Introduction:
Lee Silliman
When Lee Silliman walked into Gallery 709 in Montana Art and Framing 10 years ago, I could tell he was a highly educated, passionate artist. He only makes 8x10 negative contact prints in the manner of Ansel Adams, his hero. His first exhibition was a photographic essay of Yellowstone thermal sites totally in black and white. Since then, Gallery 709 has exhibited his collections 10 times including the Bob Marshall Wilderness, ghost towns, homesteads, pictographs and petroglyphs, Bears Ears and other famous Utah locations, and last year the show of Doors and Windows and his now infamous collection for odd rock formations from 35 years of exploring. Lee was a High School teacher and administrator from Deer Lodge that retired to Missoula 15 years ago to start a carrier in art photography and renting his collections of antique prints to museums. At 78 years old, Lee is still dreaming and working on huge projects he hopes to complete. Don Mundt Gallery 709
Artist Statement:
"In the past three and a half decades I have been photographing natural features in America’s wild spaces with an 8 x 10 inch view camera. Two areas in particular—the Yellowstone backcountry, and southern Utah’s Navajo Sandstone country—are rich in unusual geological features. This exhibit presents a collection of nature’s oddities that I found intriguing, such as: gravity-defying hoodoos, thermally-created calcareous formations, bizarre mud pots, massive fossilized tree trunks, arches that mimic worldly objects (animate and inanimate), sinuous slot canyons, a pond that drains into two oceans, and a steep couloir that emits poisonous gases.
Many of these amazing features have been given whimsical names, because they humorously remind us of our human-centric world. The viewer is thus invited to enjoy these natural treasures—and to wonder how they were created. "
Conclusion:
Be sure to check out his event "Oddities of Nature" Open first Friday 5 - 8:30PM, February 2-23 at Gallery 709.
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