Some bold leaders are kind and quiet. That describes ceramicist Frances Senska and printmaker Jessie Wilber who, as professors at Montana State University, shaped generations of Montana art and artists.
Jessie hired on at Bozeman five years earlier than Frances, in 1941. She was born in Wisconsin, but her family moved a lot, finally settling in Boulder, Colorado, when Jessie was 8.
In college and post-college, Jessie studied art and teaching. A favorite art teacher admired Cubism, an influence visible in a 1942 public-works project Jessie painted, a mural in a Kansas post office. But soon, allied with Frances in Montana, Jessie rejected all “isms” for her own vision.
Her work features nature, birds, and her garden, frequented by creatures wild and domestic. In 1953, Jessie and Frances built a modern home on a Bozeman valley slope. Almost everything in it they made, including their clothes—down to the buttons.
In the studio, Jessie created impeccable, innovative block prints, silkscreens, and collages. Later, the women added a second studio, freeing Jessie’s work from Frances’s ceramic dust. House, garden, cats, and work was their life, and its beauty inspired all who knew them.
Students followed in their footsteps, especially women with families, glad to learn that great art could come from the view out a window, or a sleeping cat--or child. Jessie Wilber and Frances Senska taught art, and that life is art.
