These works stand as both object and artifact. The bicycle is outside the normal regulations we apply to most other forms of transportation. It can be altered, hand-built, and garage engineered without falling afoul of the law. It can transport us physically, but also emotionally. Machines built as expressions of joy, for both rider and viewer. These machines offer you a portal to a place of frivolity, nonsense, and smiles. Stop by The Palace Gallery this July and experience this exhibit for yourself!
Jesse Blumenthal Jesse Blumenthal is an internationally exhibited, museum collected Artist and Educator residing in Missoula, Montana. Before moving to Montana in 2016, the high mountains of Southwestern Colorado were home base for both studio and community based industrial art practices for almost a decade. Their studio work has been shown in nine solo exhibitions, dozens of group shows and as many residencies across the US and Canada. In 2022 Blumenthal's solo exhibition “Endemic” was shown at Holter Museum of Art in Helena, MT. “Lawn in a Prairie” will open in October at Billings’ Northcutt Steele Gallery.
Blumenthal has broadened the reach and accessibility of their practice through the educational opportunities presented by working in industrial materials in a community forward environment. Their community educational practice has been awarded eight separate Montana Arts Council Grants and multiple residencies in Missoula, MT and Gunnison, CO County Public Schools. They are currently a Teaching Artist with Spark Arts Integration and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in The School of Visual and Media Arts at The University of Montana. Blumenthal was raised in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, attended University of Massachusetts at Amherst for a BFA in Painting in 2007, and completed MFA graduate work at The University of Montana in 2019.
Jason Cox Jason Cox is a Missoula, Montana based life-long builder of things that has recently started to focus on Art. He spent his formative years in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he imprinted on the nomadic bicycle mechanics at Trail Bound Sports and later was irradiated with Mad Scientist gamma rays while working at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Jason has had recent work displayed at the Zootown Arts Community Center in Missoula, where he will have a solo show in October 2026.