The Walking Man Frame Shop & Gallery

Please join us Thursday, October 4th, 6-9PM for our last Whitefish Gallery Nights of the season!  The Birds And The Bees will feature the flora & fauna photography of Dee Linnell Blank, the life drawings of Masako Dunn & oils by new artist, Luke Oursland.  Fine art, refreshments & most likely a little live music.  For more information call 406-863-ARTS or go to http://www.whitefishgallerynights.org!  Cheers

Dee Linnell Blank, nature photographer, shares her exuberance about the wild lands and native plants of Big Sky country and loves nothing better than hiking Montana’s trails with a camera and tripod.  She carves with a camera.  Instead of letting it include everything in front of it, she seeks out a time and point of view that lets her cut away distractions and clutter, until the spirit and personality of the subject shines.  This may involve lying on the ground moving inches right or left, hiking a mountain ridge traveling miles, setting the alarm for dawn light, or waiting until next season – often all of the above!  Though Dee has worked as a computer programmer and a ski guide, photography is what allows her to combine her life-long interests in art, nature, and science.  A degree in geology helps her delve into many naturalist subjects.  But she chose to concentrate on botany when she found people are more interested in flower images than photos of rocks.  You can see her work in The Walking Man Frame Shop and Gallery, the Hockaday Museum of the Arts, and Montana Outdoors Magazine.  Her photos have been published on Montana Magazine covers and calendars and in Montana’s Pioneer Botanists.  Dee is the author and photographer of the book Montana Wildflowers published by Farcountry Press.

Born and raised in Japan, Masako remembers as far back as four or five years old, dreaming about doing art.  Creativity has been a part of her life ever since.  Surrounded by a family of very artistic people, including her mother, Masako was lovingly nurtured along the way.  Trying everything from graphic design to illustrating children’s books, Masako finally found her niche in pastels…her favorite medium.  Many exhibits later and much recognition in Japan and Hawaii, Masako’s work has been exposed to the world and has driven her success.  Like other Flathead Valley artists, Masako has focused on Montana and its beauty.  Having discovered this part of the world and moving here in the late 1980s, Masako is mesmerized by the changing seasons, the mountains, wildlife and the endless opportunities for capturing the beauty this part of the country has to offer.  This particular series comes from a collection of hundreds of life drawing practices at the FVCC art department’s weekly sessions.

“Painting a still life can be a bit of a Walden Pond experience. Most of the time you’re taking something small and insignificant and spending hours closely studying it, observing it from all angles, and absorbing each minute detail. The exciting part comes when your realize that what you’ve been looking at isn’t as ordinary or insignificant as it would appear at first glance. Ordinary things often have a life and beauty of their own and this is what I hope to show in my work.”    -Luke Oursland

Please join us Thursday, September 6th, 6-9PM for “Our Zesty Domain”, featuring multimedia works by Whitefish emerging artist, Holden Roberts.  Capturing scenes throughout the region with video & deconstructing each experience in painting.  Fine art, refreshments & live music with some local boys!  For more information, call 406-863-ARTS or log onto http://www.whitefishgallerynights.org.

“The human presence has shifted into an alienated existence.  We identify with technologies that pull us away from our natural environments.  Our urban landscapes are created to fit a manufactured system to which human society has developed into.  Our domain is unnatural.  In this series I use color to outline or highlight our connection to the objects and landscapes that we, as humans, interact with. I use yellow as the symbol of energy and the symbol of our overall interference.  We have become an abstract idea amongst our own surroundings. The videos I have created depict real objects, beings and landscapes, but are arranged to show society in an abstract nature.  Each video corresponds with a painting that captures a sliver of time.  Breaking moving colors into simple static shapes is my effort to provoke the viewer to look deeper into our zesty domain.”  Holden Roberts

Join us Thursday, August 2nd, 6-9PM for our next Whitefish Gallery Nights event, featuring mixed media abstract expressionist, Mark Baumbach, along with selections from the Forest Illusions series by local photographer, Doug Ersson-Hammerberg.  Fine art, refreshments & live music with Chris Morel. For more information, call 406-863-ARTS or log onto http://www.whitefishgallerynights.org.

Mark Baumbach is a working artist, father of four young ones & an all around talented woodworker, house painter & more!!  He resides in Lakeside, MT with his wife, Shannon & children.  Mark’s style combines landscapes with abstract expressionism, mixed media acrylics & plaster.  Layers of medium on wood panel….worked, scratched & sanded until a multi-dimensional surface arises.  He then finishes with his own framework, stained black or brown, allowing the patterns of wood to come through.  His work displays well in simple modern settings, whether residential or commercial, where it is a primary vocal point of the space, but can also add dimension in more rustic settings, as the work captures many of the colors & roughness of reclaimed barnwood or metal….a touch of industrial energy mixed into vast portraits of the land around us.

“I am a self taught photographer specializing in nature based abstracts, wildlife & landscape photography.  I have spent many years in the back country of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Washington, but only in the past few years have I carried a camera with me to capture my journeys.  Often the beauty of nature is overlooked in the search for that ultimate shot.  In my nature based abstracts, I attempt to share with you those subtle views of nature in ways only special settings can capture.  Colors are all natural and as caught in camera in the field.  Forest Illusions is a collection of work using long exposure and planned camera movement combined with the use of natural lighting and coloration of the scene before me.”  -Doug Ersson-Hammerberg

Join us Thursday, July 5th, 6-9pm for our next Whitefish Gallery Nights event featuring Animal Instincts.  Bellingham, WA artists, Deb McCunn & Deb Stern, along with Montana artists, Trudy Skari, Susan Mattson & Betsey Hurd will be gracing us with a ceramic feast of rabbits, goats & birds, but mostly rabbits!!  Fine art, refreshments & live music!  For more information call 406-863-ARTS and for more about Whitefish Gallery Nights, go to http://www.whitefishgallerynights.org!!  Cheers!                                                            “Curiosity gives us vitality, allowing us to stretch and grow. Sculpting in clay is my vehicle for challenging assumptions. The richness and versatility of the medium allow me to carve subtle details throughout my work, layering meaning, stories and thought provoking questions.”  Deb McCunn                             

Join us Thursday, June 7th, 6-9PM for our next Whitefish Gallery Nights event featuring post-hillbilly artist, Fred Warf, local outsider artist, Caleb Stolte and local assemblage artist, ME.  Art From The Way Outside is a mixture of work that’s recycled & raw, re-purposed & painted, collected & assembled by some locals that believe there’s much more to art than being “pretty”!!   Refreshments, music & some far-out art!!  For more information call 406-863-ARTS or log onto http://www.whitefishgallerynights.org.  Cheers & Happy Summer!!!

“Art can be:
Everywhere, a challenge, inspiring, mysterious, simple, square, hip, futuristic, passé, unnecessary, requisite, variable, steady, natural, alien, waste of time, inescapable, competitive, collaborative, joy, sadness, out of touch, out of reach, outside, inside, expressed, expressive, laughable, created, found, godly, devilish, purchased, stolen, destroyed, created, worldly, otherworldly, despair, joy, sadness, complicated, sport, hobby, vocation, avocation, human, humane, machine, inspired, inspiring, secret, shared, disappointing, immediate, upsetting, political, controversial, numerical, landscape, portrait, abstract, realistic, hot, cold, love, hate, indifference, edible, trash-able, official, wordy, geometric, bookish, taught, ignored, adulated, erudite, complicated, misunderstood, groped, grokked, disappointing, manhandled, woman inspired, natural, childish, elderly, small, large, grand, mundane, everywhere, dance-able, spoken, story, song, beauty, god, child, given, taken, free, costly, real, surreal, hyper-real, more real than reality, whatever you want it, personal, public, sexual, asexual, outrageous, color, form, absence, presence, light, dark, morning, noon, night, nighty, night, rain, rainbow, sun, shadow, breathe, undefinable…… FUN!  And more than this!”  Fred Warf

“I’m an earthbound misfit…I collect and I assemble…grounded by rocks & rust, shells & flotsam, wood & clay.  What does it all mean?  Who’s to say……..”  ME

It’s finally spring in Whitefish & we will be celebrating with a colorful exhibit of collage work by two lovely Montana artists!!  Spring Collage will feature mixed media works by Helena artist and weaver, Mary Jean Martin and Whitefish abstract artist, Olivia Stark.  Join us Thursday, May 3rd, 6-9PM for our first Whitefish Gallery Nights event of the season!!  Fine art, refreshments & live music by local cellist, Lee Zimmerman!  For more information, call 406-863-ARTS or log onto http://www.whitefishgallerynights.org!  We are looking forward to another great season!!

                         Lee Zimmerman

Mary Jean Martin – “Color is my poetry, combined into handwoven fabric and mixed media collage.  Ancient weavers and ten thousand years of evolving culture sit with me as I weave.  I feel connected to these people and wonder what they thought about as they worked at the loom.  Probably color!”  http://www.maryjeanmartin.com

Olivia Stark – “I paint what I need to see and so I go looking. I find my best work is through improvisation.  A resourcefulness that limits overthinking.  My studio is quite small which keeps me focused on the immediate.  I enjoy the elements of structure and chaos and find the need to fluctuate between the two in making art. The dynamics involved are a satisfying part of my process.  My art is about movement.  Moving energy that is internalized.  Creating space for effort and problem solving.  A kind of primary for the development of confidence and an activation of personal assertions.  My goal is to reveal the essence of the painting, subject the viewer to those assertions and offer new possibilities.”  http://www.oliviastarkart.com

Please also join us for a Spring Clearance Sale on Friday & Saturday, May 4th & 5th, 10-5PM.  Find all those prints that you’ve been collecting (we know you have a pile of them!!) and bring them in for same day framing!!  We have a selection of in-house made readymade frames, in-stock moulding for custom framing & other select framed prints available at discounted prices.  We have a plethora of 4×6, 5×7 & 8×10 frames ready to be filled with your images!!  For more information, give us a call at 406-863-2787!!  Cheers & Happy Spring!!

Olivia Stark will be showing a series of new work during the final Whitefish Gallery Nights of the season at The Walking Man Frame Shop & Gallery. “First It’s Mine, Then It’s Yours” reminds the viewer that art is subjective and invites transformation of thought and fixed ideas. Linger long enough to experience the unique language that each piece offers.  Colorful, abstract expressionist collage & acrylics ready for open interpretation by both the artist & the viewer! Please join Olivia as she shares some of her favorite work!  Light refreshments & spinning jazz on the turntable!!  Thursday, October 5th, 6-9PM.  For more information go to http://www.whitefishgallerynights.org or call 406-863-ARTS!