Claire
Vitucci
Claire Vitucci is an artist, photographer, and writer based in Teton Valley, Idaho. Raised partly off-grid in Montana and the Tetons, she has long been interested in how people inhabit remote landscapes and how those places change over time. Working primarily with photography and collage, she combines contemporary images, historical material, and personal memory to explore homesteads, mountain culture, family histories, and the physical traces people leave behind.
My work begins with place, but not landscape in the scenic sense. I am interested in places that have been worked, altered, remembered, abandoned, loved, and rebuilt. I grew up partly off-grid, in a two-room cabin without running water or electricity, between Montana and the Tetons. That experience made structures, weather, distance, and daily work feel inseparable from landscape.
Photography gives me evidence. Collage lets me question it. I combine contemporary photographs with historical images, fragments, and visual layers to make work that behaves more like memory than documentation. Some details sharpen while others disappear. Different times occupy the same frame.
The West I am interested in is not untouched. It is inhabited. Barns sag, cabins are dismantled, roads move, families leave, new ones arrive, and stories are preserved unevenly. I make work from that instability: not to freeze a place in time, but to notice what remains as it changes.
Photography, French, and the first collages
In 2002, Claire graduated from the University of Montana, Missoula with a B.F.A. in Photography and B.A. in French. It was during her final year of school that the inkling of the collage work she gravitates towards today began to surface. Collage combines Claire’s passion for photography, perspective, and variety.
Commissions
In an effort to share the joy she finds in looking back on her personal montages of past travels and adventures, Claire will happily consider commissions to transform your memories into an actual vista through her unique technique of combining multiple photographs into a single painting.
Alaska, then home to Teton Valley
After living in SE Alaska for two years, Claire returned South, to Teton Valley, ID. In 2008, Claire and her long-time partner settled down, found a house, got married and, within a few years, started a family.
In February 2011, they welcomed their firstborn, Elsa Bird. Their storybook tale took its first turn in 2013 when the family bravely experienced the miscarriage of Swift Spirit. A year later the family was struck by even more devastating news: Luke was diagnosed with stage IV brain cancer. Despite best efforts, Luke passed away in September 2015, at age 39, after a 14 month battle with Glioblastoma.
Claire continues to live, work, and play in her husband’s honor with their ever-growing daughter, in the shadow of the Tetons and abroad.
CV
Education
- 2002, Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.), Photography, University of Montana, Missoula, MT
- 2002, B.A., French, University of Montana, Missoula, MT
Exhibitions and awards
- 2026, Radiant Remnants with Peggy Nishio and Claire Vitucci, Teton Arts Gallery, Driggs, ID
- 2018, Winner, Greater Yellowstone Crane Festival Poster, Teton Regional Land Trust
- 2014 to present, Local Galleria, Driggs, ID; Sage Realty Group, Driggs, ID
- 2013, Alpine Wines; Driggs City Center; Local Galleria; Sage Realty Group; Driggs, ID
- 2012, Solo, New Works, Jade Hair Studio, Butte, MT; Merlo Gallery; Driggs City Center; Alpine Wines; Sage Realty Group, Driggs, ID; cover of the July Get Out! publication by the Teton Valley News
- 2011, Merlo Gallery; Big Hole Music; Alpine Wines; Sage Realty Group; Driggs, ID
Nonprofit work
- 2017 to present, Marketing and Communications, Community Foundation of Teton Valley
Volunteer work
- Decorated Sandhill Crane Sculpture for Auction, Greater Yellowstone Crane Festival, Teton Regional Land Trust
- 2013 to 2014, Teton Arts Council
- 2012 to 2013, Teton Valley Community Recycling