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Noah Eikens | Childbloom Guitar Quartet | John Floridis | Blue Mountain Music Makers | Nathan Zalvaney and Caleb VanGelder | The Queens of Rock

Just as Walter Hook took inspiration from many subjects and mediums, Hooked on Art transforms Bonner School into a gathering of delights for the eyes, ears, tastebuds, and the soul. For the  ears, the sweet sound of music.

Noah Eikens on stage 10 a.m.  in the Gym

Noah began playing violin at the age of 5, taking fiddle lessons from Ellie Nuno.
He played 4 years with the Missoula Strings on Tour, traveling to Scotland, England, and Italy.
He attended the Japan Suzuki Institute violin camp in Seattle, and The Whitefish music school's Festival Amadeus camp last summer.
Noah currently studies violin with Heidi Martin, of Missoula and plays in the Missoula Youth Chamber Strings Orchestra.
When not playing violin, Noah attends school at St. Joseph Elementary and enjoys snowboarding, basketball, soccer and running.

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Childbloom Guitar Quartet on stage 11 a.m. in the Gym

The Childbloom Guitar Quartet perform complex acoustic instrumental arrangements of world, jazz, and classical pieces, spanning sounds from Bach to Bossa Nova. The members of the classical guitar quartet are Duggan Backhouse-Prentiss, Arthur Befumo, and Jenna and Jamie Wevers, under the direction of Childbloom Guitar Program Director and Instructor Nathan Zavalney. They have been performing in Missoula since 2006 in a variety of venues including Montana Public Radio, Out to Lunch, River City Roots Festival, Big Sky Film Festival, the Missoula Art Museum, and Missoula First Night.

Listen to the Childbloom Guitar Quartet's music.

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John Floridis on stage Noon in the Gym

John Floridis is a Missoula, Montana based guitarist, singer-songwriter and composer. He has been a resident in the "Big Sky" since 1993 having moved there from the strong shouldered, down-but-never-out city of Cleveland, Ohio. He has released 5 recordings mixing bluesy, folk-rock vocal tunes with adventurous solo acoustic guitar compositions including one seasonal recording "December's Quiet Joy." He has been named Missoula's best musician by the Missoula Independent and performed in the Western region for over a decade. He has performed with artists as diverse as Shawn Colvin, Derek Trucks, Patty Griffin, Richard Thompson, Emmylou Harris, Bruce Cockburn, Kelly Joe Phelps, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Patty Larkin. John also fronts Burning River, a blues-funk-rock concept that performs in the Western region. He is also a producer of programs for Montana Public Radio and a former Registered Music Therapist. John Floridis performs with guitar, vocals and sometimes manipulated, sampled and looped sounds.

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Blue Mountain Music Makers on stage 1 p.m. in the Gym

The Blue Mountain Music Makers made their debut at Hooked on Art in 2009. Since then they have enjoyed playing their mix of bluegrass, old time fiddle and folk music at several venues, including Community at the Confluence, Paw's Up Ranch, River City Roots Festival,The Peas farm, Monarch Fiddle Camp and private parties.The members of this family band are: mom Jen on guitar/cello, niece Maddi on fiddle, mando, and ukelele, son Riley on banjo, and daughter Grace on fiddle. This will be their third appearance at Hooked on Art.

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Nathan Zalvaney and Caleb VanGelder on stage 2 p.m. in the Gym

Guitarist Nathan Zavalney and drummer Caleb Van Gelder create a unique sound that weaves jazz, world, and new age ambient music. The interplay of this duo moves from  improvisational excitement to spacious exploration, pulling from an eclectic variety of original compositions, traditional melodies and rhythms, and jazz standards.

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The Queens of Rock on stage at 3 p.m. in the Gym

Melinda: I have lived in Missoula since 1980. Both of my children ages 30 and 17 were born in Missoula. I enjoy music, art, cats and traveling with my children.

Nicole: I have been singing and drawing ever since I can remember. I love playing electric guitar, and I find it fun. I am also very interested in the history of rock n roll.

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HOOKed on Art home

February 12, 2011 - 10 AM til 4 PM - Bonner School

George Gogas’ Judith Basin Encounter: When Charlie Met Pablo on the Open Range, acrylic on canvas, 1987.Courtesy Missoula Art Museum

Hooked on Art is privileged to feature George Gogas on February 12, 2011. Gogas, a student and contemporary of Walter Hook joined Dick Bush, Rudy and Lela Audio, and Janet Hook Julin at the first Hooked on Art presentation honoring the Hooked on Art namesake in 2005. He will give a Gallery Talk which is open to the public.

Also on display will be M-M Cocktail: Ingredients: 1 Part Missoula Air, 1 Part Milltown Water, acrylic on masonite, 1990, shown courtesy of the Missoula Art Museum.

Go west, young Picasso: George Gogas' intriguing new show combines Western aesthetic with modernism

This article, written by Joe Nickell, first appeared in the Missoulian Entertainer on Thursday, December 20, 2007.

George Gogas knows the history of modern art as well as anyone.

The retired Missoula County Public Schools art teacher can wax eloquently about the revolutions brought on in the early 20th century by painters like Picasso and Kandinsky and Kline, pointing out subtle yet defining characteristics of each artist's work. His knowledge of Western art is equally voluminous: He knows many of Charlie Russell's paintings by name, and is similarly adept at pointing out the stylistic signatures that differentiate the work of Remington and Russell, Ace Powell and Fred Fellows.

Gogas knows art from the inside, as only a painter can see it: How different varnishes affect the luminosity of colors; how to smooth out the weave of a canvas in order to lend a flatter texture.

Indeed, maybe Gogas knows modern art a little too well. That's the best explanation for his attitude toward the series of paintings currently hanging in the main gallery of the Missoula Art Museum.

"They're nothing new or earth-shaking," he says of the 18 large, colorful canvases neatly arrayed along the walls.

"This is nothing but old-fashioned paint on canvas with the idea of early-20th century modernism behind it."

That might sound like a rather sniffy dismissal of three years of an artist's efforts, if it weren't for the fact that Gogas himself painted those canvases. The series of paintings represents the latest evolution of a lifelong body of work by Gogas, who - despite his demure assessment of his own work - stands as one of the most celebrated living western Montana artists.

"When I'm his age I want to be able to create work like that," says Steve Glueckert, curator of the Missoula ArtMuseum. "It's an inspiration to artists and to our community; and so it's absolutely the kind of work that we wantto celebrate at the museum."

Count another feather in the cap of Gogas, who now counts two shows at the local museum, plus a large retrospective
show at the University of Montana's Montana Museum of Art & Culture in 2002, among his many accolades.

In a way, the current show reflects on themes that Gogas was just beginning to develop when he was celebrated in his last show at the Missoula Art Museum (then called the Missoula Museum of the Arts), back in 1994. That show focused on a series of paintings that he called the "Judith Basin Encounters." In those paintings, Gogas took familiar paintings by Charlie Russell and reinterpreted them through the lens of Pablo Picasso's cubist style.

"Since Picasso and Russell were contemporaries from very different artistic worlds, but both were household names, I thought they could symbolize the two extremes of contemporary art in Montana," explains Gogas. "It seemed to me that there were the wildlife painters and the abstract painters and never the twain did they meet, so I wanted to try and bridge that gap - to create those encounters in my paintings."

In a 1994 Missoulian story about the show, Gogas asserted that he probably would only paint one or two more canvases for the series, which at the time consisted of six paintings.

Thirteen years later, Gogas finds himself with 48 "Judith Basin Encounter" paintings under his belt, and more to come.

"That series will continue, because I continue to like to do those things," says Gogas. "I think there's always probably going to be more that you can do with that encounter. I enjoy playing around with that, and the series has been pretty popular."

Popular indeed. At the Missoula Art Museum's annual Benefit Art Auctions, paintings from the series have commanded ever-increasing prices over the years, consistently selling for thousands of dollars and placing among the priciest items sold at the auctions.

But as Gogas continued to work on the series of paintings, he found himself wanting to branch out and try new things. Realizing that his "Judith Basin Encounters" series had always drawn Picasso's influence into Russell's world, Gogas decided to reverse the approach and place Russell in one of Picasso's paintings. The result was "When Charlie Joined Pablo's Rock and Roll Band," a large-scale imitation of Picasso's famous 1921 painting, "Three Musicians," with Russell inserted as the band's guitarist.

Ironically, it was that direct imitation of Picasso's painting that finally freed Gogas to launch into his new series of visual improvisations.

"Doing that painting gave me the freedom, I felt, to move totally into a formal, abstract relationship of the visual elements, with no narrative, no symbolism, no social message," explains Gogas. "This new series aims for a pure relationship of shapes, colors, and lines, according to my aesthetic at the present time. That's what this show is about."

Because the resulting paintings are decidedly non-representational, Gogas turns to another art form to explain his approach.

"I compare this with instrumental music," he says. "In instrumental jazz, there are no words, it's just sounds playing off each other. How do you explain that or make a story out of that? Louis Armstrong said if you have to explain jazz you just don't get it. How do you explain in words a Bach fugue? It's just relationships of sounds.

Well, these paintings are relationships of visual elements. There are no hidden images; I'm not trying to cover up symbols or anything. It's just pure painting."

"That's what's so tough to talk about," he adds. "Modernists of the early half of the 20th century were saying that what they were creating is a purely visual experience, and that's enough. That's what my focus has been here."

According to MAM curator Steve Glueckert, Gogas' new paintings prove that there's still plenty of beauty to unearth through the visual language of abstraction.

"We can insulate ourselves in a tiny little world and think that a particular kind of art or a particular new medium is the only vital or new way to communicate; but in reality, just like in verbal language, there is so much left to say using the same words that we all know and use every day," says Glueckert. "This show represents an incredibly tight body of work - each painting is fully resolved, and they gain in impact from seeing them all together. To me, that's the definition of good art, and so I think this show could hold up at any museum anywhere."

Author Joe Nickell can be reached at 523-5358 or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

February 12, 2011 - 10 AM til 4 PM - Bonner School

View Gallery

The Missoula Art Museum is proud to participate in the 6th Annual Celebration of HOOKed on Art with an exhibit entitled Walter Hook: Building an Arts Community Under the Big Sky. This exhibit of Hook artworks from the museum's permanent collection emphasizes the inspiration Walter drew from his beloved community.

Gallery images include: Eggs on Table, oil on canvas, 1972; Phase B Has More, watercolor on paper, 1968; Range Cattle, watercolor on paper, 1962; Transmission Line, lithograph, 1984; Untitled, oil on panel, 1964.

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