resident Jana Evans says of the
alumni who are always passing
through. “They stop in the stu-
dios and ask us what we’re
working on. They’re so encour-
aging. It makes us feel we have
a support system.”
“What’s so great about the
Bray is that it has managed to
remain rough around the edges,”
says potter Sarah Jaeger, a one-
time resident and former board
member, who’s lived in Helena
since 1985. In the early ’80s she
was about to graduate from the
Kansas City Art Institute when
she saw a picture of the Bray,
and knew, viscerally, that it
was where she needed to go.
“It has that Western quality of
things being unfinished. It gave
me the sense of space I needed
to do my work, in my own way.”
That no-frills authenticity
reflects the stark beauty of Big
Sky Country, with its vast plains
and majestic peaks, heavenly
summers and hard winters. “You
don’t know perspective until
you’ve spent time in Montana,”
says Kurt Weiser, the Bray’s
resident director from 1977 to
1988. “The landscape makes you
feel small, and the population
makes you feel enormous.”
Today a professor at Ari-
zona State University, Weiser
is another who keeps close ties
to Helena, spending summers
at the house he built there.
The Bray has a come long way
from wrhen he first arrived from
Michigan. “Back then it was
like Mars, a junkyard, full of
beat-up kilns, pickup trucks,
barrels,” he recalls. Artists built
up the place, put in sweat equity.
“There was no administration
for years and years. It was like
a clay camp, an art ranch.
Everybody sort of feels like
they own it, because they put so
much into it.” From hauling clay
to patching roofs, “if you want-
ed it done, you had to figure out
how to do it.”
During Weiser’s tenure,
the foundation dramatically
expanded its grounds by pur-
chasing the 25-acre brickyard
Above:
Steven Young Lee
Landscaped Jar,
2009
porcelain, inlaid cobalt
16 x 16 x 21 in.
Above:
Mathew McConnell
Many Things Neiv and
More of the Same
(detail),
2010; raku-fired earthen-
ware, plywood with India
ink; dimensions vary
Left:
Martha Grover
Condiment Server,
20Ю; porcelain
б x 10 x 11 in.
Above:
K elly Garrett Rathbone
L ’annunciazione,
2010
hand-built earthenware,
sculpted glass, glazes,
luster; 2.5 x 1.3 x 1.3 ft.
Left:
Kensuke Yamada
Bird Rider,
2010
earthenware, wood
35 x 17 x 10 in.
046 american craft jun/julii
