The Bigfork Summer Playhouse was founded in 1960 by Dr. Firman 'Bo' Brown and his wife Margery Hunter Brown as a place for University of Montana theatre students to perform in the summer. In 1964, Brown hired Don Thomson who is now, along with wife Jude Thomson, the producer. In the early days of the Bigfork Summer Playhouse, the company ate group meals, rehearsed and lived in the same place. There were no facilities to build scenery, as a matter of fact, the building didn't even belong to the Bigfork Summer Playhouse, it was a Community Hall owned by the Masons and the Eastern Star. The summer group would rent the facility and bring in the stage, risers and audience seats.
Nancy Dunlop Cawdrey
www.AmericanSilkRoad.com
A colorist with a strong sense of design, Nancys work always evokes a response, whether she is creating one of her signature western figure pieces, a breathtaking landscape, a quiet corner of Venice, or a vibrant floral. Nancy moved to Montana 22 years ago and settled near Bigfork on Fox Creek Slough near Flathead Lake where Montanas expansiveness serves as the primary inspiration for her work. She also enjoys traveling to the Southwest
Represented in galleries in Santa Fe, Tucson, Bozeman, and Bigfork, her work is included in invitational art shows across the West. She is a 2003 Featured Artist for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and was recently voted "Artists Choice " by her peers at the Treasure State Invitational Art Show. Nancy participates in the annual C.M. Russell show and Auction in Great Falls, Montana each March, and is a Signature Member of the Montana Watercolor Society. Her work is exhibited in many private and corporate collections across the country and in Europe. A number of her images are available as Fine Art Reproductions. Her Giclee prints on both canvas and 100% cotton rag paper are available in small limited editions of 50 to 100. Several of her images are now being offered on greeting cards through Leaning Tree Card Company.
An internationalist at heart, Cawdrey uses German brushes to stroke French dyes across Chinese silk. She gives the refined tradition of silk painting a more rambunctious edge, and she delights in perpetuating the symbolic power of the myth; cowboys and cowgirls, creatures from the forest and grand vistas form a mythology of the American West, she says, "that is larger than life". Nancy Cawdrey was born in Fort Benning, Georgia in 1948. She studied art at the American University in Paris, and received studio instruction
