No headline

After three days of packing, planning, weighing and measuring, it was time for Ken Yarus and Richie Carter to go.

“They said, ‘you’re going to be here on this date and this time.’ You just get this written agreement so we show up to this trailhead, drive for two hours and, sure enough, there’s the trail there,” Yarus said. “There’s a trailer and there’s two guys out there in cowboy hats looking scary. You’re like, ‘this is happening, oh my God!’”

The men in the cowboy hats took their bags, loaded their 12 horses — with packs evenly weighed to keep the animals balanced, even if that meant the two had to rifle through everything and toss cans, ice and bottles from one bag to the next — and took the two young artists up the road to Granite Cabin.

When they reached the cabin the bags were unloaded, then the men said goodbye. For the next 10 days, Yarus and Carter would be all alone.

“Ten days is a really long time,” Carter recalled. “Backpacking trips are three, four days at the most.”

“To be like, ‘I’m just here, I’m not going anywhere,’” Yarus added. “That was kind of weird ... and nice.”

The two 20-somethings, who graduated one year apart from Flathead High School — Carter in 2007, Yarus in 2008 — found themselves alone in the middle of the Bob Marshall Wilderness by choice. They had applied for and been awarded a spot with the Artist-Wilderness Collection, a collaboration between the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation, the Hockaday Museum of Art and the U.S. Forest Service.

For 10 days in early August, Yarus and Carter headed out to the paint their surroundings, including “infinite pine trees” as Yarus joked.

Tonight at the Hockaday the results will be on display for the first time as “10 Days” begins its three-week run at the museum with an opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m.

And, in fairness, the two weren’t completely roughing it in the woods. Thanks to the generosity of volunteers with the foundation, including those guys in the cowboy hats, Carter and Yarus had all of the supplies needed for plein air painting, cases to carry their wet artwork back out of the woods and plenty of nourishment.

“We have 12 horses and they were like ‘bring whatever you want’ so we brought in three or maybe four coolers,” Carter said. “A couple of them were designated just for ice because we wanted to be eating fresh food throughout. We had steaks and bacon and hamburger meat.”

“We had huge packets of Costco chicken,” Yarus said. “We were eating burritos with half a pound of meat in them each. It was nice.”

THE ARTIST-WILDERNESS Connection program began 12 years ago and isn’t just for painters. Writers, musicians and photographers have all participated, although typically no more than three individuals or groups each year.

“We’re looking for artists who want a wilderness immersion experience and an experience they can bring back to the public in a meaningful way,” Carol Treadwell, the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation’s executive director, said.

“One of the most important parts is getting public awareness and seeing that through the eyes of artists.”

That mission of raising awareness for the wilderness was an easy hook for the two artists, too.

“We wanted to make painting seem cool and to make the wilderness seem like it’s a cool place to be,” Yarus said.

“You have an area twice as big as Glacier (National Park), go use it,” Carter added. “You don’t have to paint. You can be a fisherman, a hunter, whatever you want to do and whatever your passion is go out to the wilderness and it’s right there.”

When the two Kalispell natives got to their cabin, however, they found different surroundings than they were used to. The pair, like most artists from the Flathead Valley, have spent weeks upon weeks painting inside Glacier National Park, where a gorgeous landscape is around every corner. The Bob Marshall Wilderness required significantly more patience and discipline. Fortunately for the two painters, they had ample time to be patient.

“It felt like it had much more quiet-ness to it,” Yarus said. “I did paintings that I wouldn’t have usually done because I was just amused with different things. In Glacier Park you almost get too much to choose from, whereas the Bob Marshall you kind of get pine trees and then some more pine trees, and then rocks, and then more pine trees.

“So you’re in there like ‘ok, I guess I’m going to paint pine trees today’ and try to make the best of it. That was a good challenge for me as a painter.”

The two emerged with more than 30 paintings in total but there were some struggles, including a now-former work of art that Carter discarded in an unusual way.

“I took an ax to a painting,” he admitted.

“I genuinely liked it but it was hard,” Yarus added. “Usually I go plein air and it’s really clear what you’re going to paint. This was much more of a searching-type endeavor. A lot of the paintings were done, not out of like a real grip of passion but more of a method.”

The resulting exhibit will include all 30-plus of the paintings that made it out of the cabin, eight large oil paintings (four from each artist) based on pictures taken and a dozen photographs.

CARTER AND Yarus may have started from the same school, but the pair have taken very different paths to today.

Yarus, 27, enrolled at the Ashland Academy of Art in Ashland, Oregon after high school, forgoing the chance to attend a traditional college and committing, basically, then and there to making a career of painting.

“I was really obsessed in high school,” he said. “I was like, ‘I’m going to be the next Michelangelo.’ I just wanted to be an awesome artist.”

When the school relocated to Hawaii, Yarus moved east and began studying at the Grand Central Academy of Art in New York, spending one year in the Big Apple.

“I could only do a year in New York,” he said. “New York was so hard; the city itself. The school was good but the city just sucked. I’m a country boy.”

Carter, 28, spent time in France and Italy during his college years, eventually earning a degree from the University of Montana. He came home after graduation and kept painting while he worked at Colter Coffee in downtown Kalispell to keep his bills paid.

“Probably three, four years ago I was working (at Colter Coffee) and I put my art up,” he said. “I made four paintings and put them up and I sold them and I was like ‘oh, I could sell these.’”

It wasn’t until a couple years later that Carter and Yarus’ worlds came together at an art show, then called “Western Masters,” in Great Falls.

“I did the show two years ago for the first time,” Carter said. “Ken had already been established there and we kind of reconnected at that show.

“I was like, how do you do this?”

“It’s crazy,” Yarus said of the show. “There’s you and 150 artists showing up with trailers full of art and there’s like five entrances.”

“It’s a madhouse,” Carter continued. “It was there that we were like, ‘hey, we’re kind of doing the same thing’ and then he was moving back to the valley and we were like ‘let’s try to team up and work together’ and that’s what we did.”

Shortly thereafter, the pair turned a garage at Yarus’ childhood home, just north of Kalispell, into their art studio. Then they moved into the Yarus family house.

“That was kind of parent’s benevolence,” Yarus said. “They’re really encouraging.”

“They believe in us more than us,” Carter quipped.

The new studio — the garage is now finished and heated — has been a boon for both artists’ careers.

“That’s been huge,” Yarus said of the studio space. “I’ve made more paintings in the last year and a half than I have in a while. I’ve done more shows. Basically, you have that bit of accountability and it goes so far.

“If he sells stuff it kind of motivates me.”

“You get double the resources,” Carter added. “Whether it’s about paintings or connections with working with galleries or shows. You have two minds all the time.”

PART OF the Artist-Wilderness Connection requires artists to take their work to the public. Yarus and Carter, two of the youngest established painters in the Flathead Valley, knew just where to go. They went back to school.

The two presented an eight-minute documentary of their stay at the cabin — which will also be shown at the Hockaday — to seven different art classes at their alma mater earlier this month, then took questions and talked about their lives as artists. They will do the same thing at Glacier High School in February.

“We talked about who we are as painters,where we came from and why we’re doing what we’re doing,” Carter said.

Both painters came away pleased from the experience in the classroom, and they will have an additional chance to educate during their exhibit. Every Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. while the show is running — a stretch of more than three weeks — Carter and Yarus will be painting live inside the Hockaday.

“I’m hoping it will make it less mysterious for people and makes it seem, ideally, more amazing because they can actually see it go from a while canvas to something that is a picture,” Yarus said. “Hopefully people will be able to connect better with it.”

For more information on the exhibit or the Artist-Wilderness Connection, visit www.hockadaymuseum.org.

To see the painters’ artwork, visit www.richiecarterfinearts.com or www.kennethyarusfineart.com.

Entertainment editor Andy Viano ay be reached at 406-758-4439 or aviano@dailyinterlake.com