Friends, Family, Collaborators. & A Few Adventures
Me & my mom, Elaine Isabelle Crowe Newby (1925-1998) Kalispell, MT, 1953.
Me & my dad, Fletcher Eugene Newby (1926-2002), MacDonald Pass, Montana, ca. 1972.
When we were young: Me and my siblings, Barb Newby, sister-in-law Tammie Newby, and Steve Newby, Finley Point, MT, ca. 1980.
Rick & Liz Get Married, August 7, 1993.
Liz and Rick, 27th wedding anniversary, August 2020.
Elizabeth Antony Gans and I: When we first lived together, ca. 1991.
Liz and I on the banks of the Missouri, taking in Project Bandaloop‘s aerial dance performance, Portal, off the side of the Hardy Bridge, marking the bicentennial of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, 2005. Music by Phil Aaberg. Presenter: Myrna Loy Center. Photograph by Daniel Biehl.
Portrait of the young poet, ca. 1980. Photograph by J. M. Cooper.
Two poets: My dear friend Melissa Kwasny & I, at Joe Gans’ retrospective of paintings, prints, & ceramic sculptures, Myrna Loy Center for the Media & Performing Arts, Helena, MT, June 2016.
The launch of the collection of essays, Writing Montana: Literature Under the Big Sky, published by the Montana Center for the Book, 1996. Front row: Me & my co-editor, poet & essayist Suzanne Hunger; back row, contributors to the anthology: literature scholar Sue Hart, novelist Lise McClendon, painter Dale Livezey (cover art), poet, novelist, essayist, & editor Melissa Kwasny, & anthropologist, folklorist, jazz composer, & pianist Alexandra Swaney.
Old friend, historian and folklorist Nicholas Vrooman (1949–2019), author of The Whole Country was . . . “One Robe”: The Little Shell Tribe’s America (Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana/Drumlummon Institute, 2013). Photograph by Eliza Wiley.
Yukking it up with Wilbur Rehmann, saxophonist, bandleader, collaborator, and old friend, Christmas 2008.
Erstwhile landlords, passionate collectors, inveterate clotheshorses, & dear friends, painter & photographer Shirley Quick (1955-2014) & writer & painter Drew Livesay.
2009 Montana Governor’s Award for the Humanities ceremony. Ken Egan, Executive Director, Humanities Montana; Rick Newby, honoree; Brian Kahn (1947-2020), honoree.
My grandparents, Vera Knauff Newby & George Edward Newby, at the ranch, La Grange, Wyoming.
The original Drumlummon Institute Board of Directors. Drumlummon launch event, Montana Club, Helena, MT, 2006. Left to right: Jeffrey W. Williams; Nikki Whearty; Rennan Rieke; Patty Dean; Matt Pavelich; Rick Newby.
Drumlummon launch event, Montana Club, Helena, MT, 2006. Novelist, writer of short fiction, and long-time friend Matt Pavelich & I.
Coastal waters, lakes, streams, & one sewage lagoon.
Liz heading home on Telegraph Hill.
The freedom of the city: Parents-in-law Margaret Regan Gans (1922-2008) & Joe Freeman Gans (1920-2020) at the foot of Telegraph Hill, San Francisco, 2005,
Barcelona, 2011
A visit with two old poet-friends, Bill Borneman and Paul Piper, 2010.
The back cover of Lingos 1, containing the essay, “Xerox and Infinity,” by Jean Baudrillard, prepared for the Baudrillard Study Group with “filler” by Bill Borneman. Advertising a poetry reading by the two intent readers, Rick Newby & Paul S. Piper, March 1990.
The assembled Baudrillard Study Group (without me), 1994.
Liz and me, Woodbine Falls & West Rosebud, Beartooths, September 2014,
In 2001 potter, historian, and historic preservationist Chere Jiusto and I had the opportunity to write about the origins of the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts for the catalog to the touring exhibition, A Ceramic Continuum: Fifty Years of the Archie Bray Influence, Holter Museum of Art, Above, Archie Bray, Sr., one of the three founders of the Archie Bray Foundation, holds a pot by British potter Bernard Leach, given to him upon the launch of the foundation, 1951. The first workshop at the new foundation featured (from left) Dr. Soetsu Yanagi, scholar of Japanese folk arts; British potter & advocate of Asian aesthetics Bernard Leach; the young Montana-born ceramic revolutionaries Rudy Autio & Peter Voulkos; & the Japanese master potter Shoji Hamada, Helena, Montana, 1952.
Interviewing sculptor Stephen De Staebler at his home in Berkeley, for my monographic essay in the catalog to his retrospective at the De Young Museum, San Francisco, 2012. From left: Stephen De Staebler (1933-2011), G. B. Carson (1950-2021), and Rick Newby.
Accepting the Montana Governor’s Award for the Arts, Montana State Capitol, 2016, Photograph by Thom Bridge.
On the Costa Brava, with beloved friends Wilbur Rehmann & Susan Miles, Richard & Penny Swanson.
Marin Headlands, summer 2021. Photograph by Liz Gans.
Doug Turman’s etching, “Montana Architect George Appleton, Famous for Borrowing from the Ideas of Others, Designs a Homely Bungalow (Merz House) for the Provincial German Artist, Kurt Schwitters, Ca. 1925,” from our image-text collaboration, Sobering Moments in Montana History: Actual Events, Genuine Characters, published in my collection, Old Friends Walking in the Mountains, 1994. The twelve texts and etchings were first exhibited at the Holter Museum of Art, Helena, 1991.
Two sculptor-friends: Akio Takamori (1950-2017) & Richard Swanson & Akio’s work, Seattle, 2016.
Ceramist, printmaker, & friend Penny Swanson & me, 2005.
Long-time friend and collaborator Robert Harrison stands alongside a dozen large brick slabs he decorated during a World Association of Brick Artists residency at the Petersen TEGL brick factory in southern Denmark, 2019, Robert is the sculptor who first got me writing seriously about ceramic artists, with my essay on his work for American Ceramics, 1991. Robert and I have collaborated on two projects: the 1997 site-specific work Queen City Gateway (second photo) in downtown Helena, which incorporates my poem, “The Mythical Founding of Helena, Montana,”, and Ten Quick Sketches, a set of 10 plates by Robert and a 10-stanza poem by me, which premiered at the Turman Larison Gallery, 2013.
Jennifer Lee Thompson, sculptor, photographer, art therapist, mentor, and friend, at her installation, Name What Continues, Basin, MT, 2021.
The sculpture archive of Joseph Baraz, Hungarian-Montanan artist, builder, intuitive engineer, and friend, about whom I wrote in Joseph Baráz: Paintings & Sculpture, 1990-2011.
Travels with Richard Gans
Still life
Manarola, Cinque Terre, Bay of the Poets, with Wilbur & Susan
My Scottish maternal great-grandparents John A. Crowe and Lydia Hay Crowe, with their children, Olive, John, Guy, & Lida, at the family ranch, Little Belt, Montana, ca. 1915.
Panel on Montana writers Frieda Fligelman & Grace Stone Coates, with editor/scholars Alexandra Swaney (1944–2017) & Lee Rostad (1929-2020), my co-editors respectively of Notes for a Novel: The Selected Poems of Frieda Fligelman, 2008, and Food of Gods and Starvelings: The Selected Poems of Grace Stone Coates, 2007.
Madeline DeFrees (1919-2015) the poet-teacher who ultimately had the most impact on my work, both through her rigor as a teacher and because her Imaginary Ancestors series proved an indelible model for me. Here she reads at the 92nd Street Y, New York, 1975, at the time I studied with her at Montana.
My first poet-teacher and forever friend Roger Dunsmore, author of On the Chinese Wall: New & Selected Poems, 1966-2018 (Drumlummon Institute, 2019), for which I wrote the introduction.
Round River Program for Environmental Education, University of Montana, Lubrecht Experimental Forest, Winter 1971-1972: Charles Van Hook, unknown, Kathy Van Hook, unknown, me, & Roger Dunsmore.
Lowell Uda (1938-2014), friend, mentor, fiction writer, poet, pastor, and co-founder and editor (with me and Phil Cohea) of the Montana literary journal, Scratchgravel Hills, in the late 1970s.
Gardens–Montana & San Francisco.
Warm San Francisco memories.
Two masters of typography and the book: Robert Bringhurst & Peter Koch, Berkeley, 2012.
My mom on Hidden Lake Trail, Glacier National Park, 1949.
My dad, with his favorite Malamute, Nugget, the Cascades, 1950.
Bodhi, my best buddy ever. Rest in peace.
At the Rattlesnake Creek cabin
Logging, fencing, weeding, reading Wang Wei, etc. at the cabin.
At the memorial for Margaret Regan Gans, 2008, with Beck McLaughlin, performance artist, arts educator, and friend.
First president of the Drumlummon Institute board of directors, Jeffrey W. Williams (1954-2010), cyclist, champion trap shooter, all-around bookman, conservationist, and friend.
Book browsing in Bergamo, Italy, May 2010
With Liz at the Getty
Interviewing Jim Todd, during his exhibition, Jazz Icons: Wood Engravings, Woodcuts & Paintings by James Gilbert Todd, Jr., Holter Museum of Art, 2012. Behind us is San Francisco artist James Weeks‘ painting, Mr. & Mrs. S, 1960, donated to the Montana Historical Society by George & Elinor Poindexter, as part of MHS’s Poindexter Collection of Modern Art.
George Poindexter, Montana native and New York commodities broker, and Elinor Poindexter, longtime director of New York’s important Poindexter Gallery, were the two generous and far-sighted individuals who donated more than 200 works of art by cutting-edge American modernists to the Montana Historical Society and the Yellowstone Art Museum. They thereby immeasurably enriched the cultural life of George’s home state. It was my pleasure to write the history of how these collections came to be for the catalog to the touring exhibition, The Most Difficult Journey: The Poindexter Collections of American Modernist Painting, Yellowstone Art Museum, 2002.
Elvia Angele Stockton (1922-2018) and I, Grass Range, MT, during a visit, with G. B. Carson and my wife Liz Gans, to select paintings by Elvia’s husband, Bill Stockton (1921-2002), one of Montana’s most important early modernist painters, for an exhibition at the Holter Museum of Art.
Nigerian/British sculptor Lawson Oyekan, about whom I wrote for his exhibition, Solstice Lip Series, at the Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN, 2006.
A bookish heritage: Aunts Jean & Ruth & Uncle Bob Crowe, Columbia Falls, MT, ca. 1924. My mom, Elaine, the baby of the family, wasn’t yet born.
MJ Williams, jazz vocalist, trombonist, composer, arts organizer, & friend, with whom I’ve collaborated over the years, especially in the group Rent Party Improv, made up of a changing roster of artists, including poet Melissa Kwasny, poet/guitartist/percussionist Bill Borneman, musician Nancy Owens, poet Bryn Holt, saxophonist Wilbur Rehmann, violinist/bassist Tari Nelson-Zagar, et al. Photograph by Jason E. Kaplan.
Performing a few poems: left to right: with Wilbur Rehmann, saxophones, & Jeremy Slead, drums, Myrna Loy Center, Helena; with Joseph Baraz, sculptor, & Wilbur Rehmann, sax; Baraz studio, Helena; with Bill Borneman Jazz & Poetry Ensemble (Bob Baran, sax, Bill Borneman, guitar; Diana Ostby, onlooking), Bert & Ernies, Helena; and in the Montana State Capitol, National Poetry Day.
ArtClub, Helena, MT, ca. 1990. Left to right: Back row: Kathleen Mollohan, fiber artist; Rick Newby, writer, Jennifer Bottomly-o’looney, ceramist, filmmaker, & painter; Dennis McCahon, architectural historian, sculptor, & draughtsman; Sandra Dal Poggetto, painter; middle row: Jacqueline Baran, painter; Penny Swanson, ceramist & printmaker; front row: Richard Swanson, sculptor; Nick Bonner, ceramic sculptor; Steve Palmer, ceramist. Photograph by J. M. Cooper.
Being best man: Rob Smith (1949-1997) and Julie Cook’s wedding, Upcountry Inn, Helena, MT, , With Rob, attorney, philosopher, jazz impresario, and best friend.
Marnie Hagmann Pavelich (1955-1997), editor, mentor, & friend, Thompson Falls, MT, 1997.
Meeting up with Ric Bourie (1954-2006), editor, journalist, and friend, The Cloisters, New York, 2005.
Productive chaos.
Kurt Weiser, Stephen Young Lee, & Rick Newby: Presenting on the history & culture of the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts annual conference, Tampa, FL, 2011.
My giant uncle, Robert Wallace Crowe, a plasma physicist who made significant contributions to the early U.S. space program.
Santa Fe, NM, Autumn 2019. Photograph by Liz Gans.
Rick Newby, Writer & Editor 