Manette Rene Bradford
YAM Artist-in-Residence
February 10 – June 7, 2025

Manette Rene Bradford constructs imagined allegorical narratives for the histories and ecologies of specific geographic locations through paintings, sculptures, and wall- sized mixed media works. Her practice combines documentation and direct experience of place with historical, ecological, and folkloristic research. The imagery is fantastical, though rooted in historic realities and the observable world. Humanity, other species, and the land are equally important characters in these narratives, enmeshed and inextricable from one another. Scale is employed as a device to invert hierarchies. Through the act of building this work, Manette repeats and imitates our species’ behavioral impulse to possess, anthropomorphize, and project itself onto the landscape and surrounding ecosystem.

Manette earned a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2022, she was awarded the Montana Art Gallery Director’s Association Exhibition Sponsorship for Unsettled Lands, which will tour Montana from 2024 – 2026. She will exhibit at the Montana Museum of Art and Culture, Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art, C.M. Russell Museum, Hockaday Museum of Art, Schoolhouse History and Art Center, and MonDak Heritage Center, and has exhibited in both solo and group shows in San Francisco and Chicago. Manette was interviewed as the subject of an episode of Resounds: Arts and Culture on the High Plains, which aired on May 22, 2023. She lives and works in Montana.