Montana Western Fine Arts Gallery Presents “Forget Me Not”

The University of Montana Western Fine Arts Gallery is honored to present “Forget Me Not,” a film installation by Montana-based artist and educator Cindy Stillwell. A professor of film at Montana State University whose work has screened internationally, including at Sundance and the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Stillwell is known for her richly textured films created using 16mm and Super 8 formats. The exhibition will open on Friday, February 27 and will feature an opening reception from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. in the Fine Arts Gallery located in Main Hall.

“Forget Me Not” is a three-channel immersive video installation. This body of work centers on three flowers—sunflowers, zinnias, and black hollyhocks—each grown by the artist from seed over multiple seasons and filmed throughout their life cycles. The films unfold as a process and a cycle: early growth giving way to high summer, and finally to seed—the promise of what comes next.

During the pandemic, Stillwell began cultivating a developer’s garden in her backyard. The flowers and herbs she grew were harvested and used to create plant-based eco-developers for her 16mm black-and-white film stock. Initially filming her garden intuitively, Stillwell gradually began to study these backyard plants more deliberately, using extension tubes on her lenses to examine their intricate structures at close range. This process revealed fragile, sublime details far beyond what the unaided eye could perceive. Through extensive experimentation, Stillwell discovered that calendula flowers and leaves produced the most consistent results as a developer. Tending the garden became a daily ritual—one that mirrors the care required to create her films: cultivating plants, harvesting herbs, foraging weeds, mixing developers, and hand-processing film in the darkened space of her bathroom. These slow, process-driven practices resist haste. For Stillwell, the joy lies as much in the act of tending—to plants and to images—as in the finished work itself. These experiments ultimately led to her current cycle of short films presented in “Forget Me Not”.

In addition, the gallery will present “Mating for Life”, a mid-length (48-minute) essay film by Stillwell, made in 2012, that follows sandhill cranes during their annual migration to the Platte River in Nebraska. While grounded in the natural history of the North American sandhill crane, the film is filtered through Stillwell’s personal reflections and sense of wonder—posing questions about what these birds might teach us about the idea of “mating for life,” and what happens if we do not.

Cindy Stillwell is a film artist and educator living and working in Montana. Her work is distinguished by richly textured imagery shot on 16mm and Super 8 film, often hand-developed using plant-based eco-processes or otherwise physically altered to create ethereal, trance-like visual experiences. Through these experimental approaches, she explores human relationships with landscapes and the plants and animals that inhabit them. In Stillwell’s own words:

“My approach to making films is like a collector. I gather images and sounds, arrange and rearrange them as I try to come to an understanding of my place within a landscape and within time. This practice teaches me how to look and listen, to slow down and observe intentionally. I am drawn to boundaries and liminal spaces—where one thing becomes another—and to the edges of photographic reality, where documentation gives way to expression and reveals the hand of the maker. Using tools such as 16mm and Super 8 film, and eco-processing with plant-based developers, allows the film itself to be treated as a material object. This handmade quality asks viewers to slow down—to engage less in consumption of the image and more in meditation.”

Stillwell is a professor of film at Montana State University, where she mentors graduate students in the Science and Natural History Filmmaking program. Her work has screened internationally at museums and festivals including Sundance, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival, Tampere Film Festival, and the Museum of Modern Art’s Documentary Fortnight. She has been a fellow at MacDowell and Ucross Foundation twice, as well as at the Wurlitzer Foundation and Jentel Foundation.

“Forget Me Not” will be on display in Montana Western’s Fine Arts Gallery from February 27 to April 7. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. and 12:00 to 3:00 p.m. The February 27 reception is open to all and will feature light refreshments. We look forward to seeing you there!

For more information, please contact Montana Western Fine Arts Gallery Coordinator Jennifer Boysen at jennifer.boysen@umwestern.edu.