The artists’ gallery talk with Rachael Marne Jones and Ryan Keith Parker scheduled for next Monday, September 20, at 5:00 p.m. has been reconceptualized. In lieu of an in-person presentation, the artists will create a video documentary about their work and about the exhibition that will be available online later this month
Rachael Marne Jones is a ceramic and mixed media collaborative artist, born and raised in Montana. Her work has taken her to such varied places as the bayous of Louisiana, the rainforests of Brazil, and the glacial fields of the Peruvian Andes. These diverse ecologies have influenced her deep connection to the land and have ignited an intense interest in advocating for peoples’ agency within the places they call home. She is the founder of the Seed Bank Project (2017-ongoing) and was the first artist to attend the Global Sustainability Fellows Program at the Arava Institute for Ecological Studies in Israel. She is a visiting professor in SLU' s department of Art & Art History and teaches courses in ceramics and drawing.
Ryan Keith Parker is a lens-based artist and documentarian based in Bozeman, Montana. He lived on military installations across the US and Japan until the age of 13, and those early years became integral to the subject matter within Parker's practice. His work is concerned with the altered landscape, specifically the relationship between industrial standardization and economic factors which often leads to upheaval in small communities. His large-format photographs document the hinterland, the space subtly forgotten.