Montana's hardest working quirk and kitsch curator
Hi. It's me, Marla. I live in Montana (which I wish were a blue state). My family has lived here for seven generations. I graduated from Montana State University with a degree in painting back somewhere near the dawn of time.
If you’ve never been to Montana, there are lots of big mountains, huge wheat farms, cattle ranches and podunk towns with tiny bars that have unironic deer-head-and-shotgun-shell decor. But Bozeman, where I live, is a college town near Yellowstone Park. It’s nothing like the quaint community it was when I was growing up. It’s actually pretty gross in a rich entitled hipster way, but my family all lives here, and where else can you live with the thrill of maybe being vaporized by a super volcano?
I make art and collect kitschy stuff, including birthday candles, plaid umbrellas, 1940s neckties, quirky dolls, vintage nurse romance novels, Horatio Alger books, vernacular photographs, clocks in the shape of TVs and the odd figurine.
Occasionally these items show up in my artwork. Other times they just migrate quietly through our rambling 1930 home.
You can find the cuter version of me on Etsy at Goodwerks: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Goodwerks
