News

 

‘We the People’ art show responds to political moment

Article in the August 17, 2017 Missoulian

There were no shortage of ideas or contributors when Leslie Van Stavern Millar began discussing a politically themed art show.

“Without any effort or any pre-meditated curating, it came out of conversations with friends,” said Millar, a longtime Missoula artist who owns the Brunswick Arts Studios and Gallery on Railroad Street. It came up with friends, and grew into a full group show, “We the People,” that’s open through the end of the month at her gallery…

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At the Brunswick, We the People sends a message for the ages—and for the age of Trump 

Article in the August 3, 2017 Missoula Independent

Kathy Herlihy-Paoli’s “Eanie, Meanie, Miney” is one of several works in We the People, a group exhibit at the Brunswick Building about politics.

We the People, a new exhibit at the Brunswick Building, originated with a group of disgruntled artists in the months after Donald Trump was elected president. Even so, the seeds of the show can be traced back almost 60 years ago to when artist and Brunswick owner Leslie Van Stavern Millar was just 8 years old and living with her parents in Iran. She recalls visiting a palace in Isfahan built in the late 1500s by the Persian ruler Shah Abbas, known as a patron of the arts. The walls were covered in murals, including one depicting several men on horseback. Millar noticed there was something off about it…

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Leslie Millar and Queen Elizabeth I turn back the clock at Missoula Art Museum 

Article in the December 6, 2016 Missoula Independent

In the late 1980s, artist Leslie Van Stavern Millar began to entertain the idea of time travel. Not the H.G. Wells kind of time travel, which requires a machine, but something a little closer to what cognitive scientists call “mental time travel”—the process of conjuring a memory and reliving an experience through recollected detail and emotion. Sitting in her studio near the Jocko River, Millar closed her eyes and imagined her British ancestors—maybe a great-great-great-grandparent—standing in a field in 1559 as Queen Elizabeth I’s procession went by…

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First Friday: Taking a peek at Montana history, rendered in gouache

Article in the November 3, 2016  Missoulian.

When a viewer looks at one of the minutely detailed gouache paintings by Leslie Van Stavern Millar at the Missoula Art Museum, there’s not much to distract them.

First they have to step up to the “peepshow boxes” she constructed, an homage to old-fashioned devices. Look through the hole, and click on the light, and the little details are illuminated…

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Article in the May 30th Missoulian about the Brunswick Artists Studios’ and Leslie’s stewardship.

On any given day or night, the subdued exterior of the historic Brunswick Building on the rough brick stretch of Railroad Street belies the bustle of creativity inside…

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Montana Visual Artist