ST. IGNATIUS, Mont. — Montana’s landscape, its color, and spectacular light have always been an inspiration for artists.
Artistry comes in many forms.
It’s fluid and always changing.
Just ask artist and St. Ignatius farmer Kathy Yelsa.
Kathy’s art can be found in two worlds-one on her farm, the other in Hollywood, where she used to live and work.
“I used to do background paintings for cartoons for Warner Brothers and various animation studios,”she said.”All the color. All the lighting. All the mood.”
Kathy invited NBC Montana to her home and studio in the Mission Valley, where she showed us her work.
As examples, sheshowed us two houses that she painted for a character.
One house was dark and somewhat foreboding.
“When he (the character) was emotional, it would look like this,” she said of the dark house. “I painted it so the audience would feel his emotion.”
“Then,” she said, “gesturing to the lighter, more cheerful looking house, “when he wasn’t emotional it was painted like this.”
Kathy worked on some of Hollywood’s most successful animated cartoons.
She showed us the background she did for American Tail 3,and many other well-known shows.
In her career, she worked on about 50 animated productions.
For her work she was awarded television’s highest honor.
She won five Emmy’s.
Kathy has always been an artist.
But she also studied agriculture and education at Cal Poly Pomona.
She always loved Montana, which was the native home ofboth her parents.
She was always most at home here.
She loved doing animation.
But she said,she ” wanted a simpler life because I’d already gotten five Emmys, and they weren’t satisfying.”
What was satisfying was the organic farm near St. Ignatius that she developed, and the animals she raises.
“I spent all my time doing backgrounds of nature, and reading books about it,” said Kathy. “I wanted to start living it.”
Kathy owns and operates a ‘Homestead Farm.’
“Homesteading is where you live off the land,” she said, ” and you appreciate the life that you live in.”
Her philosophy is to grow food and construct buildings free of chemicals, and to be as self-sufficient as possible.
She and her kids built their family’s straw bale house.
They have a sculpture garden.
Everywhere you look there are sculptures made from all kinds of materials-from drift wood to fence wire.
As a farmer and artist she sees everything around her with an artist’s eye.
From her house, which sits just under the mountains,she gestures across the valley.
“We’re looking at the Flathead Valley, Mission Valley,” she said. “There’s Ninepipes, and there’s the ridges over there.”
She built a straw bale bed and breakfast with native materials.
“It’s kinda’ like the 20 mile house,” she said. ” Everything’s within our 20-mile radius.”
Her bed and breakfast has a sauna.
She shows us how the system works to be as efficient as possible.
“The hot water is from the wood burning stove. Itheats the water, heats the pizza oven, and heats the sauna,” she said. ” We open the door and it heats the rest of the B and B.”
Kathy has an internship program for students who want to learn more about homestead farming.
“My family has land, and I’d like to have my own at some point, and to be able to do what Kathy’s done here,” said farming intern Maddie Hollingsworth. ” Everything’s natural. No chemicals. It’s just very healthy. It’s a good way to live.”
Kathy may have left her animation career behind her in Hollywood, but when she came to Montana she brought those artistic talents with her to work for her farm and her community.
Several years ago, she taught art at Arlee School.
“We did a whole year of art,” she said. “This is a mosaic we did for the Arlee school system, she said, of photos of that project.
That mosaic still stands today.
Eventually, Kathy wants to fuse agriculture, building and art.
“I would like to build tiny homes,” she said, “and have people here making art on the farm.”
She’s also building a natural retaining wall.
“It’s going to be a thermal barrier for our kiln. We’re going to be doing ceramics and glass,” she said. “I wanted somewhere where we could put our artwork up here. We could see it with good lighting.”
Kathy knows light.
She spent a career painting it.
Montana light, she said, is like no other.
“Even at night there’s this light, even from the stars,” she said. “You don’t get that in L.A.”
In her quest for a simpler, happier life, Kathy Yelsa has blended the magical world of cartoons with a natural magic found on her Montana homestead.
