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Montana Artist's Refuge in Basin, Montana
April 28, 2011
by Dave Reese
Yawn, and you’ll miss it.
But look a little closer at this town 40 miles north of Butte and you’ll see a town that’s leftover from Montana’s booming mining days of the 1800s and early 1900s, a town that’s for the most part gone bust. Look a little closer and you’ll see a bright spot, where people from around the world gather for a month of artistic inspiration at the Montana Artists Refuge.
This remote outpost, set in a two-story brick building on main street, is a place where artists can live, collaborate and work on their writing or visual arts.
Founded 15 years ago as a place for artists to gather and work on their art, the refuge has thrived for the last 15 years, with good occupancy rates and patron sponsorship. Artists pay a monthly fee to live in the Refuge apartments, and the organization is subsidized by grants and donations.
But it’s time for new leadership, as the founders have decided to pass the torch to a new generation. This fall new leaders will begin to formally lay out a plan for its future. “We’re pushing ‘pause’ on the refuge while we revision and re-think,” board chairperson Melissa Bangs said. “We are in a really exciting process of re-visioning and re-imagining the Montana Artists Refuge.”
Bangs, a national nonprofit consultant who is helping lead the transition, said the Refuge’s second phase “is one of the most important transitions that nonprofits ever have. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be a part of the leadership.”
As the Montana Artists Refuge looks back on 15 years of success, it looks to the future and what it wants to take with it — and leave behind, Bangs said.
At the core of the mission is a commitment for the refuge’s long-term success, according to Bangs. “It’s still our goal to provide creative, inspiring space, and sustain a vibrant arts presence in rural communities in Montana,” she said.
The refuge is a “Montana treasure,” Bangs said, because there is no other artist residency program in Montana that offers time and space to every imaginable kind of artist, whether it’s the poet, the painter or the composer.
“Our role is to be able to nurture the artists,” she said.
Ren Vasiliev is a visual artist from New York who spent the July 2008 at the refuge. She found the refuge to be the perfect way to stoke her artistic fires.
“It was delightful,” she said. “It was a gift of time and a gift of space, with no responsibility other than to do my art.”
The refuge takes in artists of varying mediums, and Vasiliev said anyone should take time out for their creative endeavors by attending something like the Montana Artists Refuge.
Vasiliev found the small town of Basin, population 255, a welcoming environment for the artistic community. On the main thoroughfare, clapboard buildings and brick structures face the street, which is mostly empty of traffic on this summer day, except for a few ATV riders heading up into the nearby hills.
“The village is full of people who know there’s these artists in town, and they’ll just stop by and visit,” she said. “It’s pretty cool that way.”
She said there are similar artists refuges in New York that are much larger and established, “But they’re certainly not like Basin, Montana.”
The artists refuge is as much about the place as it is the mission. Here in Basin, a blue collar town of about 200 people founded on mining in the 1800s, two very different worlds come together: that of the arts, that of people making their living on the land.
But the two worlds coexist in a peaceful fashion, one group helping the other group out. Artists from major urban areas find the Refuge comforting and safe, manager Debbie Sheehan said.
“There are groups that are quite different, but since we’re small there’s not a problem with that,” Sheehan said. “But there’s also a sense that there’s not very many of us and we have to help each other out. There’s also a sense of staying out of somebody’s business unless you’re invited in. It’s a really small town; there are benefits and problems with that.”
Bangs, who is also an artist, spent last December at the refuge. “I have never had a more profoundly creative period in my career as a painter,” she said. “As an artist, the things that come out of you when you have that time, is inspiring. I’d like to be able to share that with artists and the community for a very long time.”
On the Web: montanaartistsrefuge.org
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