The lobby of the Aspen Grove residences on North 7th opened its doors Thursday for “Unseen Hands,” a multimedia exhibit featuring work by eight Bozeman service workers who drive in from Belgrade, Four Corners, and Livingston. The building’s developer, Cascade Mountain Properties, described the show as “a curated dialogue between lifestyle and labor” in a press release printed on seed paper.
Diane Wheatgrass attended the opening reception, which featured kombucha on tap and a charcuterie board sourced from three different regenerative ranches. The art itself ranged from photographs of pre-dawn kitchen prep at a Main Street bakery to a soundscape recorded inside a snowplow cab on North 19th at 3 a.m.
“I make the pastries people Instagram at brunch,” said Maria Gonzalez, a pastry chef at Wild Crumb who commutes forty minutes from Belgrade. Her contribution was a series of thermal prints showing dough temperature readings across a twelve-hour shift. “The condensation on the walk-in door at 4 a.m. has its own geometry. I just made it visible.”
Gallery coordinator Jade Whitfield, who splits time between the Aspen Grove sales office and a yurt in Gallatin Gateway, explained that the exhibit emerged from conversations in the building’s wellness sauna. “Residents kept asking who makes the city run while they’re on the skin track,” she said. “So we invited the answer in. The lobby has radiant floor heating. It felt like the right temperature for the conversation.”
Several pieces incorporated materials from the workers’ daily routes: asphalt core samples from the Jackrabbit Lane expansion, a woven tapestry dyed with coffee grounds from five downtown shops, a sculpture assembled from retired lift tickets collected at Bridger Bowl. The building’s concierge, a former ski patroller named Todd, supervised installation between accepting Amazon packages for unit 4B.
The exhibit runs through September. Admission is free, though the building asks visitors to remove boots at the entrance. The doorman keeps a basket of organic cotton slippers in sizes medium through extra-large.