Earth & Art: Tinworks Art Celebrates Montana's Clay Legacy

In the transformative space between dirt and art lies one of humanity's most enduring creative mediums. This summer, Bozeman's Tinworks Art invites visitors to explore the profound connections between people, place, and clay in its ambitious 2025 exhibition, "A Kin to Clay."

Opening June 21 and running through October 18, this season-spanning showcase celebrates Montana's rich ceramics heritage while weaving together diverse artistic voices from across generations and cultures. The exhibition creates a dialogue between local legends and international artists, all united by their relationship with earthen materials.

"Clay and earthen materials are distinct because they hold the stories of the landscapes and hands that have shaped them," explains Jenny Moore, Director of Tinworks Art. "When artists work with these materials, they participate in a dialogue that spans generations and cultures."

At the heart of the exhibition stands the work of Frances Senska (1914-2009), a beloved figure in Montana's art community. Senska founded Montana State University's ceramics department in 1946 and helped establish the world-renowned Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts, which will celebrate its 75th anniversary next year. Senska's approach embodied the quintessential Montana spirit—digging wild clay from the land, building her own kilns, and nurturing generations of ceramicists. Her double-spouted vessels and ceramic partridges will be featured alongside works by her own teacher, Marguerite Wildenhain (1896-1985), the first female master potter of the Bauhaus, who fled Nazi Germany and later founded Pond Farm pottery in Northern California.

The exhibition extends beyond Montana's borders to include a video installation by Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates titled "A Clay Sermon," which he filmed while in residence at the Archie Bray Foundation. Gates' Brick Reliquaries and works inspired by Peter Voulkos (one of Senska's notable students) will also be displayed. In a powerful historical connection, the exhibition will feature vessels by David Drake (c.1800-1870s), an enslaved potter in South Carolina who signed his work and inscribed it with poetry at a time when literacy among enslaved people was forbidden by law. His act of resistance speaks to the transformative power of creativity, a theme that resonates throughout the exhibition.

Argentinian artist Gabriel Chaile will be on-site through June 2025 to reconstruct his monumental adobe vessel "Ella vendrá a pagarle todo" (She will come to pay him for everything) and create a functional communal oven. This interactive sculpture will serve as more than an art piece—it will become a gathering place where the community can bake bread using flour harvested from last year's wheat planting, part of a previous ecological installation by artist Agnes Denes.

Following her previous wheat project, Agnes Denes will introduce "Sunflowers—to Follow the Wheat," planting an unexpected field of bright pink sunflowers (a deliberate artistic departure from the traditional yellow blooms). The installation will simultaneously rejuvenate the soil and challenge viewers' expectations—embodying the exhibition's themes of transformation and renewal.

The exhibition also features an open call to Montana's ceramic community, inviting local artists to submit works that highlight the region's vibrant contemporary clay practices. These pieces will be displayed collectively, echoing the tradition at the Archie Bray Foundation where generations of resident artists have left vessels throughout the grounds.

While "A Kin to Clay" anchors the 2025 season, Tinworks continues to showcase long-term installations that engage with Montana's landscape and history. Visitors can experience Layli Long Soldier's facade text installation "I don't trust nobody but the land" and 2024 artist-in-residence Wills Brewer's "A Repetition of Histories," an adobe work representing regeneration and the development of Bozeman's Northeast neighborhood. "These works speak to our mission of bringing together artists, their work, and community in evolving spaces where art meets the American West," Moore notes.

True to its community-centered approach, Tinworks has planned an extensive lineup of public programs to complement the exhibition. Free family activities, summer art camps, and workshops will run throughout the season, along with monthly film screenings and creative events. Special programming includes performances by Montana chamber choir Roots in the Sky on August 23-24, presenting "Lucid Bodies," a musical meditation on earthen materials and our connection to landscape. The Gallatin Clay Tour (September 6-7) will offer visitors the chance to explore open studios across the valley, while movement artists Isabel Shaida and Naomi Shafer will present "Kafka's Monkey" in early October, a theatrical adaptation exploring themes of origin and autonomy.

What makes "A Kin to Clay" particularly significant is how it positions Montana within a broader artistic narrative while honoring local traditions and landscape. By bringing together diverse artistic voices—from a formerly enslaved 19th-century potter to contemporary international artists—alongside Montana's own ceramic pioneers, Tinworks creates a conversation that transcends time and place. The exhibition invites us to consider clay not simply as material, but as Moore describes it, "a vessel of cultural memory that embodies resilience, transformation, and a profound sense of place."

In Montana, where the landscape itself often feels like a collaborator in the artistic process, this perspective feels especially resonant. The state's terrain has literally provided the raw material for generations of ceramic artists, beginning with Indigenous potters and continuing through pioneers like Senska, whose influence ripples outward to this day.

Tinworks Art is located at 719 N Ida Ave in Bozeman and is free to all visitors. For more information and hours of operation, visit tinworksart.org.