MINE: Excavating Ecologies

MINE: Excavating Ecologies showcases both new and existing work by Montana-based artists Eric Jensen, Lane Chapman, and Manette Bradford, all participants in Open AIR’s 2024 Artist-in-Residence program.

Jensen and Chapman completed their residencies in partnership with the Clark Fork Coalition, where they shared a studio space at the Cottonwood Field Station, allowing for close collaboration and creative exchange. Bradford held her residency at the Hungry Hill Art Center in Butte, Montana, a location rich with the mining heritage that continues to shape the region’s identity.

The exhibition, titled MINE, explores themes of place, extraction, ecology, and personal connection to the land. It will be on the fourth floor of the Missoula Public Library through July 28, 2025. The exhibition will conclude with a closing reception and panel discussion, featuring the artists and representatives from the Clark Fork Coalition, reflecting on their experiences and the role of art in engaging environmental narratives.

Artist Bios:
Hailing from small town Arkansas, Lane Chapman started out as a painter and illustrator until she transitioned into clay in college. She received her BFA in Ceramics from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2017. After graduating, she moved to Rochester, NY for a two-year residency at the Flower City Arts Center. She then moved to Missoula, MT for a residency at The Clay Studio of Missoula for two years from 2019-2021 and then a resident at Wildfire Ceramic Studio from 2021-2022, also in Missoula. Lane completed a residency with OpenAIR Montana in the summer of 2024 and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Montana in Missoula. Follow @laneeechapman on Instagram.

Eric Jensen is an abstract landscape painter with an interest in unifying different modes of understanding our world. Combining unlike methodologies like science and spirituality, he hopes to empower ecological preservation efforts and establish new cultural values through art. His practice is built from a contemporary art education, a critical perspective of religion in the west, and a passion for being close to nature. He has formed a landscape painting practice that looks critically at how our society perceives the land and is working to unify his practice with environmental conservation efforts. Born in Utah, raised and educated in Virginia, Eric now lives outside of Missoula, MT, after finishing an MFA in painting at the University of Montana. Follow @Eric-Jensen-33 on Instagram.

Manette Rene Bradford (b. 1978, St. Paul, MN) constructs imagined allegorical narratives through painting, sculpture, and wall-sized mixed media works for specific geographic locations, historical moments, or ecological conditions. Manette combines historical, ecological, and folkloric research with her own direct experience of place to develop her work. Through the act of building these narratives, she engages with and imitates humanity’s behavioral impulse to possess, anthropomorphize, and project itself onto the land and its biosphere, and the impression that is left as a result.

Manette earned a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2022, she was awarded the Montana Art Gallery Director’s Association Exhibition Sponsorship, for Unsettled Lands, which will tour Montana from 2024-2026. She lives and works in Montana. Follow @manette_rene_bradford on Instagram.