Every day, Corby Skinner wakes up surrounded by Billings history. He usually has breakfast while surrounded by Billings history, and for most of his work day, he’s surrounded by Billings history. He’ll often eat dinner while surrounded by Billings history. And when he goes to bed at night? You guessed it — he’s surrounded by Billings history.
Part of that is because Skinner lives and works in what is maybe Billings’ most recognizable home. The handsome brick building at 622 N. 29th St. is three floors and a basement of beautiful craftsmanship, but its defining feature is the enormous turret that rises on its northern corner, topped with crenellated parapets. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Austin North House, named for the man who had it built in 1903. But ask anyone in Billings and they’ll tell you its colloquial moniker: The Castle.
Skinner has lived in the house since 1987, and owned it since 1991. The ground floor functions as the office for Skinner/Benoit Public Relations, the PR firm he runs with Kathleen Benoit.
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But it’s not just architecture that makes Skinner such an integral figure in Billings history — especially Billings art history. If the Billings art world is the Land of Oz, then Skinner is the man behind the curtain. Few things happen around here that he hasn’t influenced in some wizardly way.
He’s been behind the scenes at the Alberta Bair Theater for so long that when he started, they still called it the Fox. He’s directed the Writer’s Voice at the YMCA for decades. He’s been on the board at the Downtown Billings Association and was chair of the Montana Committee of the Humanities.
That enough for you yet? It’s not for Skinner. He’s also got a public radio show, "Resounds," where he interviews local creatives. He was one of the minds behind the High Plains BookFest. He’s involved at Tippet Rise. In 2009, Skinner was awarded the Governor’s Humanities Award.
“I’ve always been that sort of person behind the wall supporting the artists in whatever way,” he said.
But right now he’s stepping out from the shadows. In addition to being a promoter and fierce advocate of the arts, Skinner is an artist. He’s got some of his work on display at Electric Storm Gallery, the modernist leaning display space at 405 N. 24th St. run by Taylor Evans. The exhibition, called “Echoes of the Natural World,” features a selection of Skinner’s pastel drawings alongside some ceramic pieces. It’s on display until June 5.
Skinner has deep Billings roots that tie into another one of the town’s biggest cultural institutions: the Billings Mustangs baseball team. Skinner’s father — Jack Skinner — was one of the original members of the team when they played their first games in 1948. The elder Skinner grew up in California and got his start in pro ball when he joined the Modesto Reds in the mid-1940s.
In 1948, the California kid headed north. He played second base for those inaugural Mustangs, hitting a respectable .268 for those Mustangs, while stealing nine bases and knocking in 52 runs. But Jack’s most significant victory that year came off the field. In April, when the season started, he met a Billings girl named Dorothy Yokem.
“This was before TV,” Corby laughed. “They would always go to baseball games.”
Jack and Dorothy — she always went by Dottie — got along, and they were married in December. The groom’s best man was Mustangs catcher Al Spaziano, and the wedding reception was held at Dave McNally’s mother’s house, years before McNally went on to be a World Series hero.
Maybe there was some magic in that house, because in 1949 Jack Skinner stepped out as the Mustangs’ premier offensive player. He hit .312, slugged .445 and had 90 RBIs. When the Pioneer League All Star game was played that summer, Skinner was one of Billings’ representatives. Just two years into their existence, those embryonic Mustangs were pretty good, too. They beat the Pocatello Cardinals in the Pioneer League semifinals, but fell to the Salt Lake City Bees in the finals.
In 1950, Skinner was set to trade in his cleats for a pair of sensible walking shoes. He left the Mustangs and started delivering Billings’ mail. That lasted until July. Eyeing another playoff run, Skinner took a leave of absence from the post office and took his place at second base. It was a good decision. That fall the Mustangs again beat Pocatello in the semifinals and swept the Twin Falls Cowboys to claim their first Pioneer League title.
Jack Skinner never played for the Mustangs again after that, but when he wasn’t delivering mail, he was always at Cobb Field. In the years before electronic scoring, Skinner was the club’s official score-keeper, deciding whether a outfield flub qualified as a hit or an error.
Corby was born in 1954 as the middle of Jack and Dottie’s kids — after Gary but before Jackie. But baseball was never his thing. He preferred sports he could do by himself, like gymnastics, running and swimming.
But the young Skinner really found a niche in his art classes, especially under the tutelage of Donna Loos at Will James Middle School and Connie Landis at West High.
“They not only encouraged me, but gave me absolute total freedom to do whatever I wanted to do,” Skinner recalled. “Instead of going to study hall, I’d go to the art room. I just got really encouraged to explore things at an early age.”
He graduated from West in 1972 and enrolled at the University of Montana during what he called a “very exciting time” for the school.
“It was a very liberal time to be in school,” he said. “I took anthropology, religious studies, English, theater, but my degree was in fine arts.”
Bachelor’s in hand, Skinner got his master’s degree from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, a town just east of Los Angeles.
After grad school, Skinner stayed around Southern California, running an art gallery at the historic Barker Bros. Building in downtown L.A. He lived in a “crummy little hotel” down the street for $80 a month, which was a good thing, because Skinner was flat broke. The gallery was run as a nonprofit space — meaning they couldn’t sell anything. But it was creatively vibrant, full of works by other art students just brimming with ideas.
After about six months at the gallery, the space was closed so the building could be renovated. Skinner moved back to Billings, but the plan was to return to Southern California once the building work was done. Instead, he’s lived in Montana ever since.
“Montana was a very exciting place,” he said. “It was undiscovered and kind of sexy. It wasn’t any of those things when I grew up here.”
He ran a nightclub with his friend Steve Corning, back in what Skinner called “the days of disco.”
“I thought, they didn’t really need me in L.A.,” he reflected. “I could do more here.”
And sure enough, he started doing more. In 1984 Skinner started working with the Fox Theatre, three years before the performance space was renamed the Alberta Bair, after the sheep heiress donated money for the room to be restored.
Skinner started as marketing director, but after seven years on the job he became the theater’s program director. It was under his tutelage that the Alberta Bair became the state’s best performing arts center.
That one gig would keep a lot of people busy, but not Skinner.
“I’ve always had three jobs,” he laughed. He was also the marketing director for the Billings YMCA, and in 1991 got a grant to start a literary program called The Writer’s Voice.
“They threw a lot of money my way,” Skinner remembered. But he’s the one who knew how to spend it, how to best allocate those funds so they both amplified and expanded Billings’ writing scene. It was a chance to help Billings develop its artistic flame, and then turn those sputtering embers into a roaring blaze.
Similarly, he was the chair of Humanities Montana when they started the Montana Festival of the Book (now called the Montana Book Festival). But that festival was always anchored in the Missoula area.
“I’m over in Eastern Montana, and a lot of my friends are from Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Canada,” he remembered. “And Missoula was a little smug about their own importance.”
A lot of writers are over in this half of the state. So Skinner helped found the High Plains BookFest, which evolved into the High Plains Book Awards.
All of this is in service of Skinner’s core belief that Billings can — and should — be seen as an artistic haven on the level of Missoula, or anywhere else of this size in America.
“We’ve got the largest performing arts center in the state,” he said. “We have a professional symphony. We have fabulous musicians in this town. We have a lot of writers, too.”
And for decades now, he’s been supporting them. Skinner left the Alberta Bair back in the early 2000s (he’s back again now, but he’s still going by interim program director) but he’s worked in public relations full time ever since. It’s often his job to figure out the business side of the artistic process. Sure, all of this is great, but how can it make enough money to support itself?
That’s what makes this show at Electric Storm so sweet. Rarely does Skinner take center stage, especially in a venue so public.
Pre-COVID, he’d have art shows at The Castle (the house is also his studio) on occasion. But after the pandemic, he’s been a bit more insular.
“I never had another art show, but I kept making work,” he explained. “And then I didn’t have anywhere to put the work because my walls were full.”
He’s being modest almost to a fault. The works on display in “Echoes of the Natural World” are very worthy of a gallery display. These works are oil pastels — Skinner calls them drawings, not paintings, since drawing is done with your hand, and painting with your whole arm. They’re mostly bird’s eye views of Montana landscapes, with the streaky colors of the pastels blending together to create a view that is at once intimate and grand, accessible yet impressionistic.
He calls them “loose color studies,” and though they look peaceful, they come from a painful place.
“When my mother died in 2009, it was a really cathartic thing for me to start drawing clouds and skies,” he remembered. “When you’re getting over grief, art is a very nice way to focus on the things around you.”
It was soothing to look at the grand canvas of nature, comprised of so many different little living things, all interacting to create something bigger than themselves.
Maybe you’ll also be soothed by them. You won’t be alone. Before the show was even officially open Skinner’s pieces were selling. One couple came in and bought three, and they didn’t even know who he was. That’s another benefit of gallery shows — they expose you to a whole new group of people. It’s hard to have someone stumble upon your work when it’s displayed inside your house.
Skinner’s been wrapped up in this for so long. He’s forgotten more memories about the Billings arts scene than almost anyone else has ever even made. But his favorite memory is typical Corby Skinner. It’s about him supporting someone else.
“I worked on a series of films that Miriam Sample sponsored, called ‘Montana Moments,’” he recalled. “We interviewed all these artists, so many people that aren’t with us anymore. We made these five minute promotions of Montana art, letting people know the quality of art and artists in Montana. That was a wonderful thing I got to be involved in.”