Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1393916
82 Jay Contway & Friends Art Show Moving Forward by Honoring the Past M jay contway & friends art show By Holly Matkin aster sculptor Jay Contway may have passed on, but his beloved wife and fellow artists are helping to ensure his memory lives on during this Special Edition Western Art Week. "It's all with Jay's blessing," Lynn Contway says, noting that her husband was very involved in planning this year's show right up until he passed away in November of 2019. "He is a legend and he has a legacy." Jay has been a part of Western Art Week since the very beginning. "When Norma Ashby began the Great Falls show, I don't think she had any idea that she was creating a model – and it has been a model for dozens of communities to begin their own art shows," Lynn says. "Jay was at her first show, but I don't think they realized what an important idea they were a part of." A few years later, Jay decided to put together his own Western Art Week show to help even more artists to display and sell their work. "Jay started his own art show because he was not too good with rules," Lynn laughs. "He just wanted to show his art and sell it. That is what he expects from the artists in his show: Put together a first-class display of the best of what you have to offer and show it off! Visit with the public and enjoy the life you have chosen – creating art in all forms." An eclectic mix of talented artists plan to do just that during this year's Jay Contway & Friends Art Show at the Hilton Garden Inn. Janice Gernhart Bogy, an exquisite self-taught pencil artist and painter, is also a former professional harpist who spent more than three decades performing in the Washington, D.C. area. She has been honing her visual arts skills since relocating to Montana in 2001. Knifemaker Lance DuBois, who happens to be a talented illustrator, sculptor, painter, and cowboy poet, will be on hand with a variety of his stunning one-of-a-kind creations. Artists Cathryn McIntyre (Reitler) and Mitch McIntyre, a husband-and-wife duo out of Glasgow, work together to construct unique artforms using upcycled metal surfaces, such as autobody parts.