When Matt and Heather Holmes put their fiery hot 2,000-degree ceramic pieces into metal buckets of sawdust, they don’t know what the end result will be.

The unpredictability of their finished pieces is part of the excitement, and one of the reasons the Polson husband and wife were named the next Treasured Montana Artists by Secretary of State Linda McCulloch.

Their raku-fired ceramics, mixed-media art and oil paintings are on display through mid-July at the Montana State Capitol.

Raku is an ancient Japanese ceramic firing process in which clay is removed from a kiln and then air-cooled or placed in combustible materials to manipulate the glazes. In addition to wood shavings, the Holmeses often add leaves and grass to alter the finished product.

“Each time we open the container after the piece has cooled, it’s a surprise,” said Matt, the art teacher at Polson High School. “We never quite know what we are going to get with this process.”

Sometimes barometric pressure can alter the effects, Heather added.

“The low pressure systems we like,” she said. “The unpredictability is why it is so exciting for us.”

McCulloch launched the Treasured Artist exhibit in 2009 to showcase Montana artists whose work is tied in some way to Montana. She personally selects each featured artist from a competitive pool of nominated candidates.

The Secretary of State called the Polson couple “an exceptional talent.”

A Stevensville native, Matt was inspired to pursue an art degree by his middle school art teacher who mentored him. He breezed through classes at the University of Montana, earning a degree in art in 1994. After being cooped up in a tiny photo lab in Missoula for a while after college and having to continuously smell the menthol cigarettes his boss was smoking, Matt vowed to go back to school and get his teaching credentials.

He had studied mostly painting and photography during college, but delved into clay sculpture when he accepted the teaching job in Polson. Eventually he set up an outdoor firing process for his students.

“The kids love playing with fire,” he said.

The couple set up a kiln at their home north of Polson and began churning out pieces.

Heather, who grew up in Iowa, also has had a lifelong penchant for art, but her college years steered her to a degree in marketing and finance from Mankato State University in Minnesota.

After they were married, she commuted to Missoula, where she worked in a rehabilitation unit for five years.

Along the way, the couple built their own mountaintop home, had two daughters, and Heather ran an in-home day care for eight years.

“It was a full house, and we have some interesting road stories,” she said about the winding gravel road leading to their remote home.

The three-dimensional cowboy hat raku-fired piece, one of their signature art pieces, started somewhat as a joke, Heather said, but has become one of their best sellers. Some of the raku pieces feature designs made with horse hair, clipped from the tail of Opie, the family steed.

Like many Montana families, they’ve relied on a mix of incomes to make ends meet. Matt worked construction during the summers for years until the recession all but shut down new construction in Northwest Montana. Heather currently teaches preschool at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Polson.

Matt also has a part-time photography business, Flathead Photography, and shoots a few senior portraits and weddings here and there.

They dabbled in art shows starting in about 2009, making family vacations out of trips to shows in places such as Lewistown.

“We were still figuring out what people will buy,” Heather said. “We found a niche with Western-style that moves the bigger pieces.”

It’s tricky business packing up 200 pieces of fragile ceramic artwork to take on the road, so the couple whittled their list of art shows gradually to those where their work sells the best. This summer they’ll display at shows in Virginia City, Bigfork and the Butte Folk Festival.

Their pieces are for sale at the Sandpiper Gallery in Polson, where Heather volunteers her time, and at a gallery in Hot Springs.

Some of their raku-fired pieces such as the Griz football have big commercial appeal, and their daughter Madison, 8, is also a budding artist whose copper carbonate-glazed plates, cups and bowls sell well. Four-year-old Macy is still shaping her art skills.

Heather teaches art as a volunteer at Cherry Valley and Linderman elementary schools in Polson and arranges for students to have their own “gallery night” at Sandpiper Gallery. The couple also teach adult-education classes in the fall to share their knowledge of raku. They make all of their own glazes, another unique feature of their artwork.

In lauding the Polson couple for their Treasured Artist status, McCulloch said their exhibit “is an integration of the arts and sciences, and a celebration of the element of chance.”

Past and present Treasured Montana Artist exhibits are featured in an online gallery at sos.mt.gov/gallery.

More information about Holmes Fine Art can be found online at holmesfineart.wordpress.com.