Idaho Conservation League staff took two long months to carefully review a litany of compelling applications from Idaho artists seeking to be Idaho Conservation League’s next Artist in Residence. After much deliberation—there’s some incredible talent among Idaho’s creatives—ICL is very excited to announce that Jasper Vanspoore will join as our 2025/2026 Artist in Residence!
Jasper Vanspoore grew up wandering the mountains between Montana and Idaho and swimming in the rivers flowing below them. In the granite mountain basins and thick cedar forests of her childhood, Jasper fell in love with the natural world—and she creates art to celebrate this love. Through her work, she strives to understand the personality of a landscape: the place where ridges become valleys, the path a river takes to carve through stone, and the way sunlight dances across tree lines.
Jasper primarily works with watercolor and gouache, mediums she began exploring while living and working as a sea-kayak guide in the Alaskan rainforest. There, she taught herself to paint, finding a powerful connection between the fluidity of water in nature and on paper. As a river and sea kayak guide–navigating rapids, eddies, and tides–she learned to trust and understand water; a relationship that now inspires her artistic process. In 2018, she returned to the river canyons of Idaho and has since guided multi-day trips on the Lower Salmon River every summer, deepening her understanding and love of Idaho’s wild spaces.
In 2022, Jasper graduated from the University of Montana in her hometown of Missoula with a degree in English Teaching. Her educational journey also included time at the University of Alaska Southeast in Ketchikan, where she studied ethnobotany, archaeology, and anthropology with Haida and Tlingit teachers. These studies deepened her belief in the interconnectedness of humans and the natural world, and instilled a hope that people can live in reciprocity with the land.
For the past three years, Jasper has taught English at McCall-Donnelly High School in Valley County. Now, she is thrilled to begin a new chapter with Idaho Conservation League—an opportunity that allows her to develop her career as an artist while continuing to advocate for the landscapes that inspire her.
From 2013 to 2020, ICL invited one artist annually to join in celebrating Idaho’s natural beauty—and the advocacy that’s done to protect it—through ICL’s Artist in Residence program. Combining forces with multiple talented artists over the years to explore the nexus of art and nature, this program has been enjoyed by conservation and fine art enthusiasts alike.
The program returned in 2024, reinvigorating the excitement of previous years, while at the same time bringing a fresh and vibrant new energy with the newest iteration of the program.
For a preview of the vibrant, lively imagery to come, check out Jasper’s website.