Collection: The Ugly American Dream House: Becky Roberts, Kate Huston, & Marla Goodman

August 1 – September 20, 2024

"Three strong women who are as comfortable smashing worlds as they are creating them.”

 Kirks’ Grocery welcomes The Ugly American Dream House, a collection of collage and assemblage works by Bozeman artists Marla Goodman, Kate Huston and Becky Roberts. All three featured artists use vintage imagery to navigate a contemporary stew of rage, grief, beauty, lies, drudgery and desire. Weaving ticklish narratives from imperiled hopes, revising delusional fairytales with empowered heroines, and finding dark humor in domestic strife, their works celebrate and question objects and images from our nostalgic past. 

 Marla Goodman, a grandmother and art activist from Bozeman, sifts the dregs of midcentury American culture through comedic despair. Raised in “the before times,” she draws on wildly idyllic imagery from the sewing patterns, coloring books and advertising of her childhood to compose existential narratives that mock the absurdity of their own optimism.

 Becky Roberts is a Bozeman-based assemblage artist, reimagining the world around her through found objects. Originally from Northern California, she combines her backgrounds in film studies and floral design to create dioramic dramas on unexpected stages, some as tiny as vintage matchbooks. By day, Becky is a picture framer and a supportive mother, but with glue bottle in hand, she manipulates mundane items into spicy tableaus that smack some sense into our assumptions. 

 Kate Huston was born in New Mexico and attended the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston before moving to Bozeman. Her works in The Ugly American Dream House grew from a series of paper dioramas that she calls Tiny Box Worlds. Reframing fairytales with the aim of emancipating their protagonists once and for all, her collage assemblages entwine antique illustrations and botanical engravings with the darkly lush precision of ceremonial wreaths. 

On August 1, after the artists’ reception, Marla Goodman, in the persona of Fraternal Twin Thereminist Dolly Vinyl, will perform “Escape from the Ugly American Dream House,” a program of melodic Theremin music with projections and shadow play. Admission for the 8pm performance is $12 in advance and $15 at the door. Seating is general admission.