Glacier Country Montana Emerging As Artistic Hot Spot

Glacier National Park’s wildlife, landscape and views inspire millions of people from around the world to visit each year. They also inspire thousands of artists who attempt to capture that beauty.

The combination are turning this corner of northwestern Montana into an emerging arts hot spot.

Thirty miles from West Glacier and the park’s western entrance sits Kalispell, a town of just over 20,000 residents, and home to the Hockaday Museum of Art. For the fifth year in a row, the Hockaday honors the artistic legacy of Glacier National Park with its signature art show and sale, A Timeless Legacy: Women Artists of Glacier National Park.

The museum has returned the show to its origins of featuring exclusively female artists this year . Twenty-three artists from America and Canada submitted work for public display and sale with the proceeds helping support the non-profit Hockaday.

Glacier Country’s native people, native animals and stunning scenery are represented in paintings and sculptures by artists who are all required to have spent time in the park within the past two years for inclusion in the invitation-only show running through September 21.

Before leaving the Hockaday, head downstairs for a close look at Nancy Cawdrey’s fabulously detailed “Going to the Sun.” Her dye-on-silk painting was completed for Glacier National Park’s 75^th anniversary in 1985 and is named after the vertigo-inducing, construction marvel of a two-lane blacktop road which traverses the park east-to-west. Cawdrey stuffed the picture with symbols, icons and characters from the park’s history.

Forty years later, Cawdrey continues finding inspiration from Glacier for her vibrant, eye-popping silk paintings which borrow from a Chinese artistic tradition dating back thousands of years. Her signature large format, colorful bison, moose and bears embody the advice she routinely gives herself and aspiring artists: “be big!”

“There’s nothing deeply philosophic about it, there’s form, there’s color and there’s filling the space,” Cawdrey said.

Her latest work can be found inside Nancy Cawdrey Gallery & Lounge in the cozy Rocky Mountain gem of Whitefish.

Yes, “and Lounge.”

Cawdrey, along with her husband Steve and son Morgan, took over their 4,000-square-foot space and subdivided into art gallery, bar, restaurant, kitchen and event space, putting a fresh and inviting spin on the gallery business model.

Every Wednesday from late May through early October, Cypress Yard, the building’s events, wine and lounge tenant hosts the Fresco Market with live music, fine art and great food all served up on a patio adjacent the building.

Events like Fresco Market allow the picturesque town along Whitefish Lake to pack a much heavier artistic punch than its population of little more than 7,500 would lead you to believe.

A group of local galleries, including Cawdrey’s, collaborated to launch a Western fine art festival, Summer ArtFest, this past June. Organizers are already looking forward to the 2020 event.

Whitefish Gallery Nights puts a surprising number of people into the town’s dozen participating galleries on the first Thursday of each month May to October. A handful of those galleries could go toe-to-toe in quality with anything you’d find in Aspen, Colorado or Jackson, Wyoming, the Rockies’ long-reigning artistic standard-bearers.

Counted among that number is Underscore Art which features the work of acclaimed Western artist Tom Saubert. Saubert, a Montana native and resident of Kalispell, describes himself as a “nut for accuracy” in his work.

Saubert’s family had land on the Blackfeet Reservation, east of Glacier National Park, where he spent time with the tribe back when adults there didn’t speak English and visiting whites looked for Blackfeet children to serve as interpreters. Saubert honors the Blackfeet, and the other Native people he paints, by authentically representing their clothing, hairstyles, guns, bead colors, bead size, teepee decoration and every other imaginable cultural minutiae down to the smallest detail.

“Ninety-nine percent of artists don’t care about that stuff because the public doesn’t know,” Saubert said.

But he knows. Does he ever know.

Saubert’s studio doubles as a Blackfeet Indian and Montana historical museum.

“It’s important to the way I work,” Saubert says of his studio, the material surrounding him being as bona fide as the images he creates.

Guns, knives, clothing, taxidermy, tomahawks, Native drums and blankets, books on Native people and art of all kinds fill every nook and cranny. It’s a 700-square-foot vision board for the artist who also has sketch books filled with Native dress and regalia from museum visits.

He possesses 25,000 slides from 40 years of model photo sessions, some of which last for days, placing Native people in natural surroundings across Montana, Saubert acting, “like a movie director,” orchestrating the scenes to help inform his work.

“That really psyches you up as an artist–the land, the people, the light,” Saubert said.

His thirst for authenticity went so far as to learning beadwork from a Native woman. Try your hand at beadwork to fully understand Saubert’s commitment to craft. It’s a skill he still practices.

Saubert is equal parts historian and artist, excelling at both, “fifty years after I’m dead, someone can look (at my paintings) and say, ‘it’s right,’ ‘it’s correct.’”

Saubert, Cawdrey and every other artist who’s spent extended time in Glacier National Park share animal encounters, some too close for comfort.

Cawdrey’s story involved a female moose with a baby–a highly dangerous situation. Moose are enormous animals, weighing over 1,000 pounds and standing over six-feet-tall. Unlike the dopey, happy-go-lucky Bullwinkle of cartoon fame, moose can be highly aggressive, especially a mother feeling her young is threatened.

“I’m painting this beautiful scene with the lake and the mountains and I see this mama moose and a baby–I didn’t move a muscle,” Cawdrey recalls.

She stood frozen in place until both walked away.

Adding comic relief to this serious situation was a fly hatch occurring nearby as the episode unfolded with insects flying into her canvas and becoming stuck in the oil. Not to be deterred, once the moose passed, Cawdrey, “let (the insects) dry and broke off all the legs and wings.”

Saubert’s recollection involved a grizzly bear.

With four-inch front claws, bone crushing jaws, power to tip over cars and occasionally nasty dispositions, grizzlies can kill a man with the swipe of a paw. While grizzly deaths are rare, about two on average in North America per year, they do happen.

Anyone who’s been close to one in the wild knows this, and in those moments, the statistics suddenly don’t feel so slim.

Saubert has been close.

He was painting on the east side of the park near the popular Many Glacier area with colleagues visiting Montana when they were run into Saubert’s truck by a curious grizzly. The bear appeared to be interested in the artists’ oil paints as it sniffed them thoroughly. Bears are thought to have the greatest sense of smell in the animal kingdom, far more sensitive than bloodhound.

Saubert’s telling of this story features no hint of humor.

You’ll encounter no such risk back at the galleries of Whitefish where the arts community expands beyond the visual.

The inaugural Under the Big Sky Music and Arts Festival took place this past July to strong reviews. There are two theatre companies in town with Broadway connections. Whitefish Review is a journal publishing the distinctive literature, art, and photography of mountain culture along with interviews tied to many of Montana’s famous part-time residents including David Letterman, Tom Brokaw and Huey Lewis.

For your visit to Whitefish, make accommodations at The Lodge at Whitefish Lake. Before heading out on your first big hike, fuel up in the property’s on-site restaurant with a hearty breakfast. The pork verde biscuits with tomatillo relish and andouille and bacon gravy and the pancake stack with Ann’s Famous Granola and huckleberry coulis both hit the spot.

After your hike, relive the stories at Bonsai Brewing Project less than a mile from The Lodge. Drain their “Let a Thang Go” habanero and ginger blonde soured on sun dried mangos in white wine barrels before heading to dinner half a mile further down the road at Piggyback BBQ where the authentic Montana pit barbecue is smoked over cherry wood. The pulled pork, ribs and brisket challenge anything you’ve tried in Memphis or Texas.

Jersey Boys Pizza in downtown Whitefish makes for the perfect lunch and for a fine dining experience, head to Tupelo Grill with its surprising New Orleans-inspired menu and art. You won’t regret ordering the elk meatloaf.

Whitefish is a small town in a good way. Visit any of these places with a local and you’ll end up in a group. Thank goodness for large booths.

In Kalispell, stop at Bias Brewing for a Key Lime IPA. Add on nachos with spicy pork chili, being sure to snap an Instagram-worthy, envy-inspiring “before” photo of the crispy, cheesy mound.

Montana calls itself “the last great place,” for you, perhaps this part of the state can be “the next great place.”