The fishes of Madison County

By DANIEL PERSON Chronicle Staff Writer

ENNIS -- From Trudi Gilliam’s mountain home just outside of town, you can visually trace the Madison River’s course by following the line of deciduous trees in the valley below.

ALTON STRUPP/CHRONICLE Professional metal artist Trudi Gilliam stops for a portrait with the rainbow trout she is painting for the Madison County Economic Development Council’s “Fish Out of Water Community Art project.” The river has given Gilliam a lot: a place to fish, a place to bird-watch and now, inspiration for her latest artistic endeavor, something she calls “an interesting challenge.”

Along with 11 other artists, Gilliam has been charged with the task of painting a 250-pound, 5-foot-long, fiberglass trout for the Madison County Economic Development Council’s “Fish out of Water” project.

“I lived in the Caribbean most of my life, and I tell you, this looks like a shark,” she said Sunday of the monstrous rainbow trout in her garage.

While Gilliam doesn’t have much in common with the trout, she said there is one thing, given that she is a sculptor painting a fiberglass fish: “We’re both fish out of water.”

The Madison County project mirrors the paint-a-critter projects scattered around the country. Right here in Montana, West Yellowstone did a similar project with bison, as did Great Falls. Missoula has grizzly bears. Billings has mustangs.

But Madison County might be unique in that it will be represented by a non-mammal, the county’s economic development director Sam Korsmoe said. The company that makes the fiberglass figures said Madison County was the first to order trout.

Artists from as far away as Yakk have signed up to put their mark on a fish. They submitted thumbnail sketches of their ideas and 12 were chosen.

Once the artists finish their work, the fish will be placed in sponsoring businesses across the county, then sold after a year. The project looks to create some public art in the county, increase foot traffic in businesses where the fish are on display and raise funds for the development council, the artists and local charities.

But first, they need to be painted.

Gilliam chose to depict the birds of prey that live off the fish that spawn in the Madison River. So far, she’s painted a bald eagle, a pelican, a kingfisher, an osprey and a great blue heron.

On Sunday, she took to the tedious task of circling the black dots of the trout’s scales with copper, for accuracy’s sake. She’s acutely aware that in this neck of the woods, plenty of people know the anatomy of a rainbow trout, and she’d better get it right.

She’s had to refresh her memory a few times, like when she tried to remember what the mouth of a trout looked like.

“Ideally, I’d like to catch one and look in the mouth,” she said, adding that muddy runoff has frustrated her fly-fishing so far this summer.

But again and again, she kept coming back to the sheer size of the project.

“This isn’t a trout, this is like the whale of Jonah,” she joked. “Now I know how Michelangelo felt.”

Daniel Person can be reached a dperson@dailychronicle.com or 582-2665.

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