The Interim Space Gallery on North 7th held its first lunar recharge ceremony Saturday evening, inviting the public to witness paintings and sculptures release accumulated stress from fourteen months of jackhammer adjacency. Owner Mara Lindenberger arranged the works in a borrowed pasture off Gooch Hill Road where the only ambient sound was wind through dry grass and the occasional coyote chorus.

“The pieces have been holding space for everyone’s frustration about the 19th Avenue corridor,” Lindenberger said, adjusting a selenite wand above a large oil landscape. “You can feel it in the brushstrokes. The impasto has tightened. The colors have gone defensive.”

Attendees sipped reishi hot cacao from enamel mugs while the full moon rose over the Bridgers. Several reported sensing a palpable shift in the gallery’s centerpiece, a mixed-media installation titled “Merge Lane” that incorporates actual orange traffic cones. The cones, previously angled with what one visitor described as “aggressive skepticism,” appeared to soften by midnight.

Local ceramicist Jonas Helvik brought three vessels he fired with clay excavated from the North 19th construction site. “The clay remembers being displaced,” he said. “It wants to know where the water table went. Tonight it got to ask the moon directly.”

The gallery plans monthly recharges through winter, weather permitting. Lindenberger is negotiating with a rancher in Gallatin Gateway for a permanent pasture site. She says the artworks have already requested the northeast corner, where the grass stays green longest.

Next month’s ceremony coincides with the first snow forecast. The traffic cones have been consulted and are reportedly open to whatever comes.