Michael is a sculptor who lives in Omaha, NE. He was born in a suburb of Chicago in 1969. He graduated from Creighton Prep High School in 1987. He went on to earn a bachelor of fine arts from Creighton University in 1991. Since then, he has specialized in the creation of life-sized and heroic scale commissioned sculptures for organizations, churches, industry, private homes, and shrines regionally and around the world. He maintains a studio in the historic Florence part of Omaha. He has an abundance of monumental work regionally and around the world. Some local work includes the 45-foot tall Crucifix at the Holy Family Shrine in Gretna; a 25-foot Crucifix at St. Alberts in Council Bluffs, IA; "St. Duchesne and Student" at Duchesne Academy; and St. Ignatius at Creighton Prep. St. Margaret Mary’s and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Omaha have works as well. St. Matthew the Evangelist Catholic Church in Bellevue, NE has his Stations of the Cross and Crucifix.
Reflections Sculpture Park just outside Marshall, MN is a recently completed monumental sculpture garden featuring the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. He has large works in Dodoma Tanzania, Rome Italy, Calgary Canada, Miami Florida, New York City, and Rose Key, a private island in the Florida Keys. He maintains a studio and home in the historic Florence part of Omaha with his wife, Joy.
Michael can be reached at mmontagart@gmail.com Michael’s subjects range from architectural, figurative, wildlife, and religious. He loves to create work that is at once raging in fluid motion, yet touching a deep stillness. He aspires to honor tradition, and embrace innovation with his work. If passion in the work is pursued properly, so that the abstract and realistic components are of equal depth and quality, art of astounding character and vision will invariably result. Michael finds hope in making the diametrically opposed modernist constructivism and traditional baroque world views find harmony in a single piece.
In his sculpture and drawings, Michael explores the unfathomable fire of the human masterpiece. There is a glorious and regal fire placed by God inside each one of us. We are all breathing crucibles made of unique and unrepeatable treasure. Dignity, truth, and love swirl within this conflagration. Michael note, "It is our quest, as students of the divine image in us, to expose this flame and harness its uncontainable light, guiding our journey together. My work explores an undiscovered ocean. Art has a great and untapped power to reach inside the human spirit, and draw lines between people. Art can fathom the deepest waters, beneath the intellect and any argumentative rhetoric that are used to hurt and isolate. Art has a unique and unparalleled potential to help heal the human heart and bridge the gap between hearts."
As a native Nebraskan, Michael says, "The vast and flowing vistas of the mid-western American landscape pour into everything I do. They say that long ago this area used to be a great inland sea. Living and traveling in this vast expanse, that raging and vast the ocean still lies beneath. There is a quiet demeanor in the people here that thinly veils a torrent of passion. It is the spirit of a people who have faced adversity head on as a way of life. This is our inheritance from this soil, which has made us strong. Some of my coastal city friends ask me how I can create art here. I have only to drive them past the city limits and show them the oceans I explore. I ask them in return, “How I could create art anywhere else?”
`I met Tom Sitzman (who commissioned the Stations) in the Metropolitan College Art Welding program decades ago. We worked and talked there a lot. He and his wife Jean had a studio with friends at the Hot Shops Art Center, and I often visited them there. I continued my journey with Tom and Jean when they opened the Connect Gallery and Studios on Leavenworth Street. I rented my studio from them for several years until my wife Joy and I bought our own studio and home in the Florence neighborhood of Omaha at their encouragement.
I had started a set of stations for St. Matthew’s Catholic Church in Bellevue while I was still at the Connect Studio. I negotiated the ability to use the stations for both St. Matthew’s and St. Andrew’s as an ecumenical outreach between both communities. From the very beginning, these stations were based on our long- time friendship and cooperation. Many of the tools I used on the project were brought from the gallery after it closed.
We waited patiently for the time to be right to cast a set of Stations for St. Andrew’s. Now is that time. We met and consulted with Fr. Keith Winton and Mtr. Kaity Reece often. A new vision crystalized within our team. These stations are artworks from the same molds used at St. Matthew’s, with many unique changes. They were tweaked and improved to suit the St. Andrew’s worship space. And we added a 15th Station—The Resurrection—frequently used by Episcopal churches.
We simplified what we could to streamline the narrative. I improved faces and poses. I designed a base system of bronze plates and wooden shims for this specific site. The sculptures were positioned to face the viewer, incorporating the community more personallty into the stations. This breaks the fourth wall: we are the crowd witnessing Christ’s passion. Christ witnesses to us in turn. The stations are placed low enough to be seen by children. We wanted them to be a touchable, tactile interactive passion play that brings all of us literally in touch with the story of redemption.
The Stations of the Cross chronicle Christ's Passion as described in Holy Scripture. They proclaim His free-will gift of love to us—It is not me blaming anyone else for Christ’s death; it is an acknowledgement of my participation in it. I place myself as Pilate in the first Station. The Stations call us to deeper internal accountability, conversion and gratitude. Each station is a stage where we reenact the drama of Christ’s Passion in a series of fifteen acts. Bronze speaks to me of unchanging truth and heritage. The figures and their bases are bronze, as are the rocks. I use rocks throughout the stations to remind us of Golgotha. Each station has a stainless steel Cross. Stainless steel is our advanced modern society. I want to show that the timeless truth of the Gospel is profoundly relevant in our technological era. We carry the Cross forward in time.
