Tracy Linder | Open Range

“I see both beauty and heartache in death, the inevitability of the circle of life.”

Tracy Linder’s sculptures are the color of the high plains in early fall: gold, brown, tan, and white. Made from bones, seeds, leather, fur, branches, bronze, resin, and time, her sculptures represent and incorporate cycles of growth, death, and rebirth. Life and death bear one another’s seeds in symbol and substance. Time infuses each work. Labor is embodied in stitches through unyielding materials, the weight of accumulation, and the traces of care spent shaping, stretching, and assembling.

Linder’s art makes visible her nuanced understanding of the complex and fragile relationship between people and their food sources. “My art work is an extension of living close to the land. I grew up on a family farm and now live on the vast windswept prairie of south central Montana. In this place, I am surrounded by the harsh realities of storms that can wipe out a year’s crop in minutes, ranchers braving the blustery cold to rescue a newborn calf from certain death, a community that will drop everything to help extinguish a fire, and a sense of isolation that can be 

both comforting and profoundly lonely. These experiences are my lifeblood.”

Linder blends art historical references with her deep understanding of the land and the creatures that walk upon it. What appear to be dichotomies (life and death, plant and animal, nature and agriculture) are not opposed, but joined on a continuum of time, a cycle of constant change.