OpenAIR: A Prairie Art Exhibit at the National Discovery Center
AMERICAN PRAIRIE TO HOST OPENING OF OpenAIR ART EXHIBIT NOVEMBER 9 AT 1 PM
Exhibit at National Discovery Center to feature works from 2023 Artists-in-Residence
American Prairie is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibit, OpenAIR: A Prairie Art Exhibit at the National Discovery Center, featuring the works of three very talented artists from the 2023 OpenAIR Montana Artists-in-Residence program. Artists include Melissa Kwasny, Delia Touché, and Brandon Reintjes. The exhibit opening is scheduled for November 9 and begins at 1 pm in the National Discovery Center located at 302 W. Main in Lewistown. The exhibit continues through 2024. Admission is free, however, donations to American Prairie can be made online at https://americanprairie.org or at the door with your phone using a QR code. Light refreshments will be available during the event, which includes a reading at 1:30 by Melissa Kwasny. In addition, the artists will be available for a public “meet and greet” during the event!
The exhibit, itself, features the works created on American Prairie land by Melissa Kwasny, Delia Touché, and Brandon Reintjes, who were selected for the OpenAIR Artist-In-Residence program. The artists spent a number of weeks together at various locations on American Prairie property in North Central Montana during 2023 creating works inspired by the beautiful prairie landscape. Included in the exhibit will be a mix of fine and mixed media art, poetry, prose, and more! In addition to the exhibition, at 1:30 Melissa Kwasny will be reading specific works that she composed on the prairie (both poems and prose). The readings will take place in the Clyde Aspevig Event Center. Beautiful broadsides of some of Kwasny’s poems made by printing press students at the University of Montana will be available for sale, as well as prints and a number of the books she has written.
About the Artists
Delia Touché
Delia Touché was born in North Dakota and is part of the Spirit Lake Nation. Delia is a Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota and Assiniboine artist who has exhibited across the United States and abroad, including at the Travemeise in Lübeck, Germany, Die Graphische in Vienna, Austria, the Plains Art Museum, Cranbrook Art Museum, and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, among others. Delia’s works are in the permanent art collections at the University of North Carolina, Walker Art Center, St. Olaf College’s Special Collections Department, Minnesota Historical Society, and Northwestern, in addition to other repositories. Touché holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing from Minnesota State University – Morehead, and a Master of Fine Arts in Print Media from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Delia’s work “acknowledges the estranged and complex relationship they have with their indigenous culture.” Touché’s art is “influenced by familial archive, Dakota and Assiniboine cultural framework, Native nuances, gallows humor, Indigenous diaspora and pop culture.”
Brandon Reintjes
Brandon Reintjes was born in Bozeman, Montana, but grew up in Northern Michigan. He received a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Master’s in curatorial and critical studies from the University of Louisville. Brandon serves as senior curator at the Missoula Art Museum and spends most of his time “thinking about, looking at, and making art.” Reintjes has exhibited at the Zootown Arts Community Center and the Brink Gallery in Missoula, Montana, Luminary Arts Center in St. Louis, the 930 in Louisville, Kentucky, Turman Larison Contemporary in Helena, Aunt Dofe's Hall of Recent Memory in Willow Creek, Montana, and more.
Melissa Kwasny
Melissa Kwasny is the author of seven books of poetry, including her most recent work Where Outside the Body is the Soul Today and the upcoming The Cloud Path. She also authored a collection of essays titled Earth Recitals: Essays on Image and Vision. Her first “full length” nonfiction book, Putting on the Dog: The Animal Origins of What We Wear, explores the cultural, labor, and environmental histories of clothing materials provided by animals. She also served as editor of two anthologies: I Go to the Ruined Place: Contemporary Poets in Defense of Global Human Rights and Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry 1800-1950. She was Montana Poet Laureate from 2019 - 2021, a position shared with M.L. Smoker. She has been widely published in many journals, including American Poetry Review. She holds an M.F.A. in Poetry and an M.A. in Literature from the University of Montana. Kwasny is also recipient of the Poetry Society of America's Cecil Hemley Award and Alice Fay di Castognola Award for a work in progress, an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellowship, the Montana Art Council's Artist's Innovation Award, and residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, Ucross, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and Open AIR/American Prairie. Kwasny has taught poetry as a visiting writer at both the undergraduate and graduate level, including MFA programs at the University of Wyoming, Eastern Washington University/Inland Pacific Center for Writers, and the University of Montana.
About OpenAIR
Open AIR is a nonprofit organization best known for its place-based Artist-in-Residence program that “connects artists from all disciplines and origins, with culturally, historically, and ecologically significant locations through collaborative partnerships in Montana.
