October is full of gentle days, which is perhaps why we Northern Plains residents stay here, even though we know that winter’s harsh embrace will follow. Autumn’s warmth will cause the sweat to catch on your back while the wind gives you a light caress. You welcome it like a familiar friend, a hug you were needing.
There is nothing quite like an open prairie. The wind will whisper through the curves of the hills, and if you breathe with it, you can exhale some of that poison of civilization from your body. The sage clings to your fingers after you stroke it like a cat. The berries on the junipers are waxen in mid-day sun, attracting birds as they converse back-and-forth, their echoes rolling off the tongue of the wind as it carries them over the sloping hills. If you climb high enough, you can see the belly of the old sea, cupped by cliffs with lapping edges, watermarks that give you a sense of what this place was like before.
At times, it is so soft and golden that it looks like that velvet chair with a free sign in the alley, and old wingback with threadbare fabric the shade of golden kingdoms.
A “ring of fire”
The first noticeable frost of the year descended the Gallatin River valley on October 14, a foggy and delicious morning to welcome a coming eclipse. The sun rose with its usual schedule, but the fog held onto the bottom of the valley. The atmosphere obscured the sun’s rays so just its orb showed, looking like a fiery moon as it rose behind the hills, glinting on the fields. Everything felt delicate, touched with a thin layer of frost.
The moisture in the air created an elongated sunrise with salmon-pink brush strokes launching through the sky. Industry, too, was more visible with billowing smokestacks highlighted in the cool morning air. As soon as the sun’s rays reached the grasses, the fog began to clear, and by the time the entire valley was lit, there was no sign of the frosty morning left.
It was a triumphant way to welcome the “ring of fire,” a solar eclipse that was visible in the mid-morning of October 14 as the moon passed between us and the sun. In North America, the full extent of the eclipse was only visible in a narrow line between Oregon and Texas where the moon aligned with the sun’s center, leaving just its outer ring exposed. In Montana, we experienced upwards of 70 percent of the moon’s obscuration, creating a crescent shape of the sun.
I watched from Bozeman, where several artists arranged an experiential event at Tinworks Art. Located in the city’s cannery district, Tinworks is a sprawling art campus with indoor and outdoor displays. The show “Invisible Prairie,” which opened in July, concluded with the eclipse. As the moon began to edge into our view of the sun, the eclipse became visible with special eyewear or through the pinholes punched into one of the tin buildings — a phenomenon called camera obscura. Derived from early 18th century Latin, meaning “dark chamber,” camera obscura was instrumental in developing photography and the first cameras, as when light goes through a pinhole, it creates an inverted image when it strikes the opposite surface.
Tinworks curator Melissa Ragain orchestrated this experience, which was years in the making and included former Tinworks curator Eli Ridgway, who in 2019 invited Chris Fraser, an artist and educator from Michigan, to utilize a warehouse on Tinworks campus for a project he titled “Asterisms.” Ten thousand pinholes later, the building was transformed into a giant camera obscura, inspired by the Renaissance practice of installing solar observatories within cathedrals, “effectively transforming sacred spaces into gigantic solar observatories and reliable timekeepers,” Fraser explained.
“Through each hole, an image of the sun was projected. As the sun arced across the sky, this constellation of images moved through the space — in the rafters, across the walls, along the floor, and over visitors. Their transit called attention to a time marked not by numbers but an experience of place.”
In 2023, “Invisible Prairie” opened and Tracy Linder was one of several artists asked to contribute to the exhibition. Linder utilized the room where Fraser installed the pinholes.
Linder is an artist whose work is hugely influenced by her time as a farm and ranch kid growing up in south central Montana, and her artwork incorporates her relationship with materials and work ethics of those who live and harvest from the plains.
During the October 14 eclipse, light streaming through the pinholes anointed Linder’s work, titled /weT͟Hər/ — a 60-foot-long sculpture made from more than 300 bovine ribs she found along the prairie, harvested from bone piles, and was given by neighbors. The work references wind currents, broad lightning strikes, and roiling cloud formations among the excessive heat domes she experienced on the plains where she still resides.
“I truly felt that the winds would eventually reveal the earth’s skeleton,” Linder said. She chose ribs “as they both protect vulnerable organs and are the physical remainder of lives that came before. In essence they are a reminder of both life and place.”
During the eclipse, Suzanne Kite held an outdoor ceremony to mark the occasion. Kite is an an Oglála Lakȟóta artist and composer whose work is centered on visual language and storytelling with symbols. She has a piece on display in “Invisible Prairie” that tells the story in stones arranged into symbols of her great-great grandmother Elizabeth Iron Road’s escape from the Wounded Knee Massacre. Iron Road followed the train tracks on foot and found her way back to her family.
“This is a lifelong pursuit to understand these symbols,” said Kite, who has researched Lakȟóta visual language in close collaboration with her family.
She crafted a performance score titled “Aŋpéoyokpaze,” the Lakȟóta term for solar eclipse or daytime darkness. The score featured musicians centered around a story she created using Lakȟóta geometric symbols. The score is an interactive prompt to consider “what each symbol means to you,” Kite described. “Perhaps it means the transformation of knowledge through a knowable means, perhaps at the scale of planetary movements. Perhaps it dances through time and space and changes those who see.
“When I look at this score,” Kite continued, “I see dragonflies and storm clouds and stars and lightning and valleys and feathers arranged in the shape of a seven-pointed star that’s being eclipsed by a seven-sided object,” many references to Lakota culture.
The score is like a ballet with the viewer and the land, the sun, and the moon. An excerpt she shared:
“Aŋpéoyokpaze appears above the limits of the sky, and you watch it alone. A microcosm of relationships between celestial bodies. She arcs her face toward the light, listening to the death of all things.”
— Suzanne Kite
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