By Jacob Cowgill
Sponsored by Zootown Arts Community Center
- 39 photographs, prints, and sculptures
- Size: 10″ x 7.5″ – 45″ x 55″
- Crates: 4, 22″h x 23″l x 14″w – 18″h x 44″l x 35″w
- Availability: April 2027 – December 2029
- Booking Fee: 4 – 6 weeks $500/ 7 – 12 weeks $950
- Integrative Resources: Artist will provide artist talk, and kite-building workshop for kids and adults. French-Fold style brochure also available.
EXHIBITION DETAILS
In A Natural History of the Wind, Eastern Montana artist Jacob Cowgill encounters the forces which shape the landscape, U.S. culture, and our day to day lives. The exhibition boasts 24 framed silver gelatin print photographs, 4 large scale linocut prints, and 11 handmade kites. In his own words, Cowgill is “using three art forms to explore three engagements with the wind. The photographs are a way to observe the wind, the wind map prints are a way to measure the wind, and the kites are a way to collaborate with the wind.” With each medium, Cowgill is using tactile art forms to encounter ephemeral, larger than life phenomena. Some of his works take an explicit political bent, such as his Binary Kites which carry binary-coded assertions of institutional injustice or his Salt Sack Kite which draws parallels between our current political crisis and the Depression era. As the prairie is shaped by the wind, as are we by the greater workings of our political climate. Deeply rooted in the concerns of rural Montana, Jacob Cowgill’s artwork gives body to the ineffability of wind and culture: “Part of the appeal and frustration of the wind is that it’s invisible yet pervasive. I attempt to capture something that can’t be caught.” Jacob Cowgill was born and raised in north-central Montana where the Rocky Mountains meet the Northern Great Plains. He received a BFA in printmaking and photography from the University of Montana in 2001. After a stint in a Midwest MFA program in printmaking, he moved back home to get a master’s degree from the Environmental Studies program at the University of Montana, where his latent interest in exploring the intersection of the environment and art began. It manifested as a decadelong endeavor as a farmer back in his home country in central Montana, which morphed into a career as a sourdough bread baker, the job he currently holds. He has always maintained his link to his artmaking roots, but in the past half dozen years, his circuitous journey has brought him back to it in earnest, with a passion for darkroom-based photography and printmaking (relief and intaglio). He currently lives on the Fairfield Bench, in the Golden Triangle of Montana, with his wife and two kids.
MAGDA 