BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE OAKLAND COMPANIES
Gala and live auction celebrating the region’s vibrant arts community
September 9, 2023
THE ARTISTS
JOHN BUCK
DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD
JOSH DEWEESE
TOM FERRIS
EDITH FREEMAN
JENEESE HILTON
GESINE JANZEN
CHRISTINE JOY
GALA SCHEDULE
5:00 COCKTAILS
JODI LIGHTNER
TRACY LINDER
ROXY PAINE
BEN PEASE
BARBARA VAN CLEVE
WILLEM VOLKERSZ
THEODORE WADDELL
PATTI WARASHINA
Celebratory drinks, passed hors d’oeuvres, live music from the Billings Symphony
6:30 DINNER
Seated dinner by chef Daniel Burt of Scratch Kitchen in the Montana Gallery
7:30 AUCTION
Live auction with auctioneer Maron Hindman of Hindman Auction House
10:00 AFTERPARTY
The celebration continues! Generously hosted by Kirks’ Grocery at 2920 Minnesota Avenue
welcome
to
YELLOWSTONE ART MUSEUM
THE NIGHT HONORS
Donna Forbes
Donna Forbes led the Yellowstone Art Museum at a critical time in the organization’s history. As Director from 1974 – 1998, her leadership was both foundational and innovative.
She worked with artists, staff, donors, and museum trustees to transform the Yellowstone Art Center into a museum celebrated for its commitment to contemporary art, public education, and community engagement. Donna was a visionary who inspired widespread passion and support for the YAM.
The Night Gala and Art Auction celebrates all that Donna Forbes built and honors her extraordinary impact on the arts in Montana.
LOT 60
LOT 1
PATTI WARASHINA
Seattle, WA Kiln Yard, 2016
two-color lithograph on paper, 24.5" x 29"
estimated retail: $1,000
Patti Warashina (b. 1940) is an American artist known for her imaginative and eccentric studies of the human figure. Her work, often imbued with subtle irony and humor, offers an escape for viewers from the pressures and frustrations prevalent in society. Known as the queen of Northwest ceramics, Warashina’s work is in the permanent collection of Smithsonian American Art’s Renwick Gallery and in more than twenty museums throughout the US, Asia, England, and Australia.
LOT 2 BARBARA VAN CLEVE
Big Timber, MT Filly Chasing, 1985
archival pigment, print ed. 1/7, 48" x 38"
estimated retail: $5,500
Barbara Van Cleve (b. 1935) began capturing life on her family’s ranch on the eastern slopes of the Crazy Mountains when she was gifted her first “Brownie” camera as a young girl. Her silver gelatin prints and digital photographs capture both the dynamic and quiet moments on the ranch: branding, cattle moving, and roping scenes are interplayed with conversations among ranch hands, grazing horses, and night scenes. Often shooting from horseback, many of Van Cleve’s images embrace accidental and unstructured framing and unexpected angles.
PERMANENT COLLECTION ARTIST
LOT 3
JENEESE HILTON
Blackfeet, St. Ignatius, MT
The Surveyors, 2003
mixed medium, 48" x 67"
estimated retail: $5,000
The Surveyors incorporates a favored subject of Hiltons, the two ravens from Norse mythology, Huginn and Muninn, given the ability to speak by Odin. Her paintings are in many collections, including the Missoula Art Museum, the Museum of Art and Culture at the University of Montana, and the Yellowstone Art Museum. Hilton’s work has been exhibited widely throughout the region and abroad.
Hilton was raised by her grandparents on a ranch near the Canadian border on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana. Her work seeks to examine the intricacies enveloped in our constantly growing and changing belief systems, and the conflicts which arise when one set of beliefs collides with another. Her imagery is informed by an extensive understanding of literature, biology, religion, history, philosophy, and psychology, and is shaped by life experiences such as serving in the Peace Corps in Micronesia, Asia, and the South Pacific, as well as practicing art in Missoula, Mexico, Alaska, and Colorado.
PERMANENT COLLECTION ARTIST
LOT 4 TOM FERRIS
Helena, MT
Roundup Barn Grid, 2019
framed, archival inkjet print
24" x 30"
estimated retail: $600
Roundup Barn Grid exemplifies Tom Ferris’ careful examination of the Montana landscape. This body of work finds beauty in the infinite small details held within that landscape and encourages viewers to consider the artistry of our daily surroundings.
The photography of Helena native Tom Ferris seeks to capture the beauty found within the natural processes happening all around us, whether it be fabric shredding off a barbed wire fence or the peeling paint on an old barn. Viewing the road as a metaphor for life, Ferris seeks out that which one might see every day and take for granted or not view as pleasurable or hopeful. His photographs are featured in the 2012 book Hand Raised: The Barns of Montana, and capture the beauty preserved within Montana’s barns while also honoring the state’s farm and ranch traditions.
PERMANENT COLLECTION ARTIST
LOT 5 JODI LIGHTNER
Billings, MT
Blueprint to Rewrite History, 2016 acrylic, ink, and oil on mylar, 72" x 42"
estimated retail: $5,500
Integral to the work of Jodi Lightner are the themes of personal identity, memory, and experience, and the inherent way in which they shape one’s understanding of physical structure and place. “Using structural elements to discuss the break down or build up of the ongoing relational patterns and connections I find between others,” she writes, “the environments where we place ourselves, and the living objects around us, provides me with a language that gives meaning to the human fabricated world around me.” Lightner currently teaches painting and drawing as an Assistant Professor at Montana State University- Billings. Her studio practice has included national and international exhibitions, including juried and invitational shows.
LOT 6 JOSH DEWEESE
Bozeman, MT
Large Covered Jar, 2016 woodfired salt/soda glazed stoneware, 27" x 20" x 19" estimated retail: $3,500
DeWeese has exhibited his ceramic works across Montana and internationally. His work is included in numerous public and private collections. Large Covered Jar is a classical work by DeWeese and demonstrates his artistic excellence. In 2022, the Montana Arts Council celebrated his excellence when DeWeese was honored with a Governor’s Arts Award.
PERMANENT COLLECTION ARTIST
Josh DeWeese (b. 1963) is a ceramic artist and educator, currently teaching ceramics at Montana State University in Bozeman. Prior to teaching in Bozeman, DeWeese served as Resident Director of the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena. The son of Bob and Gennie DeWeese, Josh’s upbringing paved the way for a love of the arts. DeWeese’s work, both in his life and art, reflects an extensive training in ceramics as well as a passion for the beauty inherent within ceramics processing. These processes — the high temperature, melting, and transformation of the glaze — shape humanity into each finished piece.
LOT 7
TRACY LINDER
Molt, MT Wind, 2022
found bovine bones, 7.5' x 3' x 3.5'
estimated retail: $9,000
The work of Tracy Linder is defined by the life she’s lived since birth, rooted in the knowledge and experiences had growing up on a farm in the Yellowstone River Valley in south-central Montana. At a young age, Linder began to learn about the resourcefulness needed to survive, the vulnerability found in an often-harsh environment, and an awareness of the cycles of life and death. Her creative process has become a sort of reiteration of these familiar notions and an exploration of what can be found of them after what is natural ‘dies’ away. Her work and what is created then becomes biographical through presentation, lighting, surface, and detail, commanding a visceral response from the viewer.
PERMANENT COLLECTION ARTIST
LOT 8
WILLEM VOLKERSZ
Bozeman, MT Paradise Lost, 2023
wood, acrylic/ latex paint, found objects, 22.75" x 35” x 11.25"
estimated retail: $9,000
The work of Willem Volkersz (b. 1939) is imbued with an admiration for photography, travel, American roadside culture, Americana, and Folk and Visionary Art, a fascination which was born after Volkersz relocated to the United States from Holland after the devastation of World War II and began traveling through the American West. In his travels, Volkersz would document the billboards and neon signs found across the country, eccentric styles of expression which would later add meaning to the artist’s own work. Colorful lines of neon tubing create forms throughout many of Volkersz’ images, always adding personality and narration to commonly shared experiences.
PERMANENT COLLECTION ARTIST
LOT 9 THEODORE WADDELL
Billings, MT
White Sulphur Springs Angus #2, 2023
oil, encaustic on canvas, 60" x 60"
estimated retail: $38,000
Born in 1941 in Billings, Montana, painter, sculptor, and rancher Theodore Waddell lives what he paints. Images of range animals roaming the vast plains of eastern Montana are rendered in an abstract lens with impressive atmospheric quality, suggestive of the slow grazing of the animals and transition of days. In earning his BFA at Eastern Montana, Waddell received early training with modernist painter Isabelle Johnson and was exposed to several Abstract Expressionists whom he would later credit for their deep influences, including figures like Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock. Waddell’s work can be found in museum collections nationwide and has been featured in exhibitions nationally and internationally, shown throughout China, Singapore, Sweden, Africa, and more.
PERMANENT COLLECTION ARTIST
Billings, MT
Window, 1974
reduction woodcut print, 21" x 30"
estimated retail: $1,000
Edith Freeman (1913 – 1992) began her artistic journey as a painter but would later master the art of reduction block woodcut printing after first experimenting with the process in a graphics media class with Montana painter Isabelle Johnson in the 1960s. Inspired by the landscapes surrounding her in eastern Montana, subjects like yucca, sage, iris, and sandstone forms were attentively captured using self-discovered techniques which included printing multiple colors using a single block and varying ink mixtures and applications to create interesting texture. Freeman’s legacy was honored in 1993 with her reception of the Montana Governor’s Award for the Arts.
LOT 11
GESINE JANZEN
Bozeman, MT
Near Clarkston, 2011 lithograph on paper, 15.5" x 43.25"
estimated retail: $800
For Gesine Janzen (b. 1967), the woodcut is her tradition and muse. The process, she shares, “connects me to landscapes, places, sensations, and memories.” Much like the printmaking process, Janzen’s prints embody a layered and narrative quality as she works to build imagined forms into being. Forms are shaped as they are remembered and born as they are wished into existence and draw upon the artist’s notion of place and self.
10 EDITH FREEMAN
LOT
PERMANENT COLLECTION ARTIST
PERMANENT COLLECTION ARTIST
LOT 12
CHRISTINE JOY
Bozeman, MT UNION, 2009 willow
9" x 19" x 14"
estimated retail: $4,500
UNION originated as a deeply personal work for Christine Joy. This sculpture was made in 2009 as an anniversary gift to her husband, Al. That origin is referenced in the title of the piece. Christine and Al are generously sharing this work, and the love it represents.
Working exclusively with willow, Christine Joy cycles her work with the seasons — cutting and gathering her material in autumn, then sorting, bundling, and storing. Throughout the year, she pulls from her cache, working branch by branch, she bends and constructs twisted and tied forms as if born by wind or water. Born in upstate New York in 1952, Joy received a BFA in Printmaking in 1976 from Rochester Institute of Technology and settled in 1980 in Bozeman, Montana, after completing a master’s program in art therapy at Vermont College. Her relationships and exchanges with willow continue today and provide a path for exploring the mystery of nature and examining our connection to the earth.
LOT 13 JOHN BUCK
Bozeman, MT
The
Bull Pen, TP 1, 2022 woodblock print
36.75" x 64.5"
estimated retail: $5,500
The work produced by Midwest artist John Buck (b. 1946) is enriched by a uniquely Western consciousness, funky Bay Area influences, and deep understanding of how drawn forms translate into threedimensional sculptures. After earning both a BFA and MFA, Buck would later settle in Bozeman, earning tenure with Montana State University in 1976 to teach sculpture. There, the slow and expansive landscape would continue to enrich his understanding of the mythology of the West and inherently influence his form-making. Later works produced in Montana adopt a Western sense of scale and limitless space while still working through and addressing modern socio-political issues.
PERMANENT COLLECTION ARTIST
ROXY PAINE
Red Lodge, MT
Scumak, S2-P2-DB41, 2008
low density polyethylene in black
18" x 30" x 24"
estimated retail: $10,000
The work of Roxy Paine (b. 1966), American post- war and contemporary sculptor, encourages meditation on the relationship of human beings to nature with his simultaneously natural and artificial site-specific installations. The vocabulary of fungi, plants, and industrial machines become vehicles for the artist’s reflections on mechanized production and the human impulse to impose order and control over creative and natural forces. Works in stainless steel reiterate the institutional use of the material in pharmaceuticals, food, gas, and oil pipeline industries. Since 1989, his work has been internationally exhibited and is included in collections throughout California, New York, Canada, Washington, D.C., and Jerusalem, and he has permanently sited works in Seattle, D.C., Missouri, Texas, and Sweden. He has relocated from New York and now lives and works in Red Lodge, MT.
LOT 15
BEN PEASE
Billings, MT
Kept
2022
oil, acrylic, cattle marker, oil pastel, inkjet on velvet paper, 40" x 52"
estimated retail: $15,000
Inspired by a photograph of Crow elders at the Inauguration of the First Crow Indian Baptist Day School, this work by Ben Pease includes deeply personal and historical references. The story of the school intersects with Pease’s own family story as his great-grandmother was a student. In much of his artwork, Pease considers the legacy of colonization and the mistreatment of Native communities on current and future generations.
Ben Pease (b. 1989) comes from the Valley of the Chiefs District on the Crow Indian Reservation and grew up in Lodge Grass, MT. Pease is not only an artist but a contemporary storyteller, viewing creativity as one of the most important aspects of one’s education. His work often includes historical photographic references and reflects the artist’s contemplation of contemporary Indigenous issues such as cultural appropriation, exotification, racism, and stereotyping disguised as appreciation and oblivion. Pease’s work continually yet respectfully asks: how, and why?
LOT 14
in a Place and Made to Learn New Ways All While Keeping the Old Ways Alive as Best as They Were Allowed with Ignored Promises of Good Cattle, Pensions, Housing, and Fresh Food … As Long as They Learned the New Ways and Gave More Land,
LOT 16 DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD
Bozeman, MT Sancai, 2023 cast bronze with patina, 23" x 26" x 9" estimated retail: $125,000
Throughout an extensive and prolific career, the horse has remained a constant source of inspiration for Deborah Butterfield (b. 1949). Often represented as muscular, energetically charged war machines, Butterfield’s horses take on more genteel and unique personalities, animated through the artist’s use of organic materials such as mud, leaves, and sticks. Later horses become compositions of collected junk metal and pave the way for smaller, more limited editions cast in bronze. The artist has said of her process: “I always work to make the personality of each of these horses dominate and overrule the identity of its sum parts. These horses are rarely hollow shells, but are built up from within and reveal the interior space.”
PERMANENT COLLECTION ARTIST
MEET THE AUCTIONEER
MARON
HINDMAN VICE CHAIR, HINDMAN AUCTIONS
Maron Hindman, began her decades long career in the auction business as the director of marketing as well as bids and client services for Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, in 1988. The Chicago-based firm operates more salerooms in the United States than any competitors and conducts over 150 auctions annually in all major collection categories. Maron became one of the principal auctioneers shortly after she joined the firm, and, since her move to the Denver branch, she has been instrumental in building a successful and growing Western and Wildlife art department for the auction house.
For over 30 years, Maron has provided private collectors, estate professionals and institutions comprehensive art services including valuation, auction, private sales, collection management as well as disposition and acquisition advice. Hindman has had the privilege of handling many prominent estates and collections from distinguished museums, institutions, corporations, and private individuals from across the country and is recognized globally as a leading auction house with an unyielding focus on client service.
Maron has served as an auctioneer in numerous charity auction events including the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, USO, Children’s Home and Aid Society, Easter Seals Greater Chicago, Wellness House and the Brookfield Zoo, Easter Seals Colorado, Up with People, Porter Hospital, and Opera Colorado. She also coordinates consignments from individuals, private collections, estates, and museums throughout the West and Southwest region. Maron lives with her husband and family in Denver, Colorado.
AUCTION INFORMATION
LIVE AUCTION BIDDING
• All attendees will be assigned a bid number and paddle on September 9. Bidders who wish to remain anonymous must register as absentee.
• Please note that a 15% buyer’s premium will be assessed on all successful bids. The premium is a fully tax-deductible donation. Proceeds will go directly to the stewardship of the Yellowstone Art Museum’s building, grounds, and permanent collection.
NEW THIS YEAR!
Purchase a Luck of the Draw Raffle ticket and win the chance to select one designated Auction Artwork. The lucky winner will be drawn during The Night Gala and Art Auction and may select one of the predetermined artworks to take home at no additional charge. Tickets are $100 each. Only 100 tickets will be sold. All tickets must be purchased in advance on the YAM website, or in person during The Night Gala and Art Auction event. All proceeds from the Luck of the Draw Raffle will support the YAM’s Art Acquisition Fund for the Permanent Collection.
Artwork not selected by the raffle winner will be auctioned during the event as planned.
ABSENTEE BIDDING
If you are unable to attend The Night Gala and Art Auction in person, absentee bidding and live phone bidding are available. Participants must register by 12 PM MST on Friday, September 8. To inquire further and register, please contact Precious McKenzie at development@artmuseum.org or 406-256-6804 X225.
ARTWORK PICK UP / DELIVERY
Successful bidders need not take their artwork home with them the night of the Gala. Each purchaser will be required to choose between two options:
• Works can be picked up at the YAM on the following Wednesday, September 13, between 10 AM and 5 PM, or
• Arrangements can be made for white glove delivery of artwork(s) by curatorial staff on Thursday, September 14 between the hours of 11 AM and 6 PM. Deliveries outside of Billings city limits may incur an additional fee. Purchasers must be home or arrange a representative to receive the work during a preferred delivery window.
A storage fee of 10% of the purchase price will be assessed to any work(s) still on site by 5:00 PM MST on Saturday, September 16.
THANK YOU
brought to you by our generous TITLE SPONSOR
THE OAKLAND COMPANIES & LEAD SPONSOR
LORNEL BAKER
TABLE SPONSORS
EIDE BAILLY LLP
RED LODGE CLAY CENTER
ROCKY MOUNTAIN COLLEGE
STEVE & JENNIFER CORNING
JON LODGE & JANE DESCHNER
DEBORAH ANSPACH & DR. JOHN HANSON
MATTHEW & STEPHANIE STROUD
SUSAN SULLIVAN & STEVE ZABAWA
SUPPORTING SPONSORS
THE LAWRENCE LITHOGRAPHY WORKSHOP
HINDMAN AUCTIONS
SPECIAL THANKS TO BILLINGS SYMPHONY
CARAMEL COOKIE WAFFLES CO.
KIRKS’ GROCERY
RIVERSAGE BILLINGS INN
TOWN & COUNTRY FOODS
TODD FORSGREN
MARON HINDMAN
KEEARA RHOADES
