DeWeese's work at the June solstice show and sale honoring Gennie, her work and her life. Photo by Kelly Gorham.

Inspiration and conversation

Bob and Gennie met while art students at Ohio State University. He earned a master's degree in Iowa and they lived in Texas before Bob took a job in 1949 at what was then Montana State College. In buttoned-down 1950s Bozeman, they led what many considered to be a bohemian lifestyle and quickly displayed a talent for championing local intellectual life. Neighbors marveled at what they found inside their small brick house on South Church Avenue — a vibrant chaos of kids and half-finished art projects and the implicit lesson that Art Mattered.

"My career — the life I have lived — would never have been if I hadn't known this family," said New York City-based dancer/choreographer Mary Overlie, who grew up across the street.

Bozeman psychologist Dee Mast recalls encountering Gennie on Main Street in her youth.

"In those days, women didn't show it but she was a woman who knew who she was," Mast said. "Gennie wore bright colors and natural fabrics and a hairdo that suited her, not fashion. There I was in my bubble cut and double knits. Gennie was one of the women who modeled what I needed, to become what I was (meant to be)."

Tina DeWeese recalls that her father's downtown Bozeman studio was a gathering place for the community's intellectuals, most based at the university.

"In those days, there were not the social divisions between (university) departments that there are today," Tina said. "My parents' friends were artists and scientists and philosophers from all over campus. They would talk for hours about what they were doing."

Moving beyond tradition

Gennie liked to say that when they arrived in Bozeman, "art in Montana was pretty much all about Charlie Russell. Contemporary art was made fun of (in those days) —but it evolved and so many people do it now I don't think there's any conflict."

The DeWeeses helped broaden the definition of art in Montana beyond the "Russell School" with their own work as well as their influence on the students Bob inspired during three decades of teaching. He took seriously his role as a mentor to artists. Tina said she found a note shortly after her father's death written in a sketchbook.

"He wrote the word 'responsibility,' which he defined as the ability to respond," she said of her father, who was always making art, sketching on scraps of paper, making collages from whatever was handy. "He felt that was his means of being responsible."

Before the family moved to Cottonwood Canyon in 1965, Gennie's work had been largely influenced by the abstract expressionist movement. She also did oil portraits of her children, ink sketches of friends and family and small abstracts. In the canyon, surrounded by the steep, tree-covered hills with the crystalline creek tumbling past just below the house, her vision exploded with rich colors and she traded her paintbrushes for cattle-markers and later, pigment sticks. She used the large, crayon-like bars of oil and color to respond to the landscapes, people and pets around her. Her determination to be true to her passion resulted in one painting of the Gallatin Valley that is 40 inches high and 121 feet long. Many of her works were too large to frame economically so she adopted the Asian system and made giant scrolls.

Once, when asked the difference between the landscapes and her non-objective work, she said the subject matter was determined by whether she was responding to the interior or exterior worlds.

Return to regular view	Text-only              Email this article	Published: 11/24/2008