For the fifty years of its existence, the Archie Bray Foundation has been a continuous, unique, and important center for the arts. Archie Bray envisioned his pottery as a place where young artists could use the brickyard's clays and kilns, hone their skills, learn from each other, and develop a sensibility about the Foundation's signature production ware. In 1951, Peter Voulkos and Rudy Autio became the Bray's first two resident artists. By the start of the 1960s, they had accomplished a revolution in the concept of ceramic art. A series of resident directors, themselves artists, have overseen the development and expansion of the Bray Foundation's programs and workshops. An ever-increasing number of young artists continue to find support and inspiration there, largely because of the three rugged individualists who gave it life and impetus. "It is a place," writes curator Peter Held, "where people come of age, finding a niche in the centuries-old continuum of the ceramic arts." 
"You get notorious when you start a pottery in the middle of the wilderness," Peter Meloy reflected, looking back on his own backyard pottery beginnings in Helena, Montana, in the late 1940s. Meloy went on to a career in law but remained actively connected with the arts, as did Branson Stevenson of Great Falls, a versatile artist and businessman. They became two of the three original board members of the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts. The other member and founder, Archie Bray, owned a brickyard that, even if at first notorious in its western isolation, became the nexus of contemporary ceramics in America. 
This fiftieth anniversary publication offers a history of the Archie Bray Foundation, an evaluation of its accomplishments, and a discussion of 85 works selected from more than 800 in the Bray collection. Through interviews with artists, resident directors, workshop presenters, and the late Peter Meloy, and drawing on the resources of the Foundation's archives, Rick Newby and Chere Jiusto present its always lively, occasionally conflicted, and unfailingly interesting history through the voices and letters of those who knew it best. Art historian Patricia Failing considers the aesthetic and intellectual influences of the Bray experience upon artists who worked there, and on their later work. She examines the profound effects that a seminal workshop of 1952, presented by legendary potters Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada, and Soetsu Yanagi, had upon the Bray's resident potters, and subsequently on the entire concept of ceramic art in America. Art critic and writer Janet Koplos discusses the unique circumstances that gave rise to the Bray collection and gives a close reading of the 85 objects selected for the book. A Ceramic Continuum also includes a listing of all Archie Bray Foundation resident directors and artists and of workshop presenters over the years.

A Ceramic Continuum: Fifty Years of the Archie Bray Influence

Arts & Photography

Failing, Patricia

Jiusto, Chere

Newby, Rick

Koplos, Janet

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Univ of Washington Pr

"The Most Difficult Journey" tells several important stories. It traces the dispersion of visual modernism into the most distant reaches of the American West. It provides fresh insights into the workings of a significant New York gallery during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. And it reveals, as Andrea Pappas writes, that the 'so-called second generation [of Abstract Expressionists], far from being derivative artists lacking in creativity, actually performed crucial and difficult work'. Montana-born New York commodity broker George Poindexter befriended Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and other rising stars of Abstract Expressionism and bought their works. His wife, Elinor, also became passionate about avant-garde American art, and in 1955, she opened the Poindexter Gallery on New York's West 56th Street. Together George and Elinor Poindexter assembled an enviable collection of American modernist paintings.Besides excellent examples by such luminaries as de Kooning, Pollock, Kline, and Richard Diebenkorn, the collection included works by many lesser known artists who nonetheless made significant contributions to modern painting in America. In the early 1960s, the Poindexters began donating a portion of their collection to the Montana Historical Society, in honor of George's pioneer forebears. Following George's death in 1974, Elinor created a second Poindexter Collection, donating another sizable group of paintings and prints to the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings, Montana. "The Most Difficult Journey" brings together 65 paintings from both collections. There is an essay by poet and cultural historian Rick Newby that traces the history of the Poindexter family, the Poindexter Gallery, and the creation of the Poindexter Collections. In this title, a ground-breaking assessment of the paintings by art historian Andrea Pappas is also included.

The Most Difficult Journey: The Poindexter Collections of American Modernist Painting

Mitchell, Ben

Pappas, Andrea

Yellowstone Art Museum (Billings, Mont.)

Yellowstone Art Center

The Rocky Mountain region is where east meets west in America, where the western plains meet the Continental Divide. In this region, including Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming, a multitude of cultural phenomena have grown. Rockies architecture includes Depression-era Government Rustic designs and also the parkitecture movement evident in Yellowstone National Park. Coyote folk tales and cowboy poetry contribute to regional lore, while the region's religions have ranged from the shamanistic practices of the Utes, Nez Perce, and Coeur d'Alene to the flourishing of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Art of the American Sublime school as well as the fiction of Thomas McGuane immediately locate the Rockies, while fourteeners, ski town culture, and film festivals―from Sundance to Slamdance―make the region a favorite tourist destination. Rick Newby and contributors present a thorough and nuanced examination of the many cultural elements from throughout the wide reach of the Rocky Mountain region.
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures is the first rigorous reference collection on the many ways in which American identity has been defined by its regions and its people. Each of its eight regional volumes presents thoroughly researched narrative chapters on Architecture; Art; Ecology &amp; Environment; Ethnicity; Fashion; Film &amp; Theater; Folklore; Food; Language; Literature; Music; Religion; and Sports &amp; Recreation. Each book also includes a volume-specific introduction, as well as a series foreword by noted regional scholar and former National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman William Ferris, who served as Consulting Editor for this encyclopedia.

The Rocky Mountain Region: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures (Volume 6)

History

Americas

Greenwood

Great Escapes: Montana State Parks

Travel

Food, Lodging & Transportation

UNKNO

A radiant map of the world: [poems]

Arrow Graphics

The Suburb of Long Suffering, which includes the novella-length title prose poem and Rick Newby’s celebrated essay, "Bookmen on the Montana Frontier," is—in the words of poet Roger Dunsmore—"the book of an erudite barbarian who tells us ‘solitude is a savage word.’" Poet and essayist Sandra Alcosser writes that Newby is himself a bookman "schooled . . . on exquisite passages from his father’s naturalist journals, as well as the sacred texts of Borges, Sartre, Milosz, Confucius, and Colette." The Suburb of Long Suffering, Alcosser adds, "has a protean narrator with a gift for paradox in both composition and observation. The teeth of a squirrel / are sharp, and its nest / a thing of beauty." And author and publisher Nick Lyons notes, "Rick Newby is terrific—with a shrewd eye, a truly original vision, and a delicious capacity to ‘yoke’ very disparate images." Novelist and poet Melissa Kwasny called Newby’s previous collection of poems, Old Friends Walking in the Mountains (also published by Bedrock) "a collage of sensual pleasures and play," and poet William Pitt Root found in Newby’s first book of poems, A Radiant Map of the World, "rich evidence of curiosity in the service of an intelligence eager to probe what is unstinting in human nature and equipped to report the findings memorably." Besides his three collections of poems, Newby has published nine other books, either as author or editor. These range from Walking San Francisco, written with his wife Liz Gans, to Writing Montana: Literature under the Big Sky, co-edited with Suzanne Hunger. He also edited the rollicking Western novel, A Most Desperate Situation: Frontier Adventures of a Young Scout, 1858–1864, by Montana pioneer Walter Cooper (illustrations by Charles M. Russell).

The Suburb of Long Suffering

Riverbend Publishing

Theodore Waddell: My Montana―Paintings and Sculpture, 1959–2016

Born in 1941 in Billings, Montana, painter, sculptor, and rancher Theodore Waddell stands as one of the West’s most celebrated contemporary artists. His late modern “landscapes with animals” couple abstract expressionist technique with creatures—Black Angus cattle, horses, and bison—that populate the high plains and mountain valleys of today’s ranching West.  Heavily illustrated with the artist’s own work, as well as images from his personal archive, Theodore Waddell: My Montana traces Waddell’s influences, ranging from the Cezannesque works of Montana rancher and teacher Isabelle Johnson to the abstract expressionism of Robert Motherwell, the expressionist figuration of Robert DeNiro Sr., and the classic western paintings of Karl Bodmer, Charles M. Russell, Frederic Remington, Thomas Moran, Joseph Henry Sharp, and Maynard Dixon.   With access to Waddell’s journals and letters and an extensive oral history recently completed, author Rick Newby offers unprecedented insight into Waddell’s first years as an avowed artist and his period of struggle and disciplined creativity. Newby portrays Waddell’s decades as a practicing rancher and the years of his success—when his sculptures and vast canvases have found homes in leading museums.   Ultimately, Theodore Waddell’s works are important, not simply because they bring together disparate traditions but because they stand as emotionally and sensuously resonant works of art that speak of landscapes and animals, life and death, austerity and abundance. They possess, in the words of Seattle Times critic Robin Updike, an “immense, poetic dignity.”   This volume also includes a gathering of essays celebrating the life and art of Theodore Waddell by the Montana curators, critics, scholars, poets, and fiction writers who have known him best.  Contributors include the Honorable Pat Williams, Robyn Peterson, Bob Durden, Gordon McConnell, Mark Browning, Donna Forbes, Greg Keeler, Patrick Zentz, Scott McMillion, William Hjortsberg, Paul Zarzyski, and Brian Petersen.

Individual Artists

Drumlummon Institute

Born in 1941 in Billings, Montana, painter, sculptor, and rancher Theodore Waddell stands as one of the West’s most celebrated contemporary artists. His late modern “landscapes with animals” couple abstract expressionist technique with creatures—Black Angus cattle, horses, and bison—that populate the high plains and mountain valleys of today’s ranching West. Heavily illustrated with the artist’s own work, as well as images from his personal archive, Theodore Waddell: My Montana traces Waddell’s influences, ranging from the Cezannesque works of Montana rancher and teacher Isabelle Johnson to the abstract expressionism of Robert Motherwell, the expressionist figuration of Robert DeNiro Sr., and the classic western paintings of Karl Bodmer, Charles M. Russell, Frederic Remington, Thomas Moran, Joseph Henry Sharp, and Maynard Dixon. With access to Waddell’s journals and letters and an extensive oral history recently completed, author Rick Newby offers unprecedented insight into Waddell’s first years as an avowed artist and his period of struggle and disciplined creativity. Newby portrays Waddell’s decades as a practicing rancher and the years of his success—when his sculptures and vast canvases have found homes in leading museums. Ultimately, Theodore Waddell’s works are important, not simply because they bring together disparate traditions but because they stand as emotionally and sensuously resonant works of art that speak of landscapes and animals, life and death, austerity and abundance. They possess, in the words of Seattle Times critic Robin Updike, an “immense, poetic dignity.” This volume also includes a gathering of essays celebrating the life and art of Theodore Waddell by the Montana curators, critics, scholars, poets, and fiction writers who have known him best. Contributors include the Honorable Pat Williams, Robyn Peterson, Bob Durden, Gordon McConnell, Mark Browning, Donna Forbes, Greg Keeler, Patrick Zentz, Scott McMillion, William Hjortsberg, Paul Zarzyski, and Brian Petersen.

This guide features 18 great strolls, including 9 in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the world's largest urban national park.

Walking San Francisco (Walking Guides Series)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Gans, Liz

Exercise & Fitness

Falcon Guides

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Books by Newby, Rick