Parks Reece designs specialty plate
Artist Parks Reece on Tuesday at the Park County Treasurer’s Office holds the new Montana license plate he developed. The license plate will help support the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Foundation. (Justin Post/Livingston Enterprise photo)
Originally published in The Livingston Enterprise on August 26, 2020
By Justin Post/Enterprise Staff Writer
The work of Livingston artist Parks Reece is featured in galleries, books, benches, murals and in homes and businesses in Montana and beyond.
And now you might see it zooming down the interstate or a dusty Montana road and all points in between.
Reece’s artwork is featured on the new Montana license plate supporting the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Foundation, or ABWF, and is now available to purchase at county treasurer offices across the state.
The colorful plate features a large, Yellowstone cutthroat trout with — in the whimsical style of Parks Reece — a grizzly bear riding on its head. There’s a yellow sun in the top right and a mountain range along the bottom of the plate, which includes the artist’s signature.
Livingston resident Bob Hughes, who serves on the Abasaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Foundation Board, said it occurred to him last year that many nonprofits have a specialty plate to help raise money for their mission and that the ABWF should, too.
Hughes reached out to Reece with the idea of a specialty plate that would help support the ABWF, and the artist volunteered his time to create the plate. Livingston resident Rob Park also volunteered on the project, lending his graphic design skills.
Hughes said the foundation is pleased with the final product.
“We were pretty sure it would be a best seller — we thought it would be very popular all around the A-B Wilderness,” he said. “There really is nothing I think that compares to it for being distinctive. Somebody puts it on their vehicle and it really jumps out at you.”
Reece said he agreed to the project because he supports the foundation’s work and preserving wild places in Montana, such as the 944,000-acre Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.
“I want to do good things for people I believe in,” he said.
Reece said he’s heard from people all over the United States about the license plate and even received a phone call from Africa.
Reece said the development of the plate required some back-and-forth with officials at the Montana Department of Justice, which reviews and approves new plates before they are produced at the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge.
Park, who collects license plates, said he worked between Reece and state officials to ensure the final plate met state specifications.
“My job was to take Parks’ artistic vision and kind of shepherd it through the red tape of the Montana Highway Patrol and the state prison and all of the different echelons of government entities that had to have their say in it,” Park said.
For instance, Park said slight adjustments were made to the artwork to ensure the Highway Patrol could easily read the license plates numbers. With those changes made and accepted by the state, the plates were produced and shipped to treasurer’s offices.
“The bottom line was we were able to keep it looking really good — close to what the original was — and that’s attributed to Rob and the work he did,” Hughes said.
The Park County Treasurer’s Office sold out of its first shipment of the new ABWF plate, but a second shipment arrived earlier this week and another 30 plates are on order, said Ginger Fahrney, the office’s senior clerk.
“They seem to be pretty popular — they’re pretty cool,” Fahrney said.
Hughes said the ABWF is unique among the dozens of other specialty plates available in Montana.
“It’s got the distinctive Parks Reece style,” he said. “We’re very happy that he so generously participated.”
Additional plates may be ordered if on-hand supplies run out at the Park County Treasurer’s Office, located in the City-County Complex at 414 E. Callender St. in Livingston.
For more information or to check on availability, contact the Treasurer’s Office at 406-222-4120.