related events

Lecture on the History of Beet Production in Billings with Lauren Hunley from Western Heritage Center
Thursday, April 30, 2026 // Reception 5 PM; Lecture 5:30 PM

Rebecca Hutchinson
Embedded in the Overlap

Montana Gallery

April 3, 2026 – January 9, 2027

Embedded in the Overlap features work by Rebecca Hutchinson, an award-winning sculptor and three-decade resident of Helena, Montana. The site-responsive exhibition engages directly with Yellowstone Art Museum’s location in Billings, inspired conceptually by aspects of the city’s distinctive character: the history of settlement along the geographically prominent Rimrocks, the industries that sustain its communities, and the dramatic, and often unpredictable, weather of the plains.

For the exhibition, diverse materials from the region such as beet pulp, blue jeans, creek willow, and regional clay are carefully collected and transformed by Hutchinson for artmaking. Much of the organic and fibrous content is boiled, pulped, and poured into large sheets of paper; the paper sheets are further cut, coated in clay, and coiled to build up the vessel forms. In addition to sculpture, printmaking serves as a medium through which Hutchinson expresses her concept of place.

An innovative artist in ceramics and paper clay, Rebecca Hutchinson began working with ceramics as an undergraduate student at Berea College (Kentucky) and studied under renowned ceramic artists and papermakers while pursuing an MFA at the University of Georgia (Athens). Hutchinson’s training in both clay and paper coalesced into a single practice later while in residency at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, MT. Ultimately, Hutchinson uses her innate connection to nature and expansive paperclay practice to examine how place-making emerges from historical and cultural forces.