At Two Dot Schoolhouse, Ruth Marie Tomlinson Builds an Artistic Community

At her solo exhibition last year at The Vestibule, Seattle artist Ruth Marie Tomlinson presented a new series of work inspired by her close readings of British nature writer J.A. Baker’s The Peregrine and Icelandic author Sjón’s The Blue Fox. As if on sheets torn from a sketchbook, her pages included excerpts and outtakes of what impressed her from these books, mapping each author’s descriptions of place, movement, color, and image. These small works departed from some of Ruth’s previous work with large-scale sculpture, installation, and public art. Handwritten and awash in colorful watercolors and blue ink made from dissolved iron extracted from guns and viewed together in a sequence, these intimate pieces felt like reading a deconstructed book crafted around two distinct narratives and practices.

For nearly 20 years, Ruth has divided her time between Columbia City and Two Dot, Montana—a town of roughly 25 people. In 2007, she and her husband John, a co-founder of The Thursday Collective musical ensemble and a jazz keyboardist, purchased a decommissioned two-room schoolhouse at auction and transformed the building into a live-work artist residency with three studios, while preserving the architecture and features unique to the site. The original playground equipment and swing sets still stand, while inside the building, chalkboards and color-coded shelves full of vintage reading material for school-age children line the walls. When the school’s enrollment dwindled to two children in the early 2000s, Wheatland County shuttered it. Town residents like former county commissioner Richard Moe appreciate the lengths the Tomlinsons have gone to preserve the school, which is a source of community pride. “It’s a welcome place for the former students and teachers who stop by to make their memories come to life,” Moe says.

But as Ruth and John approach their mid-70s and look to simplify their lives in Seattle, they hope to transition their historic home to new stewards, who may be interested in creating a community-minded venture while honoring the building’s historic value. “The greater Two Dot community has been so welcoming to us and appreciative of the care we’ve given their beloved school,” John says. “Our greatest hope is to pass the schoolhouse on to someone with a creative vision that continues the building’s connection to the community.”

Two Dot Schoolhouse in Wheatland County, Montana.

Courtesy of Ruth Marie Tomlinson

Since its inception, the Two Dot Schoolhouse Studios and Residency Program has welcomed more than 60 artists across disciplines to work alongside Ruth and John in their home, including Seattle artists Sue Danielson, Erin Elyse Burns, Stasia Burrington, Tania Kupczak, Quinn McNichol, Leah Swenson, and writers like Natalie Pascale Boisseau and Clayton Aldern, in addition to musicians James Sloane of The Thursday Collective and Char Easter of the band Luna Moss. “The residency is whatever you want it to be,” Easter says. “But that’s not exactly true. It’s whatever your artist self needs it to be, a place for creating or just unraveling.”

Artist Yixuan Pan, an assistant professor at the University of Washington Tacoma, visited Two Dot for a weeklong residency in August, after getting to know Ruth through her Vestibule show and a panel the gallery organized on the role of conversation in artmaking. At the schoolhouse, Pan prepared for an upcoming solo show at SUNY Binghamton. The sprawling project examines glass through sound, poetry, sculpture, costume, graphic design, 3D animation, digital video, and performance. “With so many threads to hold at once, I needed space to tie them up,” Pan says. Mapping out her thinking on chalkboards helped her to organize her thought process and work through connections she hadn’t seen before. The experience was enriched by conversations with Ruth and fellow resident Claudia Castro Luna, a former Washington state poet laureate.

Artist Yixuan Pan maps out ideas for an upcoming exhibition.

Courtesy of Yixuan Pan

Ruth invited Castro Luna for a residency after meeting her through the 2025 Jack Straw Writers Program Castro Luna curated. Though Ruth had explored the edges of creative writing for years by taking classes at Hugo House, her self-study of The Peregrine ushered in a new way of engaging with literary craft. The opportunity with the Jack Straw program came at the right time for Ruth, supporting her in writing experimental essays about her relationship to memory and place. But she’s also been in community with writers for much longer.

With the help of Seattle writer Elissa Favero, Ruth hosted a residency at Two Dot focused on regional writers. The two met as faculty at Cornish College of the Arts during Ruth’s time teaching in its art department. Favero first visited the schoolhouse in 2019, when she and Ruth organized a four-day retreat with Montana writers, including facilitator Debra Magpie Earling, and Cornish film students whose writing engaged deeply with place. She returned to Two Dot the next year to polish her chapbook-length essay, Children of Rivers and Trees: An Abecedarian (Newfound, 2023), about her own Montana family roots and her grandparents’ history. “I’d like to think my book is inflected with the feeling of them both and also the special place Ruthie and John have created in Two Dot,” Favero says.

Ruth and John Tomlinson.

Courtesy of Ruth Marie Tomlinson

“Every artist and writer that has entered the red doors of the Two Dot Schoolhouse has brought something unique with them,” Ruth says. “New ideas, as well as ways of seeing this place, have become so important to us. Some have come from the city, never having experienced a rural setting; many have been new to the big, open landscape of Montana. Both John and I have delighted in each guest’s discoveries and relished the dinner conversations that have covered topics as wide as the Montana range itself.  In addition, there is nothing better than working in your own studio while feeling the energy of someone working on their own practice down the hall.”

For more information, follow @twodotschoolhouse on Instagram.