News Release

Glacier Announces 2020 Artists-in-Residence

Date: July 1, 2020
Contact: Gina Kerzman, 406-888-5838

West Glacier, MT – Due to the COVID-19 situation in Montana this year, Glacier National Park was able to select only two of the three artists that usually participate in the Artist-in-Residence program. No artist was selected for June this year. With COVID-19 mitigations in place, artists Ben Justis and Ann Mansolino will be able to participate in this residency in 2020.

Glacier National Park is piloting changes to the Artist-in-Residence program, in which artists for both 2020 and 2021 have been selected from the 2020 call for artists. The artists selected to participate in the 2021 Artist-in-Residence program are Brad Einstein and Kyle Niemer, who create humorous and educational nature documentaries, Imma Barrera, a night sky photographer, and Sean Edgerton, a science illustrator and biologist.

The program offers professional artists the opportunity to pursue their artistic discipline while being surrounded by the park’s inspiring landscape. Each artist will pursue their work while in the park, and then engage and inspire the public through multiple outreach programs. The public programs will be related to their experience as the Artist-in-Residence and have typically been demonstrations, talks, exploratory walks, or performances. Due to COVID-19 these presentations will look different in 2020, as the safety of the selected Artists-in-Residence and the public is paramount. Digital images of selected work produced as a part of the residency may be used in park publications, websites and presentations for education and outreach.

The Glacier landscape has long inspired art and expression, from traditional dances and stories, to serving as a summer residence and source of creativity for the famous painter Charlie Russell. In present day, art in the park continues in the form of the Artist-in-Residence program, countless art workshops held in and around the park, and with thousands of visitors who come each year bringing easels, cameras, and other tools to capture the beauty around them. Art inspired by Glacier regularly appears in both local and worldwide gallery shows and museums.

Artists for the summer of 2020 are:

Ben Justis (July 13 -August 7)
Composer and percussionist Ben Justis has enjoyed performances of his works domestically and internationally by such ensembles as the Portland Percussion Group and United States Air Force Band. During the summer of 2019, he was an Artist-in-Residence at Homestead National Monument of America (Nebraska) and Denali National Park, where he worked on original music to be donated to the parks. While in residence in Glacier, he'll be taking audio recordings of ambient soundscapes and anthropogenic noise which will inspire a piece that aims to sonically represent the retreat of the area's once-mighty glaciers.

Ann Mansolino (August 31- September 25)
Ann Mansolino uses photography, writing, and handmade book forms to explore the relationship between the internal self and external ideas of place. She is interested in the ways in which landscape can help us understand ourselves – as metaphors for our emotions and psychology, as well as expressions of our more literal relationship to nature and the larger world we inhabit. While in Glacier National Park, she will be creating image and text works that reflect upon the features of the land, the need for preservation and conservation, and relevance of glaciated landscapes to our internal experiences of being human in the world.