Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident (AIA) 2019
The Rat Trap Clay Club is an amorphous group of people that has a core membership and encourages friends and strangers to hangout and make work. Trained and untrained art people, all work is collaborative so pedigree and politics hopefully are irrelevant. Gallatin Valley, Montana is a hub, with the next step to become nationwide.
The Rat Trap Clay Club is…
A collective of friends who have been celebrating collaboration for several years in an ongoing conversation regarding social conflict, political turmoil, ecological disaster, hope, love, joy, sex, drugs, rock and roll, soul-theft, soulregeneration, transhumanism, etc.
Composed of dirtbags, thieves, saints, royalty, veterans, professors, anarchists, low-lifes, tattoo artists, students, high-brows, and above all friends, influenced by the half-lit discussions, debates, discords, they undergo. Their ideas originate from film, literature, memes, fights, long acid-fueled motorcycle rides, sunsets above the junkyards, walks along drainage ditches, checkout counter magazine covers, the parody of syndicated news outlets, and anything else that pisses them off/inspires them to change what’s around them to an easier-to-swallow existence.Content includes present and past political figures, various shades of gray, symbolic creatures/ monsters, state secrets, dark humor, tributes to those who came before them, inside jokes, existential brillantes/failures, hope-filled debacles, and testimonies of love and companionship.
Most of the forms used in this show are bottles, the vessels of life-granting and life-ruining substances they represent the basis of all things both good and evil in the lives of man, they are decorated with a conflagration of both the positives and negatives, the best and the worst of us.
The Rat Trap Club’s collaborative process constitutes a departure from the sacredness of the work itself, instead placing the emphasis on the collaborative process, with the end work a kind a dictation of discussions held over the period of time the work was made. No image is too sacred to be wiped out, painted over, eliminated, rubbed out of existence, granting a freedom rarely experienced.
Though the Rat Trap Clay Club grew from Bozeman, Montana, it has since spread throughout the country through a cast of revolving characters/artists.
ALL PROCEEDS EARNED GO TOWARD SUSTAINING THE CLUB WITH NO INDIVIDUAL/S’ GAIN OFF THE SALES OF THE WORK.
AN IDEA CAN’T HAVE AN EGO, GO BROKE, STARVE, OR DIE.
LIKE RATS, THEY MULTIPLY.
Join us today.