Exhibit by Leah Cupino
Well-traveled neon boulders dance aloft on the breeze from the Pleistocene Era into our present day with Leah Cupino’s playful renditions of rocks.
Jessie Wilber Gallery
August 8 – September 6, 2024
Reception
Opening: Friday, August 9th during the Art Walk from 6:00-8:00pm
Artist Statement
def. ‘Erratic’
adjective
not even or regular in pattern or movement; unpredictable
noun
Geology
a rock or boulder that differs from the surrounding rock and is believed to have been brought from a distance (by glacial or volcanic action)
Countless rocks in our region were shot into the air by a volcano and hitched rides on melting glaciers. They traveled, left marks on mountainsides, and unique to their new geo-scape, some even became worshiped anomalies, subjects of heated litigation and eventually National Monuments. In this exhibit, the consumer can become the next mode of transport for the erratics when these works and confectionary oddities are brought home.
Artist Bio
Leah Cupino once lived on top of a volcano and a score of other locations in her life, but now resides in Helena, Montana. Her 20-year career’s worth of paintings include loose landscapes and topographical glacier abstractions and now includes a focus on the boulders within them.
Her subjects are united by her fascination with grand scales of time, as she colorfully weaves concepts of place, ownership and what it means to simply be a part of this earth.
Cupino is currently the co-founder of Omerta Arts, a studio-residency mentorship program and gallery where she also organizes her city’s Art Walk events when she is not outdoors with her family.
She has enjoyed residencies at Art Gallery Studios in Mexico City, CDMX, the Wolf Pack of New York City, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and Virginia Commonwealth University, and her degree in Fine Arts and Commercial Design from Walla Walla University, and has enjoyed teaching at the Cittone Institute and CHI of Philadelphia, as well as Carroll College and Helena College, of the University of Montana’s Fine Arts Departments in past years.
