Clarice Dreyer

Clarice Dreyer creates paintings, prints, and sculpture in cast bronze and aluminum. Her work emulates natural forms, systems, and phenomenon. Dreyer is a lover of nature, birds, and flowers; her works seemingly insist on a garden setting. Her human-scale pieces are both intricate and strong, evoking a fairytale world and suggesting utility at the same time. She says, “My work incorporates the mysteries of nature, elements of my own memory, and excerpts from rural life to create a metaphor for ordinary life as an aesthetic and spiritual existence. It is this feeling of harmony between humankind and nature that gives life and vision to my art.”

Born and raised in Missoula until age twelve, she now lives in Bozeman where she and her husband, painter Steve Kelly, ran Botanica, a contemporary art space that specialized in cutting-edge floral arrangements. Dreyer received her BFA from Montana State University in Bozeman and her MFA from the University of California, Berkeley. She has completed several public art commissions, exhibited extensively across the country, and is represented in numerous public and private collections. She received NEA fellowship grants in 1982, 1984, and 1990, and has received numerous other awards.