BIO

Manette Rene Bradford (b. 1978, St. Paul, MN) constructs imagined allegorical narratives through painting, sculpture, and wall-sized mixed media works for specific geographic locations, historical moments, or ecological conditions. Manette combines historical, ecological, and folkloric research with her own direct experience of place to develop her work. Through the act of building these narratives, she engages with and imitates humanity's behavioral impulse to possess, anthropomorphize, and project itself onto the land and its biosphere, and the impression that is left as a result.

Manette earned a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2022, she was awarded the Montana Art Gallery Director's Association Exhibition Sponsorship, for Unsettled Lands, which will tour Montana from 2024-2026. She will exhibit at the Montana Museum of Art and Culture, Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art, C.M. Russell Museum, Hockaday Museum of Art, Schoolhouse History and Art Center, and MonDak Heritage Center, and has exhibited in both solo and group shows in San Francisco and Chicago. Manette was interviewed as the subject of an episode of Resounds: Arts and Culture on the High Plains, which aired on May 22, 2023. She lives and works in Montana.