Bozeman Magazine

The Montana State University College of Arts and Architecture will host an event honoring the opening of an exhibition by Professor Emeritus Harold Schlotzhauer on Thursday, Sept. 8, at 5:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. 

The event formally kicks off the “Time Fighter” exhibition, which is hosted in the Helen E. Copeland Gallery in MSU’s Haynes Hall. The exhibition includes a variety of pieces from Schlotzhauer, who taught at MSU, specializing in painting and printmaking, from 1980 until his retirement in 2008. The exhibition will remain on display through the end of September. 

“[Schlotzhauer] has stayed hugely involved. He is just fantastic,” said Caleb Fey, gallery director for the College of Arts and Architecture. “We’ve got some work here that he’s just finished, [and] there are pieces in this exhibition from 1966, ’68, ’72.” 

Harold Schlotzhauer has lived and worked in Bozeman for 42 years. He was born in New York in 1941 and raised in San Jose, California, where he acquired his love of surfing and skateboarding. He attended San Jose City College and Cabrillo College and received both a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Fine Arts from the California College of Arts and Crafts.  

Schlotzhauer has shown his work across the country and world. He is known for his bold, graphic displays of color, the technicality and detail of his process and the physicality of his brushstrokes within the underpainting. The current exhibition includes wall-displayed paintings as well as vividly painted skateboards and surfboards, which are a hallmark of Schlotzhauer’s style.  

“When I look at some of his old work, I can see the same language,” said Fey. “To me as a viewer, it’s just so impressive to have landed on this visual language that he’s so good at, and to have mined it so thoroughly for so long. On the surface, the work is all very similar, but it doesn’t become repetitive.” 

The Copeland Gallery is one of four galleries at MSU that hosts art for public viewing. Other galleries include the Dean’s Gallery and Cheever Gallery in Cheever Hall, the latter of which focuses on architectural drawings, photography and projects; and the Waller-Yoblonsky Gallery at the Melvin Graduate Studios west of MSU’s campus. The College of Arts and Architecture has numerous other exhibitions planned for the 2022-23 academic year, and all gallery shows are free and open to the public.