Embedded in the Overlap
Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, MT

April 3, 2026 – January 9, 2027
August 6th Opening Reception & Artist Talk

Embedded in the Overlap presents twenty-two vessels, forty-five prints, and two tumbleweed sculptures. Created from locally sourced materials and composed with sensitivity to site, the works center on the social and cultural history of Billings, Montana. They trace layers of archaeology, time, and transformation, considering what has unfolded from river to rim: Indigenous presence, pioneering westward migration, industrialization, and ongoing settlement and modernization. Hutchinson brings together both natural and industrial materials. Local Montana clay, sugar beet pulp from the Western Sugar Company, blue jeans, and 100% cotton, worn-out garments are used to form the vessels- harvested creek willow from Montana creeks shape the tumbleweed sculptures. Fibers from these materials are pulped into handmade paper, and Montana clay binds the forms through a paper-clay process. The installation extends beyond the gallery into the hallway where a collection of prints-created through layers of monoprinting and silkscreen processes foregrounds weather as a distinctive marker of place. Here, weather becomes part of a broader reflection on movement and adaptation, inviting viewers to consider how we arrive in a place and how we persist within it.