The Montana landscape is immense, unpopulated and strangely moving. Just moments earlier, I was standing among the lighted hills when the sky above me wept. I am on a 11,500-acre ranch called Tippet Rise, founded by philanthropists Cathy and Peter Halstead. Natural arts museum is the right pun to describe this place. What you come here for is nature, music and sculptures which are larger-than-life, sprawled over the vast land, each miles apart and seemingly meditating upon the landscape.

There are only eight sculptures here, including an Alexander Calder installation and two surrealistic pieces are by Ensemble Studios based in Madrid.

Domo and Bear Tooth Portal (pictured below) are works by the Ensamble Studio. They are cast from concrete moulds packed tightly with Montana earth and finished look naturally occurring, albeit mysteriously so – an intersection of art and the landscape. As their silhouettes reveal themselves on the horizon, they brood like geological formations, only from a world that isn’t quite like our own.

Widely recognized as one of the most influential abstract expressionist artist of his generation, Mark di Suvero revolutionized the world of sculpture and profoundly influenced modernist architecture, design and land art. Two of his works at Tippet Rise, Proberbs and Beethoven’s Quartet, convey the signatures of his large-scale sculptures, transcending time and space, and opening ideas about the relationship between art and nature.

Hidden in a small depression near the entrance of the massive ranch is Oliver Barn which serves as both base camp for visitors and a state-of-the-art concert hall designed to absorb music in the purest way possible.

The Halsteads had envisaged Tippett Rise to be a sanctuary, with the coexistence of music, art and nature at its heart. During a performance, time and space and the rhythms of land, music and built environment all merge into single extraordinary experience,” says Sarah Bird, Tippet Rise’s creative director. It’s an expression that any visitor to Tippett Rise should easily relate to.

Notes:
All photos in this post by Matthew Johnson. Text is adapted from Johnson’s Cereal Magazine essay, “Tippet Rise: Art, Nature and Music“