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There is an honest irony in Montana’s contemporary landscape. I study what I see everyday, as it is, affected by my presence. I value Montana’s glorious, wild, unaltered landscape. I see it and then I look to the foreground, I look to the left. I am interested in the intersection of reality and pristine. We want to protect and preserve this place AND we want to access it. We live here. What does that look like?
I was born and raised in Red Lodge, a small tourist-driven town in south central Montana, where the landscape informs recreation, business and love. I currently live in Missoula, Montana and regularly make the 400-mile journey between my current home and the home of my childhood. When driving, I meditate on my surroundings. My interstate examinations reveal people and products moving along the land -- all with a destination and all isolated articles that pass by more of the same cruising objects.
My wife and I now speed through this scenery with our two small daughters. My practice has evolved to meet the needs of my family and I find that I now, when I am not opening a fruit leather or tweaking my arm to fetch a fallen book, I have increased opportunity to absorb still shots that I previously passed in a blur. There are more stops, there is more noise, more distraction and, yet, I find this change has pushed me to see more. I have shifted my gaze away from the highway and onto a rotting roadside doe, a house on a hill, an ironic dead end sign.
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