BILLINGS — As the Yellowstone Art Museum (YAM) faces a 77% cut to its county funding, one artist’s new exhibit is offering something else for the community to rally around.
Watch how chaos creates connection in Jon Lodge's Carbon Strata:
Though the chaos and sounds of protesters supporting the museum on the street and at county commissioner's meetings, a different chaos makes noise inside the building. The museum’s newest exhibition, Carbon Strata, opened Friday and features the work of Billings-based artist Jon Lodge, an 80-year-old multimedia creator with a decades-long art career.
Step into Lodge's world, and it may seem like a lot at first glance, but there is a method to the madness.
"That's what we're dealing with here, is abstraction, (which) is not really connected with what it should be, or it could be anything," said Lodge.
Lodge’s work is as sprawling and layered as the concept of carbon. The exhibit stretches across one of YAM’s largest galleries, with pieces climbing walls, filling skylights, and even spilling onto windows and outdoor spaces.
"It's everywhere. Kind of just like his theme with carbon. It's everywhere," said Carter West, YAM's preparator. "I think Jon's highlighting the beauty of that, of things that are not always on a pedestal, but are strong in our everyday life.”
This is also not Lodge’s first connection with YAM. As a supporter and donor, he has worked with the museum on printing projects, exhibitions, and collaborations dating back decades, including a solo show in 1999.
Related: The Art Life: 60 years apart, two artists reflect on works in shared gallery
The entire exhibit is a collaborative project with the museum's staff and Lodge's personal friends.
"He really just employs all kinds of hands for help. We did have a welder on site helping get one of two pieces up, tall metal sculptures in the middle of the gallery there. He just has a bunch of different folks in his pocket ready to lend a hand," said West. "I think that just speaks to Jon as an artist and a person. It's great to work with him, and he has big ideas."
Lodge, who grew up in Carbon County and later studied jazz at Berklee College of Music in Boston, draws from a range of life experiences, including photography, printmaking, and music, to inform his process.
"I took photography and got into the printing business, and it all starts coalescing, and the study of jazz and that experience informed the randomness and abstraction of visual production, so this is where I landed here in this other world here," said Lodge.
He became fascinated with the concept of carbon and sees it not just as a chemical element, but the thread that binds all life and matter together.
“It's the second most common element of the body after oxygen, so it's like the running system of everything. I can build anything and think about just about anything and make a connection to it in some way to carbon, like this light,” said Lodge, pointing to a projector. “It came from looking at dots, and then realizing there's a connection to dots, to insects, and then dots are an essential element in image reproduction."
That connection plays out in unconventional ways throughout the exhibit, from hanging industrial printer neon film, dots on canvases, projected light (projected again onto those canvases of dots), large metal sculptures, an olfactory room, and even a simple plastic, orange cone.
“I don't think many people thought about having a cone being actually part of the work, but that's what I mean, you have to be fearless, and say, 'Okay, I'm gonna do this. No matter how stupid it is, or absurd, I like the concept, and I like how it looks,'” said Lodge.
One piece in the middle features over 7,900 five-inch black paper squares, randomly glued by five different people to form two large, almost chaotic screen. Despite its stiff appearance, it is also translucent in places, which allows light and views of other artwork to pass through, creating a constantly shifting perspective, according to Lodge.
"It's like projecting of the human red blood cells that are carrying oxygen and carbon to our brain so we can come up with this stuff in the first place," said Lodge.
Much of Lodge’s work embraces what he calls “planned random,” a concept inspired by nature’s balance between structure and unpredictability, much like raindrops, which fall in controlled but random patterns.
"It's very planned and controlled, it's stochastic," said Lodge. "That's sort of like the concept, the conceptual use of materials and processes and experimentation and just give chance to chance, that's what I'm doing."
Visitors are not expected to make sense of everything right away, because often, Lodge said, he does not always either. But, maybe, that's the point. Artwork can serve as a sense of enjoyment in the middle of so much uncertainty.
“We're going to keep trying to provide the community with great shows and to keep our link with local and regional artists strong, regardless of what commissioners in the county decide,” said West. "I think that it's such an important time to really embrace the arts with everything going on in our world. It's something that can unite us on a very deep level.”
Lodge's exhibit asks us to let go of definition, find connection in chaos, and just enjoy art for what it is.
"What I want people to maybe see is something they've never seen before. That really, even if they wonder what it is and they don't like it, they don't think it's anything. If they still say anything about it, there's some connection, and we're happy," said Lodge.
Carbon Strata runs from Sept. 5 to Jan. 10 at the YAM in downtown Billings. A public opening reception with a jazz performance is scheduled for Sept. 19 at 5 p.m.
