Artist Talk: Corwin “Corky” Clairmont

Join the Holter for an informative artist talk with exhibiting artist, Corwin Clarimont!

Corwin (Corky) Clairmont [enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes] is a celebrated visual and conceptual artist whose decades of work have included printmaking, mixed media, sculpture, and installation. He is professor emeritus at Salish Kootenai College, where he directed the fine art department.

Clairmont’s work challenges the cultural and ecological effects of European settlement upon the land previously inhabited by his indigenous ancestors for thousands of years. From Salish Kootenai treaty rights to Montana highway development, Clairmont has addresses both deep-seated and contemporary issues. His work is always site specific, land based, and activist in nature. This exhibition includes work from the Yellowstone Pipe Line series, completed in 1995 and the recent Shadow Site series, created at MATRIX Press, University of Montana, in 2022. Clairmont uses the same strategies of collage, cut out (the positive of which is left in the landscape to disintegrate), and photography in each series to engage the viewer and connect his print directly with a site.

After earning an undergraduate degree from the University of Montana, Clairmont continued his graduate studies with a fellowship at San Fernando State University and in 1971 completed his education with a Master of Arts degree from the California State University in Los Angeles. He spent the next 14 years within the Los Angeles art scene and worked as the printmaking department head at the Otis/Parsons Art Institute. In 1984 Clairmont returned to Montana, where he continued exhibiting his art and began administrative work while a professor at the newly accredited Salish Kootenai College, developing the SKC Fine Arts department and degree program.

Clairmont’s artwork has been exhibited nationally as well as in China, Germany, Norway, New Zealand, France US Embassy Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Africa.  Awards include the Ford Foundation, National Endowment of the Arts, Eiteljorg Fellowship Award, Arts Missoula’s Individual Artist Award, and the State of Montana 2008 Governor’s Award for Visual Arts. He currently serves on the State Board of the Montana Arts Council.

This event is free and open to the public. No RSVP or pre-registration is required.
Image: Corwin Clairmont, Shadow Site #1 / Happy Flying Object, 2022, Monotype / Screenprint, Collection of the Missoula Art Museum, Gift of Matrix Press, 2022.05.01

This exhibition is sponsored by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Montana Art Gallery Directors Association; Montana Arts Council, a state agency funded by the State of Montana; the National Endowment for the Arts; and additional support from coal tax placed into Montana’s Cultural and Aesthetic Projects Trust Fund.