Show Preview | Artistic Horizons - Southwest Art Magazine

Bozeman, MT, Hilton Garden Inn, June 29-30

Brent Cotton, Friends, oil, 20 x 26.

When artists receive an event invitation from Darell Tunnicliff, the manager of legendary western realist painter Clyde Aspevig, they know their works will likely be in excellent company at an exhibition of the highest order. Add a worthy cause to which the show’s proceeds will be donated, and the invitation becomes downright irresistible.

“It’s an honor just to be asked,” says Utah-based G. Russell Case, a self-described  “impressionist landscape painter of the West.” He’ll be bringing three paintings—two Arizona scenes and one of Glacier National Park—to the first annual Artistic Horizons show, which benefits Arts Without Boundaries. This nonprofit organization brings workshops, concerts, and lessons in the performing and visual arts to schoolchildren in Montana communities.

In this two-day fundraising event, 15 artists show two or three pieces each. Attendees at the Friday-evening opening reception and the Saturday viewing and sale can see a variety of artworks including landscapes like those of Case, Brent Cotton, Glenn Dean, Josh Elliott, and Jill Carver; figurative images from Suchitra Bhosle and Logan Maxwell Hagege; wildlife paintings by Kyle Sims; and animal sculptures by George Bumann and Tim Cherry. “We’re keeping the quality  very high,” says Linda Williams, an Arts Without Boundaries board member, Boze- man resident, and a plein-air and still-life painter. “It’s a strong show of terrific painters and sculptors.” Prices, says Williams, “will run the gamut,” and 30 percent of proceeds will go directly to benefit the organization’s programs.

“When the invitation comes from Darell Tunnicliff, you just know that it’s going to be a top-quality event and that it’s going to be done right,” says British-born, Austin-based Carver. “For me, this is a huge opportunity to showcase some of the studio pieces I’ve been working on.” She’s particularly enthusiastic about showing a luminous snow scene that she painted recently at her mountain cabin near Rico, CO. Carver also has firsthand experience with the kind of good deeds that Artistic Horizons supports. “Back in England,” she says, “I was an artist in residence at a Quaker school that emphasized the arts, regardless of whether the children had any talent. As a structure for expressing emotions, that’s tremendously important in developing well-rounded human beings.”

Sims, who lives just north of Bozeman, feels an important personal connection to the show, too—along with a local one. “The arts were really important in my upbringing, an escape from a lot of the stressors in life,” he explains. Sims was fresh from finishing a painting of “a grizzly bear skirting around some thermals” in the Yellowstone area, one of at least two works he’s bringing to Artistic Horizons. “And besides, it’s nice for a change to be doing a show that’s in town. It’ll literally take me 10 minutes to drive to the venue.”

Artistic Horizons opens with an artists’ reception on Friday, June 29, from 6 to 9 p.m. Tickets are $50 per person and include heavy appetizers and wine. —Norman Kolpas

contact information
406.577.6313
www.artswithoutboundaries.org

Featured in the June 2012 issue of Southwest Art magazine–click below to purchase a copy:
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