Making a Splash In Life And In Art

Text by Kay Bjork and Photography by Ali Spoon

CM “Chip” Jones does art much as he lives life – with a sense of adventure, experimentation, learning, sharing – and with an incredible amount of humility and generosity.

Jones showed an interest in art at a young age while growing up on a small ranch on Miller Creek south of Missoula. It is easy to trace some of the elements that formed him as an artist and as a man. He often sketched and did art projects for hours. He says, “When I was in the 4th grade I drew the same horse over and over again.” When he and his two brothers received wood burning kits for Christmas he wore out his and then his brothers’ when they didn’t show interest in using them. He developed his love and appreciation of the backcountry and wildlife through time spent with his dad who was a packer and the inspiration of his neighbor John Craighead, famous American conservationist and wildlife biologist. These two fundamentals merged as he began to do artwork with a focus on wildlife.

Dr. Dan Walker gives a lot of thought to what tomorrow and the practice of medicine may bring

Written by Polly Kolstad • Photography by Jesse Martinez

Preventive Cardiologist, Dr. Dan Walker is one of the few solo Great Falls practitioner’s today. Throughout our country, medical doctors in practice alone are in a stage of demise. According to Walker, they have been disappearing for the last twenty years.

A Mid-Century Monolith Morphs into Ultra-Modern

Text by Heather Bode | Photography by Jim Wells

What do you get when you cross a house built during Leave it to Beaver’s heyday and a doctor who’s a self-proclaimed HGTV addict? You get four young boys asking their mother, “Mom, what have you DONE? Why would we leave a perfectly functioning house to move HERE?” Then you hear her response: “There was just something about this house that called to me. It was a wreck, but I loved it. It was our house,” says Julie Kuykendall, the homeowner.

Battling the Elements for One’s Very Existence on Montana’s Plains

Text and Photography by Mahlon Kriebel

In the spring of 2011, we visited my 92 year old cousin in Great Falls and learned that my grandfather had homesteaded a few miles west of Fort Benton. Homesteading in 1911 wasn’t for the weak of heart. Winds scoured wheat fields before seeds germinated and torched scantily watered gardens. Water from drilled wells was so alkaline homesteaders hauled sweet water from the Missouri River. In winter, wind driven snow obliterated the horizon. Granddad relates that guide ropes linked buildings together and a visit to the outhouse was fraught with danger. Skeletons of strayed milk cows weren’t found ‘till spring. Prairie shacks were wall papered with newspaper but icicles grew from nail heads. When the buffalo chips disappeared pioneers huddled near a stove of smoldering cow pies. A window of respite between the winter thaw and summer heat with concomitant flies and stinking water provided a ray of hope to endure. That hope was shaken when a hand-watered garden was attacked by swarms of grasshoppers. My grandfather’s stories were incompatible with the mood of Laura Ingalls’ “Little House on the Prairie.”

At the golden age of 102, Geraldine Paulus still has something to give back to life.

Text by Polly Kolstad and Photography by Jesse Martinez

“I don’t know why I’m so special. It’s just that all of my life I’ve been involved with people and traveled a lot,” says Geraldine (Gerry) Paulus, a sprightly silver haired lady, quietly engaging conversation.

“I’m from Choteau, born on a homestead out of Collins, 102 plus years ago.”

Paulus lived for a short time in Nebraska. Then, the family came back to Montana when her grandfather passed away and her father took over the farm near Choteau so she and her brother could go to high school. She attended Western Montana College for two years and became a school teacher out of Power.

How a Sled, Two Sticks, and a Puck Change Lives in Montana

Text by Shane Klippenes and Photography by Jim Wells

Naseem Zaidi is a 10-year old boy from an Air Force family, who moved to Great Falls, Montana last year. The youngest of five children in a loving family with an energetic, engaged Mom (Shelly) who would move mountains for him, Naseem looks “normal” but struggles with severe autism that has left him functionally non-verbal. As a result, many things that the rest of us take for granted can be a challenge for him, including group engagement or team sports.