Although a series of her assemblage work features hands pinned like insect specimens inside shadow boxes, artist Kate Huston is not so easily pinned down. Her works spans decades and mediums, all with an eye toward creating community both in and out of the world of art. As her art travels, Huston follows, hosting free art events in the hopes of inspiring creativity in others.
She provides supplies and often homemade pie. “Pie brings people together,” she said during an interview in her home studio outside Bozeman on Tuesday, later mentioning how she and her mother gather to test new recipes. Huston will host events at the Covellite Theatre in Butte on Friday evening and outside the DADI mini museum at 6 p.
m. on Saturday, where she is the new featured artist. “It’s great, it’s two hours of community gathering and free art,” Huston said.
“I think people think art can be inaccessible and expensive, and I really don’t want it to come off as that.” Plus, who knows where it could lead? Huston, who graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston in the ’90s, cites a class taught by Jesseca Ferguson as inspiration for the shadow boxes that would eventually become the assemblage collage pieces. A print from Ferguson, with a collection of found objects, hangs over the mantle in Huston’s living room.
But in the class, the materials were a bit more outside of the box. “Who knows that working on pig intestines with cyanotype would.