Helena-based artist Sandra Dal Poggetto uses an abstract language and fragments of the western landscape – hide, feathers, wood and wire – to create evocative paintings and drawings in a solo exhibition, on display through Sept. 27 at the Montana Museum of Art and Culture at The University of Montana
Pulitzer-Prize winning author/critic Mark Stevens, a longtime champion of the artist’s work, describes her paintings as “truthful reflection[s] of our culture’s complex relations to the landscape of the West.”
In addition to displaying her artwork, Dal Poggetto will select objects from the museum’s Permanent Collection to illustrate different philosophical and aesthetic understandings of the human relationship to the natural world.
“This novel approach to MMAC programming affords an uncommon opportunity to see the Permanent Collection through the eyes of a working artist,” writes museum director Barbara Koostra. “… As she considers the landscape and our relationship to it, she pulls in sometimes harmonious, sometimes dissimilar threads that weave together myriad points of view into a fascinating tapestry.”
Dal Poggetto earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Davis with honors in Art Studio, and received a master’s in painting and drawing from San Francisco State University.
Her extensive exhibition record includes solo shows at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings, Oregon State University in Corvallis, the Holter Museum of Art in Helena, the University of California at Davis, and Dana Reich Gallery and Peter Koch Printers, both in San Francisco.
Her essays on the relationship between art and landscape have been published in academic and literary journals and anthologized in the Canadian academic journal, The Structurist, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Heart Shots: Women Write about Hunting and The New Montana Story: An Anthology.
The artist gives an overview of her “American Fork” series at 7 p.m. Sept. 11 in the gallery, and joins Stevens for a discussion of her work at 5 p.m. Sept. 25 in the UM Masquer Gallery, prior to the closing reception from 5:45-7 p.m.
Call 406-243-2019 or visit www.umt.edu/montanamuseum for details; visit www.sandradalpoggetto.com for more on the artist.