SIDE TRIPS part three--Lolo and Lulus

Highway 93 in Montana runs along the edge of the Bitterroot Range. The vistas are wide open

with little towns called Darby and Victor and Lolo. They still harvest their grassy hay and pile it in stacks using a beaverslide.

photo from google images

Beaverslide then

Beaverslide now. This device is used to make very picturesque hay stacks--- --much more artistic than the big rectangular bales or the giant rolls that look like shredded wheat cereal for monsters. The countryside along the Bitterroot Mountains is part of the area used for the movies, “A River Runs Through It,” and “Legends of the Fall"—both starring Brad Pitt. On considering those movies as I drove along I thought how my little adventure was kinda like the movie, “Thelma and Louise” ---without Louise, and without the gun, and (dang it) without Brad Pitt. --And I was going north instead of south. Well, really there was no parallel at all to “Thelma and Louise” except for a crazed woman behind the wheel for a very long time. When I finally reached Missoula I took a break and stopped at the Missoula Art Museum not far from the University of Montana. They were closing, but I talked them into letting me cruise through the galleries while they emptied the place out. On the walls of one room were canvases about five feet by five feet. Some were one solid color and some were two colors

photo scanned from info brochure

Quoting from the exhibition brochure, “The artist transforms what at a glance appear to be monochromatic panels, revealing subtly enlivening surfaces with incandescent layers of muted color.” In the next room was a selection of prints on variations of this:

photo scanned from info brochure

Highlighting “the artist’s sensitivity, intuitive color sense, consistent instinct for compositional resolution and his ever present spirit of experimentation.” Before they showed me the door I went through one more room. It was a large gallery with nothing on the walls. On the hardwood floor were hundreds of rocks painted red and bearing the name of the artist.

photo scanned from info brochure

This artist “has been the recipient of many prestigious grants and awards.” A list of the grants and awards followed. Visitors were encouraged to take a stone with them until the “sculpture” is redistributed into the world. I took a rock.

As I left Missoula and journeyed west on Interstate 90, I wondered about what I had seen at the museum. Either I was really obtuse and missing the point when it came to the definition of art; or the creators of those works had decided everything that required skill had already been done; or they were pulling off one of the best Emperor’s New Clothes scams I had seen in quite a while. I personally preferred the art of the farmers’ haystacks.