When LA artist Eric Junker’s Montana mural commission fell through this past summer, he and his teenage son headed for Big Sky Country anyway. This is the story of their adventure.
Two for the Road
Eight hours into the first day's drive, from Los Angeles to a campsite in Logan Canyon, Utah, I received word that the mural project in Bozeman had been called off. It turns out, the guardians of the wall had gotten cold feet about backing a possibly controversial public art project. If I'm being perfectly honest with myself, this mural had never really seemed like a sure thing. The wall’s stewards had been ghosting me for weeks.
But during the dog days of 100-degree summer in L.A., the vaguest possibility of a mural in Montana provided enough of an excuse for me to throw paints, camping equipment, and fly-fishing gear into the van to head out on an open-ended mural-painting road trip through the western Rocky Mountains. I managed to persuade my 15-year-old son, Rye, to join me by dangling the prospect of exploring empty skate parks in small towns, scoring epic thrift-store clothes for cheap, and cruising through the jaw-dropping beauty of Utah, Idaho, and Montana. I sweetened the deal by suggesting that I’d let him take the wheel on long stretches of remote country roads, even though he's still got a few months to go before he gets his driving permit.
A father-son jam session in the back of their van.
The pair's Aistream.
Eric gets a new pair of boots
I could hardly be described as a "Type A" personality, but it's a quirk of my character that I always prefer to anchor my travel and leisure with some sort of work. I'm never content to sightsee or relax by a pool; I need a good project to be happy. Going all the way back to my first solo trips to Europe after college, my friends were visiting the Louvre in Paris and having a blast in Greece, while I could be found varnishing boats in the blistering summer sun in Nice or whitewashing houses in Mykonos. (I’ve met a lot of interesting people this way, but it’s decades later, and I've still never been to the Louvre.) Over the last few years, I've discovered that planning trips around mural painting scratches both my travel itch and that nagging urge to always be creating something. As a result, you’ll find my murals scattered all over the place: California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Mexico, Louisiana, Costa Rica , New York City, and now Montana.
A bison in the wild.
Eric painting a bison in the wild.
In the days following the news that the mural project had been cancelled, Rye and I drove through indescribably beautiful scenery. Wherever possible, we avoided the interstates and stuck to backroads. Island Park, the Tetons, Wisdom, Philipsburg, and Darby passed by. Rye got his fair share of driving, and I tell you, those long stretches of road with my kid were an unexpected blast. When he wasn't driving, he'd sit in the passenger seat and strum his guitar or play DJ, providing a soundtrack for the American Western landscape out our window. You know the cliché that we should find pleasure in the journey, not the destination? This was a reminder. We'd stop wherever an epic view, a shady tree, or a shimmering river beckoned. Rye would cook a meal on the camp stove, we'd pull our guitar and banjo out from under the pile of wool blankets, empty Taki bags, and gum wrappers in the back of the van, and play music for the attending audience of cows. We'd jump in a creek for a swim, or throw a fly to eager trout. And who knew there were so many excellent skate parks in the Rocky Mountain West? At night, after a camp-cooked dinner, we slept well under the stars.
Rye cooking up a meal.
A table with a view, and a wine bottle whose label Eric designed.
Skalkaho Falls selfie.
Fast forward about five days. It's our first dreary and rainy afternoon, and we're driving down a busy highway offramp into Bozeman. The abrupt transition to the confines of a city and the day’s melancholy drizzle made me sad and restless to paint. It made Rye anxious to get back to L.A., to his band and the company of his friends. Fortunately, in Bozeman we were warmly welcomed by our old friends Brandt and Amy Williams. They took the edge off the afternoon with the offer of a shower, a meal, and a place to stay for the next couple of nights.
After settling in, Rye skated off to the nearest skate park to blow off steam, and I scouted for a wall to paint. I didn't have to look far. The Williamses live in an old mechanic's shop that they've converted into a super-cool home (they’re designers and professors), and the large cinderblock garage wall facing the Simkins-Hallin lumber yard next door provided an excellent, and available, canvas. The following day, I was refreshed by a night in a clean bed and a cup of coffee at the Roly-Poly Coffee Shop down the street, and a large buffalo and a caffeine-fueled grizzly bear were soon facing off on their north-facing wall.
Pie for breakfast.
Grizzly print.
Print is not dead.
Rewinding to the summer of ’22 to explain the bison and grizzly bear motif: My introduction to Montana had come the previous summer when Lori Ryker, founder of the Artemis Institute, invited me to do a monthlong artist's residency in Paradise Valley, just north of Yellowstone National Park. My charge for the residency was to learn as much as I could about the ecology of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) and to create a visual street-art language that could communicate the importance of preserving this treasure. That’s a tall order. As I learned that summer, the GYE is the last intact ecosystem in the lower 48 states. It’s worth preserving. I had developed the bison and grizzly bear images, used for the Bozeman mural, "in the field" the previous summer, while exploring the park with my wife, Georgia, and drawing from life. I also took inspiration from vintage illustrations of bear and bison on postcards, posters, and old maps we found in local antique and junk shops.
Back to the present: After finishing the mural in Bozeman, I put the word out on my Instagram account that I was in the Yellowstone area and looking to paint murals. The shout-out opened a floodgate of kindness and interest in my work in the area, but especially from people in Gardiner, at the northern entrance to Yellowstone National Park. Gardiner is a small town that's taken some big hits in the last few years. In July 2020, a fire destroyed much of its business district. COVID diminished the Yellowstone tourist traffic that is the town’s seasonal economic lifeblood. Most recently, the town was severely affected by the floods of 2022, which damaged the bridge that serves as the entrance to the park, further hampering the tourist trade. I’d been there the previous summer with Georgia. It was eerily quiet for the height of summer, but we’d fallen in love with its grocery store, the old guy who owns the fly shop, and the fact that Gardiner seemed populated entirely by energetic river-rafting guides.
Eric in front of the mural he painted at the Gardiner Visitor Center.
Charissa Reid, owner of Upriver Yellowstone Cabins, with husband Tim.
When Terese Petcoff, executive director of the Gardiner Chamber of Commerce, offered a wall at the visitor's center, and Charissa Reid, owner of Upriver Yellowstone Cabins, followed up with an offer of a place to stay, the deal was sealed. I was going to Gardiner. Rye and I spent a few more days together in Paradise Valley—playing music, jumping off bridges into the Yellowstone River, and exploring the natural wonders of the park—before I put him on a plane home. Driving the van to Gardiner later that day, I was saddened by the empty seat next to me, and stopped to do a lonely chalk drawing underneath a bridge crossing Prospect Creek on the way to Gardiner. It was raining.
I’d planned to be in Gardiner for a day or two and then move on, possibly heading back to L.A. by way of Wyoming and the Tetons. But that two-night stay? It turned into eight days, three murals, and evenings fly fishing, hiking, and hanging out with new friends with deep connections to this place. In addition to the visitor’s center mural, I threw up a piece in an alley behind the Yellowstone Pizza Company on Park Street (thanks for the free pizzas, Dave!), as well as on the side of a barn at Upriver Yellowstone on Olson Road, about three miles north of town on US 89. The barn was built with weathered siding repurposed from old buildings in the National Park, giving it a wise and seasoned vibe that I like.
Eric’s “lonely chalk drawing” beneath a bridge.
Camp-site painting.
Fly fishing in the Yellowstone River.
Painting a mural in a Gardiner alley.
My affection for the tough little town of Gardiner grew with each sunrise in my tent by the river. The sunrise meant that I hadn’t been devoured by The Grizzly Bear during the night, making the view of Eagle Peak, the morning crew of elk feeding on the grasses near my tent, and the cup of coffee at Bears Brew in town that much sweeter. My friendships with the people I met also grew, and it was hard to leave. As I drove home, 16 hours backtracking through Montana, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and Nevada, I was planning my return next summer, hopefully with Georgia, and Rye in the seat next to me playing guitar.
Eric Junker is an artist and designer based in Los Angeles.