STNDRD Exhibitions presents It’s Raining in Montana by Abby Flanagan on view August 22nd – October 9th. A reception will be held on Saturday, August 22nd from 5pm-7pm.
“It’s Raining in Montana” engages the Missouri River as both subject and site. The Missouri River is the longest continuous surface channel of water in North America, and flows for over 4,200 miles from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi Delta. Rainfall in Montana joins waters from North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri, forming the Missourian streambed before continuing through the Mississippi to the Gulf. Granite City, Illinois is a dot along this route.
The flag, stitched with the phrase “IT’S RAINING IN MONTANA,” poses a question: what does the weather in Montana have to do with here? By asking this question, the work proposes an expanded notion of site, announcing weather elsewhere as a gesture to encompass the river in its total length and its ever-changing composition. Around the flagpole, a cluster of glass rain gauges collect precipitation. By broadcasting this text in Granite City and linking it with the physical presence of collecting rain, the work evokes a sense of movement across time, distant geographies, and bodies of water.
Abby Flanagan is an artist and educator based in Western Massachusetts. Her practice traces interconnections between environment and self, moving across drawing, sculpture, and installation to explore subjects of materiality, presence, and precarity. Flanagan holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin from 2022 and a B.F.A. from Montana State University from 2015. Her work has been exhibited at Visual Arts Center in Austin, TX; North Loop in Williamstown, MA; NON STNDRD in St. Louis, MO; GrayDUCK in Austin TX; Tinworks Art in Bozeman, MT, among others. She has participated in artist residencies at Lighthouse Works in Fishers Island, NY, SOMA Summer in Veracruz, MX, Orein Arts in Elmira, NY, and Mildred’s Lane in Narrowsburg, NY. She has written for arts publications including Incandescent and served as visual art co-editor for the Bat City Review. She currently teaches Drawing in the Expanded Field at Amherst College.