STORY BOARD: The Mountains’ Tale takes the form of a two-channel video installation, displayed across two 100” vertical flat screens with accompanying sound. The STORY BOARD project is an animation made from paintings, video and photographs by Strom and archival materials. Strom uses painting and moving image to think, to imagine, to speculate and to make trouble. STORY BOARD is being produced in a chapter format. Chapter One was exhibited at Hennebery Eddy Gallery, Bozeman, Montana in November-December 2024. Other chapters are in progress.
CHAPTER ONE focuses on Butte, Montana in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The animation takes place against a backdrop of a lodge pole pine forest, impacted by fire. The narrative features a human figure that dances, installs barbed wire, cuts down forests and learns to mine copper. CHAPTER ONE reflects on Strom’s family histories’ of white settlement, occupation, the extraction industries, and the subsequent environmental crisis.