Performance painting

By LAURA BEHENNA

Bigfork Eagle

Nestled behind a hedge of 50-year-old lilacs on Grand Avenue in Bigfork, Sally Janover is creating a natural and artistic sanctuary.

A lifelong artist in a variety of media, Janover is gradually making her property a work of art in progress. She's preparing to open her studio to visitors as an example of how people can live and make art sustainably, using natural methods and found objects.

"I'm a painter, but instead of painting pictures, I like to paint on things," she said. "I'm painting pictures on the outside and the inside of my studio."

She indicated her front porch, where she's hand-painted delicate leaves along one of the posts, a colorful yet delicate abstract design on another post and a series of tiny squares on a third.

An ornamental garden, in which most of the plants are native to Montana, stretches between the porch and the door to Janover's art studio on the west side of the house she shares with her husband, Michael Janover. On the studio door she has painted a garden illustration and the words "Secret Garden."

The name is apt, because few passersby, even those on foot, would guess the pretty yard and cottage are there behind the lilac hedge. The only part of the property visible from Grand Avenue is the enormous weeping willow tree that lends a peaceful feeling to the front yard.

Between the willow, the studio door and the driveway lies a gravel path. Janover constructed the path by laying paper bags on the ground, spreading gravel over them and edging the path with rocks she collected.

"We made this without using any new materials," Janover said, pointing out that the paper bag layer keeps out weeds and eventually will biodegrade into the soil. The path is just one example of her efforts to make attractive and useful things from items she finds or already has. Her studio will feature recycled and mixed-media art made with things found in nature or that would normally be thrown away.

While her husband worked in the film business, Janover's interest in plants and preserving the environment was enhanced when she studied "permaculture" with Bill Mollison, an Australian who created the concept. Permaculture is a system that integrates agriculture and human culture in ways that can be sustained permanently.

After becoming certified in permaculture, Janover studied residential landscape design at University of California in Los Angeles with the intention of applying permaculture principles to urban homes. She is putting these ideas to work by mixing native plants with showy ornamentals that are suited to local environmental conditions. She spends little time maintaining her gardens.

"Once they're in, you don't have to do anything, except water," she said.

She's working on developing her property into place where she hopes artists and musicians eventually will gather to make "living art," she said.

Recently Janover began expanding her long-time interest in independent film. Last year she visited her daughter, who teaches at a one-room schoolhouse in a tiny ranching community on the eastern Montana plains. The school's seven students ranged from 5 to 13 years old.

"I just fell in love with the kids," Janover said.

She decided to make a documentary film about the children's lives on their families' ranches, where they spend much of their non-school time feeding cattle, helping with branding, rounding up horses and learning a way of life most people probably don't know still exists. She learned that ranching parents teach their children particular skills when they reach certain ages. She was most interested in showing what might be lost when these kinds of small schools and communities disappear.

To her delight, the film department faculty at FVCC loved her idea and encouraged her to enroll in their program and use the department's facilities and equipment in making the film.

Janover will edit her videotape this summer into a 20-minute documentary. She plans to enter it in film festivals and post footage on You-Tube, a Web site where anyone can upload short films.

"I'm excited about my studio, but the art I love most is movies," she said. "My studio is where I work daily, but if I get this video done right, that could open the door for the next one.

"I think independent movies are the only way to go," she added, explaining that the Hollywood film business is fiercely youth-centered, not just for actors but also for screenwriters and directors.

Older film-makers and those with unusual ideas have to work outside that establishment to achieve what they want to do, she said.

"It's a tough, tough business," she said. "So you go around them.

"I tend to go around all my obstacles, looking for the creative path to my goals. I'm doing it with my studio now, and always will with whatever art I create."