Chris Alveshere

Chris Alveshere was a long-term resident at the Clay Studio of Missoula and continues to maintain a full-time studio practice in Missoula. Originally from North Dakota, Alveshere earned degrees in ceramics and art education from Minnesota State University Moorhead and his MFA in ceramics from Alfred University.

Penélope Baquero

Penélope Baquero is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Colombia, and currently living in Missoula. She is the creator of Ecosapien Evolution, an arts and ecology project for ecosocial, decolonial change, with the longterm vision of collaborating with artists, philosophers, and scientists to create interdisciplinary art-making spaces where we practice being natural. Her work has taken her across the world as an ecovillage organizer, facilitator, eco-educator, and theater artist and teacher. She is currently co-director of Turning the Wheel Missoula.

Sasha Barrett

Sasha Barrett is a Ukrainian native artist living in Missoula, earning his MFA at the University of Montana. His current work is in dialog with the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, consisting of large wall tiles, vessels, and sculptural representations of war hardware, the humanitarian crises, and his personal relationship to friends and family living in the invaded country. Barrett has shown in national galleries and has received numerous grants; he was named the 2019 Ceramics Monthly Emerging Artist.

Kate Davis

Kate Davis began a life with animals while caring for mammals and raptors in the Cincinnati Zoo Junior Zoologists Club in 1973. She earned a degree in zoology from the University of Montana in 1982 and founded the non-profit educational organization Raptors of the Rockies in 1988.

Davis keeps a dozen non-releasable and falconry birds at the facility at her home in Western Montana. She has led the beloved “Raptors and Art” summer camp at MAM for over a dozen years. Raptors are the subjects and source of inspiration for her own drawings, paintings, welded steel sculptures, photography, and dry-point etchings. Davis has authored and illustrated six books on raptors; Raptors of the West won the National Outdoor Book Award and Montana Book Award Grand Prize. 

Cameron Decker

Cameron Decker is Diné, an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, and a descendant of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes. He is fascinated with printmaking, painting, drawing, digital art and public arts. Decker served at MAM as Educator and Outreach Coordinator and as a faculty member at Salish Kootenai College in the fine arts department (four years as department chair). He earned his M.A. in integrated arts in education (Creative Pulse program) at University of Montana. Decker has a painting in the exhibition Indigenous Identity: Here, Now & Always, curated by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, at the Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University. The painting is titled Place dream, tʔe t čen nspsuppsm, and is painted using natural pigments and drawing charcoal that he made. Decker is co-founder of Xʷlxʷilt with his partner Aspen Decker, an enrolled member of CSKT and fluent speaker of Salish language. They focus on ways to support Montana schools and institutions with authentic, appropriate, and engaging lessons about Indigenous values, contributions and innovations.

Patricia Garcia

Garcia grew up in the desert bordering Arizona and Mexico. When she found herself in a college ceramics class she discovered the generosity fostered in arts communities. Her enthusiasm for clay now fuels her own community work. Garcia started her work as a teaching artist while earning her Bachelors of Fine Arts at Western New Mexico University and has extensive experience teaching wheel-throwing, hand-building, and tile and mosaic mural creation. Garcia has worked on public art works with youth and larger communities from Arizona to New Mexico to Montana to Mexico. In Missoula, Garcia has served in an artist residency at Wildfire Ceramic Studio and completed a two-year Post-Baccalaureate Program at University of Montana.

Garcia is active in community arts and teaching ceramics, and makes sculptures in her home studio to encapsulate quietness and contemplation.

Bev Beck Glueckert

Bev Beck Glueckert has been an art instructor and workshop facilitator for adults and children for over 30 years. Her work has been widely exhibited throughout Montana and the Northwest region, as well as nationally. Glueckert taught drawing and printmaking at University of Montana and University of Great Falls and is a member of the SALTMINE artists group. She earned her BA from the University of Idaho and her MFA in printmaking from the University of Montana.  Glueckert lives and works in Missoula

Stella Nall

Stella Nall is a multimedia artist and poet from Bozeman, Montana, and a First Descendant of the Apsáalooke (Crow) Tribe. She graduated from the University of Montana in 2020 with a BFA in printmaking, a BA in psychology, and a minor in art history and criticism. She now lives and works in Missoula, where she is represented by Radius Gallery. Nall's murals can be found across Montana, and her work is collected in numerous public collections, including Montana Museum of Art and Culture, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Arts.

Jennifer Ogden

Jennifer Ogden is a working artist and longtime contributor as a teaching artist at MAM. She has been teaching K-12 art at Victor Public School in the Bitterroot Valley since 1995 and previously taught for the Missoula Family YMCA, Evergreen Kids Corner Summer Explore program, and the Bemis School of Art. Ogden is also a teaching artist for SPARK! Arts Ignite Learning for Missoula County Public Schools. She is enrolled in the Creative Pulse Integrated Arts Master’s program for educators at University of Montana.  

Krissy Ramirez

Born and raised in the border town of Douglas, AZ, Ramirez discovered her enthusiasm for clay at Cochise College. She earned a BFA with an emphasis in ceramics from Western New Mexico University in 2017. After a 2-year artist-in-residence program at WNMU, she moved to Montana. During her time in Missoula, she has been part of the post-baccalaureate program at the University of Montana, co-founded and was a resident artist at Wildfire Ceramic Studio, and is currently making work in a new private space called Speakeasy Clay Studio. Ramirez is a member of Missoula's BIPOC art collective,  COHESION.

Jolena Ryan

Jolena Ryan has served as a teaching artist at MAM since 2013. Ryan earned her BFA at University of Montana in painting and photography, with a minor in art history. She earned a Master’s in art education from Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass. During her graduate studies, she taught art to children of all ages and worked for the Boston Art Institute. She is thrilled to continue her art education journey at MAM and enjoys Missoula’s thriving arts community.  

April Werle

April Werle is a mixed Filipino American painter. She received her BFA from the University of Montana and lives and works in Missoula, MT. Werle has established, designed, and implemented several racial equity art programs such as the BIPOC Arts Advisory Council, COHESION Art Collective, and the MCPS BIPOC Student Mural Program. She currently co-chairs the COHESION Art Collective Advisory Committee and serves on the Pinaysphere Creative Committee. In 2022, when Werle was awarded the Montana Arts Council ARPA Grant, the Holter Museum of Art presented her first solo museum exhibition, Mga Hunghong Sa Diwata (Whispers of Spirits). Werle’s murals can be found internationally. Her works have been exhibited frequently in the American Northwest and sold to private collectors nationwide. She has been featured by Filipino American brands and organizations like Kuyate and Filipina American News.