Resounds: Arts And Culture On The High Plains

Artists Mark Earnhart and Jodi Lightner have a joint exhibition, Suspended Intervals, at Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings. Both are professors in the Department of Art at Montana State University Billings. Lightner earned an MFA in painting from Wichita State University and specializes in painting and drawing. She is the Chair of the art department at MSUB. Earnhart specializes in sculpture and three-dimensional practices and received an MFA from the University of Maryland.

Jazz music in all its many forms is an American invention. In Billings, the genre is gaining a greater audience and a growing interest in higher education.On this episode of Resounds, MSU Billings Music professors Dr. Scott Jeppesen and Roxanne Jeppesen and pianist/arranger Jayden Ostler discuss music education, the Rocky Mountain Jazz Collective, and their performances in this region.

Dr. Janine Pease is a Crow educator and advocate. She is a board member of the Crow Language Consortium and the founding president of the Little Big Horn College, as well as the past President of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium and Director of the American Indian College Fund.

The Yellowstone County Museum was founded in 1953 by the Yellowstone Historical Society, Parmly Billings Library, the Pioneers of Eastern Montana, Yellowstone County, and the City of Billings, and has been open to the public since 1956. The museum’s mission is to collect, preserve, and share the history of Montana’s Yellowstone River Basin through a range of dynamic educational programs and storytelling exhibitions.

Maxim Loskutoff’s novel, essays, and short stories have received national recognition and awards, including two High Plains Book Awards, first for his short story collection Come West and See and another for his novel Ruthie Fear. His new novel Old King was published in June 2024.

Gavin Woltjer is in his eighth year as the director of the Billings Public Library. During his tenure, he and the library staff have sought to adapt to the new library building, challenges related to the pandemic, the ongoing discussion of censorship, and expanding resources for the community within and out of the library.

Humanities Montana serves Montana communities through a variety of programs, grants, and partnerships that keep the humanities alive in the state, speaking to Montana’s diverse history, literature, and philosophy.