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Relevance of Place: Cathy Halstead

Shannon Jackson interviews artist, philanthropist, and Tippet Rise Co-Founder Cathy Halstead on the power of artistic metaphor at Tippet Rise and the importance of facing the history and future of the site with a spirit of love. In this episode, Halstead discusses the mission of Tippet Rise as well as the art center’s growing relationships with historic and contemporary communities in the region. Watch to hear her explore the site and its venues and to hear poetry from Peter Halstead on the human relationship to nature.

Filmed in October 2022.

Cathy Halstead

Cathy Halstead is an abstract painter whose work explores the similarities between the infinitesimal and the infinite, between the repetition of invisible but essential patterns in nature.

Together with her husband, Peter Halstead, she co-founded Tippet Rise Art Center in Fishtail, Montana. Tippet Rise is an intersection where art, music, land, sky, and poetry weave together into an algorithm which is greater than the sum of its parts.

She and Peter also founded the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, which gathers poems from across places, eras, and traditions for audiences worldwide. She and Peter are trustees of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, which makes grants in climate, education, and the arts. Cathy is on the board of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and of Storm King Art Center. Cathy and Peter have two wonderful daughters and two adorable grandchildren.

Shannon Jackson

Shannon Jackson holds the Hadidi Professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, where she currently serves as Chair of the History of Art Department. Jackson is a scholar and educator of cross-media art practice and of socially-engaged art. A Guggenheim fellow and award-winning author, she has published several books and online platforms, including Back Stages (2022), Public Servants (2016), The Builders Association (2015), Social Works (2011) as well as In Terms of Performance and Media Art 21. Jackson serves on the boards of several arts organizations, including Oakland Museum of the Arts, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, Headlands Center for the Arts, the Minnesota Street Project Foundation, and the Kramlich Art Foundation. As a guest program advisor to Tippet Rise, Jackson helped to create the Relevance of Place series of site-specific dialogues.

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