Meet the Artists
of the Thunderhead Benefit Auction
Laura Barrett
Laura Grace Barrett (1930–2017), was a champion for art her entire life. She ran three galleries during her career, two in Bigfork, and was an ardent supporter of women artists in particular. All the while, she was quietly making her own work including prints, collages, and paintings. Barrett, who opened Bridge Street Gallery and Wine Café and Restaurant, Collage Gallery in Bigfork, Montana, Ambos Galeria de Arte y Artefactos in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Barrett exhibited and supported many Montana contemporary artists.
Born in Froid, Montana, and raised on a wheat farm, Barrett left at the age of sixteen to attend the University of Montana, where she studied writing, language, and education, and later art at the University of Hawaii and the University of California, L.A. She wrote and directed the play “Garden of Pleasure,” which was performed at UCLA, and wrote “What is More Real Than a Dream? Memoir of Chateau Montelena Winery” about the winery in Calistoga, California she and her husband helped found whose 1973 Chardonnay won the landmark Paris tasting of 1976.
Amanda Bielby
Working in the building trades. I found myself unbalanced by developing painful arthritis through my back and shoulders. I desired my work and found that balance in Art. I use the techniques I learned as an industrial painter in my art to satisfy my passion to build and heal.
I believe the laboring craftsmen in the building trades develop their own fine art over time. My inspiration grows from life’s moments and my landscaped environment. My artistic background has motivated me to incorporate leftover building material that on the norm would be thrown away to our landfill. Stay Green
Jesse Blumenthal
Jesse Blumenthal is an internationally exhibited, museum collected Artist and Educator residing in Missoula, Montana. In 2020 Blumenthal’s studio work was exhibited at The Missoula Art Museum, Yellowstone Art Museum, Western Cast Iron Art Alliance Invitational, and Hereford College in the UK. Solo exhibitions will be held in 2021 at Terrain Gallery in Spokane, WA and in 2022 at Holter Museum of Art in Helena, MT. Blumenthal's educational practice has recently been awarded a Montana Arts Council Artists in Schools and Communities Grant supported by The National Endowment for the Arts, was granted a residency in Missoula County Public Schools, and received three separate regional grants to support further research and professional development. Jesse was raised in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He attended UMass Amherst, earning a BFA in Sculpture in 2007, and completed his graduate work at The University of Montana, earning an MFA in 2019. He serves as the Director of Performance for the National Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art and Practice.
Courtney Blazon
Courtney Blazon is an artist and illustrator living and working in Missoula, MT. She is a graduate from Parsons School of Design, where she received her BFA in Illustration. She's shown in Montana at the Missoula Art Museum, Holter Museum of Art and Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art, and outside of Montana, she has shown in Seattle, Portland, New York, Philadelphia, Baton Rouge, San Francisco, Jackson, Wyoming, and most recently, in Billings, MT at Northcutt Steele Gallery. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings (Western Edition), Studio Visit Magazine, and juxtapoz.com. She is the co-organizer of the popular Montana MADE Fairs, a series of art and craft fairs started in 2007. She is a past recipient of a Montana Arts Council Artists Innovation Award. She is represented by Radius Gallery in Missoula, MT.
Carolyn Courson
Inspired by the quilters of her family and the Impressionist Art Movement, Carolyn Courson’s fiber art quilts emphasize the beauty of Nature, featuring traditional and contemporary quilting techniques. Recent botanical art studies have honed her art skills in fiber and colored pencil, while selection as an Artist-in-Residence at Old Faithful in 2017 and 2018 narrowed her focus to flora and landscapes.
A native of Montgomery, Alabama, she and her husband reside along the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay. They enjoy travelling, especially to Montana, and are active volunteers in their community. A graduate of the University of Central Florida, she retired from a successful career in governmental accounting. She is a member of two fiber art groups in Alabama and is a Board Member of the American Society of Botanical Artists. Her fiber pieces have been exhibited regionally in group exhibitions in Auburn, Callaway Gardens, and the Mobile Museum of Art. Her botanical paintings have been exhibited at the Mobile Arts Council and the Ashland Gallery.
Jenny Hines
Jenny Hines is an artist living in Butte, Montana. Trained as a photographer, she turned to scanning when her film cameras kept breaking.
These days she works primarily with plants to create high-resolution images of native flora.
Linda Helding
Linda Helding is a dyer with over 50 years experience in commercial and natural dyes. Her pandemic art projects moved beyond dyeing yardage and yarn into making collages with dyed silk and recycled fabric.
Michelle Postma
Michelle Postma is a ceramic artist, painter, educator, and adventure enthusiast living in Missoula, MT. Her art practice is focused on reflecting the multivalence of reality from a grounding of loving acceptance. Michelle translates her observations of inner and outer worlds into a language of animals, female figures, and buddhas. The images come from a meditative process of watching images as they arise in her mind. The characters are very kind and she loves them. The closer she gets to reality, the weirder it gets. Thank you.
www.michelle.land
https://youtu.be/TxO2qzsCumw
Christine Martin
CHRISTINE MARTIN is the Curator of The Historic Clark Chateau. She studied Fine Art and Art History at The Ohio State University and Printmaking at the University of Montana. Her previous experience includes: The Mansfield Art Center and The Art Works on Main Gallery; steward of the print shop at the Imagine Butte Resource Center; and longtime teaching artist of printmaking, life drawing and studio arts. Her work has shown at the Pearl Conard Art Gallery, The Mansfield Art Center, The Foreground Gallery and other national shows. She has been featured in several publications and has illustrated the book Iron, Ardent by Sheila Black for Educe Press.
Richard Opper
Richard spent the last 12 years of his career as director first of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, then the Montana Department of Health and Human Services. He turned to painting as a way to get closer to the truth and to help heal a world plagued by climate change, threats to democracy and other such nuisances.
Salisha Old Bull
Salisha Old Bull is a recent Art graduate and former Student Success Coordinator at the University of Montana. She spent 7 years in student support and 4 years teaching Tribal Governance and Administration. She has pursued art throughout her life and finds her greatest professional and personal achievements in the art world. Salisha is Salish-Crow from Arlee, MT. Salisha currently lives in Vancouver, BC.
Sophia George
Sophia George is an artist born and raised in Northwest Montana. Her work is based on plants, flora, and curious moments in nature. She paints with watercolor on paper and fabric.
Stella Nall
Stella Nall is a Montana-based multimedia artist and poet. She is involved in the community of Missoula as a member of the WMCI Indigenous Art Advisory Committee, by playing in the local band Cry Baby, and by frequently sharing her work through exhibitions, publications, murals, and interactive installations which invite participation. She is currently an exhibiting artist with the Art Mobile of Montana, and her work lives in numerous public and private collections, including The Montana Museum of Art and Culture and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
Stephanie Pointer
Stephanie Pointer is an artist and owner of Clementine’s in Bigfork, MT. Stephanie is an alumnus of ArtCenter College of Design, The University of California, Berkeley, and The University of Montana. Stephanie is passionate about art, nature, learning, music, gardening, family, friends & food.
Talia Roberts
Talia Roberts was born and raised in South Florida, spent her undergraduate years between North Carolina and New Zealand studying Psychology and Art, and is currently living in Missoula, Montana. Inspired by Earth’s natural cycles, the seasons, and the relationship that light and color have with the human psyche, Talia experiments with color combinations, illusions, and geometric forms to explore the limits of our eyesight. Her paintings require viewers to trust in their senses and emotions to contemplate the meaning of her work.
Stoney Samsoe
Stoney is a lover of art, science, and nature. She believes that connection with community, creativity, and curiosity are key ingredients to a happy and healthy life. Stoney is the co-founder and director for Western Montana Creative Initiatives and the Open AIR program.
When not working on WMCI/Open AIR Stoney enjoys hikes with her husband and dog, gardening, and time in the studio.
Youpa Stein
My father was a forest ranger and growing up I lived in National Forests, the Tongass in Alaska and the Kootenai in Montana. I feel a sense of being home when I am with water and trees. I have BFA in Acting and Directing and a MA in Psychology and Drama Therapy, MA. My art explorations over the last forty years have included teaching, performing, directing, sculpture, writing and photography. In 1993 I co-founded the non-profit organization Living Art of Montana and for twenty-three years I served Living Art’s mission to use the arts and nature to support healing through many different roles. I was a member of the Montana Arts Council from 2005-2015. I started making masks in 1990. In 2009, I started to amass a collection of fallen bark and began experimenting using natural and man-made materials in my mask work.
Around 2010, the design elements that excited me in bark shaped how I saw things. My camera became another way to capture what was compelling to me in natural forms. I am grateful to collaborate with the biodiversity of our world. In June 2016, I transitioned from Living Art to pursue making art full-time. My mission now is to create work expressing uncommon views of natural forms to illuminate and revitalize our connection to the earth. Writer, farmer and activist, Wendell Berry, describes the care of the earth as our most ancient and worthiest responsibility. I dedicate my art-making in the service of that responsibility and my hopes for the health of our blue planet.
David Wilson
David Wilson was raised in Montana. He has taken many trips to Latin America—including a year in Brazil and over a year teaching on a Fulbright Exchange in Chile. He has also taken many trips to Honduras, a couple of junkets to Cuba, and some extended visits to Spain. His primary vocation thus leaned toward work with languages and he has spent the last twenty years working as a high school Spanish teacher, translating for Migrant Education and medical groups. Two important focuses in Wilson’s landscape paintings are his continued interest in manipulating texture and his attempt to capture a certain spontaneity.
Antonia Wolfe
I am drawn to vivid, vital colors and textures; the essences of places are what move me. With my camera I strive to capture flashes of beauty wherever I happen to find myself, at home or abroad. I have been asked why I concentrate so much on beauty when there are so many despairing images to convey. My answer is simple. It is the mystery I am always tracking with my lens: beauty can be found even in the the most agonizing, tragic places. Each of my images-----even the most otherworldly landscapes------tries to unearth a humanity that could easily have been overlooked. My jewelry-making grew organically out of my work as a photographer; on photography assignments I have collected stones and beads from countries around the world. They too are records of a presence that moves through us. My work unfolds out of attention, passion, and love. All of my art work is an expression of my curiosity and love for the world with all its diversity.