RITUAL RITUAL: New Works by Shelby Baldridge and Jerod Peitsmeyer, now showing in the ZACC Main Gallery.
Exhibit opens Friday, August 1 from 5-8 PM
Artists Talk: Thursday, August 21 from 5:30-7 PM
Shelby Baldridge Artist Statement/Bio:
It’s a delight to show a new series of paintings alongside my friend and colleague, Jerod Peitsmeyer in this shared exhibition, Ritual Ritual. Jerod and I met through working together for the School of Visual and Media Arts at the University of Montana and quickly discovered we could relate to each other on many levels. This exhibition offered a chance to explore some ideas we shared in brief moments over the course of the past few years. Collaborating on a triptych of paintings provided an exciting new experience with insights to my own painting process and fresh motivation to produce a new series in a short timeframe away from full time work.
This new series of paintings aims to visually portray moments from my journey toward calming my nervous system and discovering practices that benefit my mental health. It is a collection of moments, activities and rituals that I took notice of, and therefore can turn to when experiencing difficult and challenging circumstances or feelings. ‘Legs up the wall’ is a posture I learned from practicing yoga, and one that I utilized frequently during a particularly unsettling span of time that occurred a few years ago. It is one of many tools I continue to incorporate when in need of rest or to sooth anxiety. Spending time in close proximity to nature also greatly assists my healing process, and I noticed this particularly after moving back to my home state of Montana from an urban area. Getting outdoors to walk, bike ride and garden have all become supportive rituals that found themselves in these works, along with tracking the cycles of the moon, seeking wildflowers and resting more often (perhaps with my legs up the wall). Each painting features one or more images representing these experiences that provide joy or calm, and therefore disrupt anxiety. Painting itself has become a ritual this summer that I hope to continue cultivating.
Shelby Baldridge is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Missoula, Montana. Her artistic practice oscillates between sculpture and painting, and sometimes combines the two disciplines. She received an MFA in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2020, and a BFA in painting from the University of Montana in 2012. Regardless of the medium, Baldridge centers the natural world in her work, and often highlights the connections between species. Her upbringing in northwest Montana allowed ample access to national forest and wilderness areas; these surroundings encouraged a curiosity for nature and influenced her interest in portraying ecological themes. She is currently an Instructor with the School of Visual and Media Arts and directs the Gallery of Arts at The University of Montana, and tries to find time for practicing yoga and getting outside whenever possible.
Jerod Peitsmeyer – Artist Bio/Statement
I teach Art History and Fine Arts at the University of Montana, but more often I am just someone trying to work things out—with words, with objects, with images. I’ve kept a studio practice alongside the teaching. Some years more than others. Sometimes there are solo shows. Sometimes I share a wall with friends. The rhythm shifts. I move between making and thinking, the silence of the studio and the chatter of the classroom, and neither space ever quite wins out. Each changes the other in ways I try not to control.
Ritual Ritual is something I’ve wanted for a long time. A collaboration with Shelby Baldridge, finally made real. For years our conversations circled art—quick things in hallways, ideas texted and never answered, fragments that evaporated just as they got interesting. But somehow they stuck. Or maybe they ripened. Either way, this show is what happened when we stopped letting them go.
Shelby’s work always struck me as intriguingly calm and vibrating at once. Controlled but searching. It listens. And that listening made me want to work differently. To not rush toward resolution. To be quiet inside the work and let it shift without pushing.
While we were developing the show, I kept returning to Kristeva, who said art speaks what has no shape yet. To Adorno, who reminded me that art is not obliged to be helpful. To Hilma af Klint, who asked nothing of us but attention. Who left things open on purpose.
These new works come from a different place. A friend helped me see that everything I’ve made up to now traces back to a single moment. My father, asking if I was gay because I wanted hot pink Nike hiking boots. I was eleven, maybe twelve. And those boots were radiant. This show is a small act of going back for them before his words, relegating his question finally. For the joy. The clarity. That brief flash of myself looking back at me from a clearance rack of glorious boots.
This is not a statement. It is a rhythm returned to. A long conversation. A ritual. And then another.
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