Frame of Reference, Inc.: Tabby Ivy in the Whitefish Art Walk

Wow - that's a terrible picture! What's it even doing in our blog? Well, that's a shot of the display window at the Bozeman Watch Company's Whitefish showroom, located at the corner of Central and 2nd Avenues, smack in the heart of downtown Whitefish. And, if you strain your eyes and look closely, you can just make out two paintings on easels in that window. Go ahead, work at it a bit - we'll wait...

Here's the story: for 25 years now, Whitefish has done an Art Walk in conjunction with the Winter Carnival, stemming from the days when the town didn't have many art galleries and there were few venues to see the creative talents of local artists. Artists are allotted space in the display windows of businesses downtown, and the result is three blocks of self-guided art tour, visible in all hours of the day and night. The Whitefish Winter Carnival was just ranked by National Geographic Traveler magazine as one of the top ten winter carnivals in the world, and it's a really big deal, lasting two weeks and packing the town. Needless to say, the exposure for artists, particularly those not represented in Whitefish galleries, is really quite exceptional.

As you may know from previous blog posts, we have somewhat of a strategic alliance with the Bozeman Watch Company; Derek is a bit of a watch geek, and at the behest of our friend John Lang, we started with a small display case of the limited edition timepieces here in Bigfork back in June of 2011. In October, Derek started actually working for BWC, spending a few hours each week in their Whitefish showroom, helping with sales, but also handling systems integration, advertising and some graphic design tasks. When BWC was approached to host an artist this year, it only seemed natural that we ask to be allowed to choose one from Frame of Reference!

So, we chose Tabby Ivy, one of our (rapidly) emerging artists, whose work we've shown for about two years now. Tabby is a Bigfork resident who was a serious black-and-white photographer prior to picking up a paintbrush - her ability to see in monochrome allows her to create stunning ethereal landscapes in a very limited color palette. Tabby's paintings have sold exceptionally well this past year, so she was the natural choice for the Art Walk; our goal is to gain her some additional exposure in the hopes of earning her some additional gallery representation out of the area. Tabby created four new pieces specifically for this event, and since you can't see them in that rotten photo above, I'm putting them below. And, I'll get a photo of the windows at night posted here in the next several days, because the one above doesn't do the pieces justice.