Rebecca Hutchinson remembers the very first installation she ever encountered: family dinner.

Ceramic cups, plates and silverware -- and the table, too -- all in their places, primed for human participation. A former Archie Bray Foundation resident, Hutchinson started out making her own functional ware, inspired by those plates and cups and bowls.

But the part she liked most? Lining up her unglazed pieces into nice, even rows.

"I knew the spacial element was key to who I was as a maker," says Hutchinson, one of two installation artists -- the other is Bean Finneran -- featured in the Holter Museum of Art's new exhibition, "Natural Inclinations."

Multi-media artist Sandra dal Poggetto and ceramic sculptor Sally Brogden complete the quartet of mid-career female artists whose work is included in this eclectic but complementary collection. Along with two other brand new exhibits, the show opens with a reception Thursday, July 10, 6-8 p.m.

What is an installation? While the work can vary widely, the simplest explanation is that installation art interacts with the space and the viewer in an integral way.

Last week, Hutchinson spent hours fastening hundreds of leaves and blooms in an array of off-whites to enormous branches suspended from the ceiling in the museum's high gallery.

The work seemed tedious in a way, but also relaxing. And Hutchinson had some help in the form of museum intern Lauren Korn.

While it may not be "useful" in the traditional sense, Hutchinson considers the large scale sculpture she's creating these days to be utterly functional, because it's designed specifically with the viewer's participation in mind.

"I look at nature and I see in nature resolution that's perfect," said Hutchinson, who is exploring the idea of "respecting space" with her latest work. "In nature, things find a way to grow perfectly."

That is not so much the case when it comes to humans, points out Hutchinson; but her beautiful branches and the way they fit into the gallery embody this idea of functional negative space.

"There's collaboration between parts but there's respect between parts," she explained.

Although there's plenty of planning that precedes such a complex undertaking, part of being an installation artist is not being totally sure of how things will go until you get into the gallery.

"Being here influences the formal result," said Hutchinson.

"This is studio space for me right now," she added, explaining that having to do everything out in the open gives the process a "healthy stress element."

A week later, Bean Finneran flew into Helena from France to install a series of her unusual ceramic sculptures, which evoke either natural forms or weird, otherworldly creatures.

Unlike Hutchinson, Finneran says she embraces the "performance" aspect of the process because she has a background in theater and performance art.

"I've always loved, you know, arriving in an empty place," she said.

Finneran's strange sculptures are assembled from thousands of small ceramic "curves" in a wild variety of colors. She hit on this versatile shape years ago and has been working with it ever since.

The curves allow her to build towering, beehive-like structures, rings that resemble bird's nests and a variety of other forms. All hand rolled, fired, glazed and painted, no two curves are alike, giving Finneran's work a complex, organic feel.

"That blade of grass, snowflake thing; that's interesting to me," she said.

On this day, Finneran was truly having to go with the flow as far as installing her work, since her assistant was delayed in the Bay Area.

She walked one ring's perimeter, casually placing curves wherever struck her fancy.

Finneran has thousands of these things boxed up in a storage facility near her home. When she gets a new project, she can decide which colors to bring along and how to put them all together.

"Everything is just different every time," Finneran said.

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