgoblins begs a look at the “magic” of the landscape in which the hobgoblin moves. Shakespeare’s Puck, a hobgoblin par excellence, is a “knavish sprite” who [...]

In another “lifetime,” I worked for an individual who deflected criticism of her planning decisions by saying, “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” The comment squashed and [...]

A recent popular blog (http://reddotblog.com/artists-are-you-consistent-a-gallery-owners-perspective) shared the belief that artists need to understand the importance of consistency in order to [...]

Bodacious…a combination of bold and audacious.  Downright and unmitigatedly, perhaps even notoriously, thorough or complete. Boudicca… Warrior queen of the Iceni, a people living in [...]

The land holds this story of two friends who were lost this past week – Gary Standley and Taoufik Agoumy. It is a tale of two very different individuals, separated by physical and cultural [...]

Each time I drive past Travis School, the one-room schoolhouse where I started my whole adventure in learning, I see the possibilities.  “Some day, it could be a __________” or “Someday, wouldn’t [...]

My husband recently emailed me this photo with the comment, “Your desk doesn’t approach this!” His words calmed my guilty panic about the growing piles of books and notes surrounding my [...]

Over the last years, I have repeatedly heard artists indicate that one of their greatest needs is to “tap into a network” of creative people. The word net comes from an Old English word probably [...]

Having just knit a sweater with a “soft-to-your-skin” blend of Mountain Colors’ hand-dyed wool, I can’t help but consider the joys found in creating by hand. The tactile joy for the creator, and [...]