Maryann Fielder "Installation"

In 1991 I was awarded a Montana Arts Council Fellowship for Painting. I had been exploring the concept of environmental art; reading the short history of environmental and conceptual art; particularly the early work of Robert Smithson. I became aware of how a work of art defines space as much as it can depict it in a painting. In the environmental works of Michael Heizer and others, the earth became the medium.

The fellowship award money I felt, gave me an opportunity to explore something completely outside of my “normal” work. I could experiment.

After every hunting season deer hides are a readily available resource in Montana. I had access to lodge pole, and raw, scraped hides. Through the tutelage of my close friend, Janet Conner, an artist who works with and tans her own hides, I used the hides as canvases. Nodding to the achievement of Native American artists who have long used hides to depict stories and events, I decided to stay in a more contemporary abstract mode for my narrative. The ongoing “land and water wars” in the west became my theme. The hides are displayed in a circle to suggest an enclosed space, but the observer can enter the painting from any side and stand at the center of it, thus becoming corraled. The piece refers to the fence wars in the west between cattlemen and farmers; it refers to the fire climate of the west, and to the land becoming increasingly shut off to outsiders by private landowners. Most importantly, it refers to the two most precious commodities of the west; water and open space.

Critical Review:
“Corral” got two exhibition showings in Montana but was not generally well-received by the art community. There was recognition for the “courage” to stretch my conceptual ideas to this work; but not appreciation for a “perfectly good painter” doing this sort of work.

The “perfectly good painter” got a lot of recognition from herself however. I have never regretted taking a chance on doing different work, to explore and even to “play” at my work to learn something new.

The hide pieces are currently being stored in Montana; but one of the paintings was sold.