about

Tracy Linder’s soulful sculptures and installations provide an in-depth discourse regarding our connection to the land. Linder grew up on a family farm and now lives on the vast windswept prairie near Molt, MT. Linder often uses organic materials such as bone, leather, seeds, leaves and grasses to connote the inevitable cycles of growth, death and rebirth. Time and labor are major factors in the creation of her work as she carefully manipulates materials in unexpected ways to convey our sinuous relationship with nature.

Recently, Linder was commissioned by the One & Only Moonlight Basin Resort, to create an installation in their circular stairwell. In 2021, she was awarded an Artist’s Grant by Tinworks Art in Bozeman, MT which lead to a commission for their “Invisible Prairie” exhibit. Linder’s work was featured in the International Sculpture Center’s Magazine (Nov/Dec 2020) and a she had a mid-career retrospective at the Yellowstone Art Museum (catalog essayist Lucy Lippard). From that exhibit, notable collector, Neltje, purchased two major installations that are now housed at the Neltje Center, University of Wyoming.

Her works have been shown nationally and extensively in the Northern Rockies with solo shows that include: OK Harris Works of Art, NYC, Missoula Art Museum, Eiteljorg Museum, Nicolaysen Art Museum, Holter Museum of Art and Fort Collins Museum of Art. She was a featured speaker for a TEDx Billings event in 2015. Linder served on the Montana Arts Council from 2008-2021. She was the first artist in residence of the Yellowstone Art Museum’s Visible Vault for 6 months. She was also a recipient of a Ucross Fellowship in Wyoming. Linder was commissioned by the US General Service Administration’s Art in Architecture program for the Sweetgrass, MT/Coutts, AB Border station. Prior to that she taught at MSU-Billings and served as the Gallery Director for 7 years. She received her MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

statement

My rural heritage has propelled my art work for over 30 years. I grew up on a family farm in south central Montana and now live out on the prairie where I continue to have an intimate relationship with the land. My sculptures reveal a narrative of working the land, often exposing the indelible experience of nurturing life and contending with death. The circle of life reveals a profound beauty in both.

Through a holistic perspective, I intermingle contrasting aspects of plants, animals and the environment in a manner to evince our connection to the natural world. This consciousness, when successful, reveals an unflinching portrayal of the working land imbued with our complex relationship to the environment.

In my work, I mediate an amalgamation of lived farm/ranch experiences along with current circumstances surrounding our land and climate—all filtered through my own sensibility. I utilize the perspective of the land’s inhabitants; I rely on the shared memory of my materials. I am accustomed to investigating and manipulating materials to relay both the fragility and strength of our ecosystem.

This manner of working allows me to bring forth thoughtful meditations on harmony and melancholy; balance and instability. I notice the change in weather patterns, the topsoil eroding, the transition of bird species, the over and under population of wildlife species. I watch as some grasses thrive and others wither. I feel a hauntedness of unseen forces at play, both past and present, that propels my inquiry.

There is an innate connection to my surroundings that is humbling. I remember hail wiping out our crops in minutes, a mother cow refusing her newborn, and the many hardships faced daily on the farm. I also remember seeing the first signs of spring as the crops break through the surface, the joy in bedding the calves in fresh straw, and the triumph of harvesting a good crop.    

From all of this springs forth an aesthetic that considers materiality, rhythm, and repetition as a prescription for contemplation. An empathetic glance into our world.

resume

“Linder’s sculptures are the color of the high plains in early fall: gold, brown, tan, and white. Made from bones, seeds, leather, fur, branches, bronze, resin and time, her sculptures represent and incorporate cycles of growth, death, and rebirth. Life and death bear one another’s seed in symbol ad substance. Time infuses each work. Labor is embodied in stitches through unyielding materials, the weight of accumulation, and the traces of care spent shaping, stretching, and assembling.”—Susan Barnett, Curator, Yellowstone Art Museum (2020)