Read the Winter 2026 Hotchkiss Magazine

In an art installation at Hotchkiss, Claire Emery ’90 transforms field observations into vivid woodblock prints that explore connection, attention, and the living landscape.

By Darryl Gangloff

When you step through the doors of Main Building, you are greeted with beautiful, colorful images of nature in action. A lynx stands tall. A canoe drifts through the water. Flowers sway. The pieces were originally small woodblock prints that are now enlarged for the installation. They invite you to slow down and look closely.

The work of Claire Emery ’90 honors both the spirit and the vitality of wild landscapes.

“I am an artist, naturalist, and educator who lives surrounded by the wild earth in Missoula, MT,” she writes in her artist statement. “Intensely curious and introspective by nature, I engage with my community deeply, noticing details that others simply pass by.”

Emery focuses on attention and connection in her pieces. “Hopefully, we can find that connection today with another human being, and then with a standing tree, a flying bird, or a twisting leaf on its way to the ground,” she said. “When we can find this, and feel it, we are family. We are inextricably bound. The flower and I, the tree and I, the soil, the sky, the water and I, we are connected. One family. One home.”

Her work is grounded in field journals. She transforms sketches, observations, and reflections into woodcuts, carving each image by hand.

“Using a variety of carving tools, I carve the woodblocks, drawing images out of the darkness of the wood and into the light,” she said. The process takes hours of careful planning. “Every carving is a discovery, not a formula. The work has its own life.”

Those stories shape the work that is now on view at Hotchkiss through August 2027. They form what Emery calls “journal entries of the moments I’ve had in my life.” Each print that hangs on the walls is the result of a specific encounter Emery had with plants, animals, and places. “The bear, lynx, hawk owl, heron, lakes, rivers, and skies are my neighbors and my relations, and I owe them my best.”

Emery speaks often about what happens when we pause long enough to truly notice. “What happens when we actually stop ourselves, and we pay attention to what’s happening right now, in front of us?” she asks. That pause, she suggests, can create “a moment of connecting intimacy that can travel with you for the rest of your life.”

An Unconventional Path

Emery describes her path into art as unconventional. “I became an artist through a back door,” she writes. She pursued a graduate degree in natural science illustration from the University of California in Santa Cruz. In 2005, she completed an M.S. in environmental studies from the University of Montana, with an emphasis in place-based education and art, and she received an MFA in visual art from Vermont College of Fine Art in 2015.

While studying wilderness in a multidisciplinary program, she encountered the practice of keeping a natural history journal. The impact was immediate. “I discovered that I loved this,” she says. “I learned more about the land than I ever had.”

She worked as a scientific illustrator, collaborating with institutions like the New York Botanical Garden and Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. But over time, she felt a pull toward something more interpretive. Woodblock printing became the answer. “I cannot help but get to know my subject better as I go along, choosing tools, marks, patterns, space, and substance,” she said.

Finding Inspiration at Hotchkiss

Emery did not arrive at Hotchkiss intending to become an artist. While she never took an art class as a student, the foundations of her work were already forming.

“In my teens, I thrived in the stimulating Hotchkiss community as a student, a runner, a swimmer, a cyclist, a pianist, and a photographer. The rambling woods and meadows surrounding the School became my second home. This is where I first heard the booming of ice.  This is where I first saw the running of fish. This is where I found the pulse and majesty of life beyond the confines of the walls,” she said.

She looks back on her time in Lakeville with “great joy” and remembers long hours on the cross country and cycling teams, moving across the landscape with curiosity and freedom. “We would train 50, 60 miles a day, but we were just having fun enjoying that intimacy with the land from a bicycle.”

Her creative interests surfaced in other ways, too. She studied photography with Bob Haiko and worked in the photography lab for hours at a time, experimenting and learning through trial and error. “I would be in there from before dawn until after dark,” she recalls, “just developing photos and figuring out how to navigate the process.” These experiences would later converge in her artistic practice. At the time, they were ways of engaging with the world.

To return to Hotchkiss now, with her work installed at the School’s entrance, is both full circle and something new.

“It feels like I’m coming back to have a conversation with this place that I never could have had when I was here,” Emery says as she walks through the trails surrounding the campus during a recent visit, just as she had when she was a student.

“It just feels good to come back and have my work speak for something we never spoke about,” she continues, looking up at the trees on the Hotchkiss trails. “How to be a good steward, how to be aware of your environmental impact, how to have a relationship with the earth, water, sky, and seasons.” 

To learn more about Claire Emery’s work, go to www.emeryart.com.