Lynne Spriggs O’Connor
Before moving to the rural West at age forty-two, Lynne Spriggs curated exhibitions of folk and self-taught art at the High Museum in Atlanta. She spent ten summers on northern Montana’s Blackfeet Indian Reservation while pursuing fieldwork for her PhD in Native American Art History at Columbia University. She also worked in the film industry as Production Coordinator for Spalding Gray and Jonathan Demme on the iconic Swimming to Cambodia. After landing in Montana, she curated Bison: American Icon, a major permanent exhibit for the C. M. Russell Museum on bison in the Northern Plains. For the past fifteen years, she and her husband have lived on a cattle ranch in an isolated Montana mountain valley east of the Rockies, where her life centers on writing, animals, and family. Elk Love is her first memoir.
Facebook: @lynne.spriggs.oconnor
Instagram: @LynneSOconnor
Are there particular films that have influenced your writing?
Films that have influenced my writing include: Moonstruck, As Good As It Gets, Something’s Gotta Give, Jeremiah Johnson, My Octopus Teacher, All That Breathes, A River Runs Through It, Days of Heaven, Out of Africa, My Life as a Turkey on PBS.
Is there a genre of music that influences your writing/thinking? Do you listen to music while you write?
If I listen to any music while writing, it’s classical. Otherwise, I’m inspired by howling winds, the sound of a roaring creek through open windows in springtime, my dogs snoring next to me, a crackling fire in the wood stove, the way snow falls and light changes, a flock of over 200 finches as their shadows dance across walls each time they arrive and depart from feeders near my desk.
Vacation druthers… City or Rural destination? Why?
My vacation druthers are rather particular. I always like to be near/in beautiful countryside - expansive spaces, rolling hills, lakes, mountains - and preferably with animals and interesting birds. I love visiting farms and people who love animals like we do. That said, because I live in an extremely isolated place most of the time, I adore an occasional proximity to restaurants with excellent local foods, fun architecture, a good independent bookstore, opportunities to enjoy the visual arts and theater! I love traveling on ferries, sea planes, and trains. Favorite spots include Scotland, Argentina, Slovenia, British Columbia.
Do you have another artistic outlet in addition to your writing? Do you sew? Paint? Draw? Knit? Dance?
Photography is a favorite creative place for me. I love taking photos, editing them, and sharing them. I have an absurb digital photo library - tens of thousands of images over the years, primarily of beautiful places, animals, and documenting the intimate details of things in nature that fascinate me. And, of course, many shots of my ridiculously handsome and kooky husband, Harrison. I also enjoy singing, dancing, painting, messing around on the piano, riding horses in open country, and dogs by my side for any adventure.
If you could create a museum exhibition, what would be the theme?
While writing Elk Love: A Montana Memoir, sometimes I would imagine my story as a multi-sensory museum exhibition. Using specific objects and imagery (paintings, photos, drawings, animals, colors, scents, sounds, tastes) to trace distinct memories of what has informed and influenced me over time, I could observe more about how those life experiences have woven themselves together to shape me as a person. One of the memoir’s thematic threads is my work as a professional museum curator while creating a large exhibition of Native American objects to tell a story of bison in the Northern Plains. Art, artists, and creativity have always been at the center of my life.
