Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2021/ No. 163 i Western Art Collector

Welcome spring! With the change of the season, we are so excited to bring you some of the most popular shows of the year, including Cowgirl Up! Art from the Other Half of the West at Desert Caballeros Western Museum in Wickenburg, Arizona; Night of Artists at the Briscoe Western Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas; and March in Montana in Great Falls, Montana. In addition to these great events, we have some highly anticipated museum coverage, including an in-depth preview on Creating the American West in Art at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, Tennessee. Events and shows are starting to bustle this year, both online and in person. And yes, we miss seeing our collectors at events and shows. Our entire team is getting excited to attend some…

February 20 Wyoming Art Auction Jackson, WY – (866) 549-9278 February 27-April 4 Masters of the American West Los Angeles, CA – (323) 667-2000 March 6-7 Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market Phoenix, AZ – (602) 252-8840 March 17-20 Out West Art Show & Sale Great Falls, MT – (406) 899-2958 March 18-20 March in Montana Great Falls, MT – (208) 664-2091 March 26-27 Briscoe Museum’s Night of Artists San Antonio, TX – (210) 299-4499 March 26-May 9 Cowgirl Up! Art from the Other Half of the West Wickenburg, AZ – (928) 684-2272 Through March 19 C.M. Russell Museum Sealed-Bid Sale Great Falls, MT – (406) 727-8787 April 10 Scottsdale Art Auction Scottsdale, AZ – (480) 945-0225 May 30 Santa Fe Art Auction’s Art of the West Santa Fe,…

It’s hard to drive through Arizona and not see Ed Mell paintings at every turn. The spires of Monument Valley—Mell has been there. Desert washes suddenly full of water from a passing storm—Mell’s been there, too. Low-lying valleys in northern Arizona, sprawling vistas in Navajo Country, the Grand Canyon, pink and purple sunsets in the Sonoran Desert—yep, he’s painted them. All of them. Other artists discover Arizona, but the native Phoenician was born with it in his DNA. His home state makes a starring appearance in Mell’s newest show, opening March 4 at the Ed Mell Gallery in Phoenix. “It was a fun show to put together, especially since I couldn’t really do anything else,” he says, referring to the pandemic and its health-related restrictions. “I did find some time…

Manitou Galleries notes that cowboys used interesting phrases that were unique to the ranges, trails and corrals of the West. One of those phrases was “ace high,” which means first class and respected. The gallery is now taking that casual cowboy slang and using it as the inspiration for a new group show. Ace High—which opens March 5 at the gallery’s Palace Avenue location in Santa Fe, New Mexico—will feature the works of eight top artists at the gallery. “This show provides the collector with a glimpse of the original American West and what impact Westward Expansion had on the cowboy, the Native, the animals and the land,” the gallery says. Artists in the show include Kim Wiggins, JD Challenger, Curtis Wade, William Haskell, Bryan Haynes, David Riley, Greg Woodard and…

I t was one year ago this month that the world changed for many of us. I still remember where I was when it happened. I was sitting in our Western Art Collector and Native American Art booth at the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market at the Heard Museum in Downtown Phoenix. As people streamed into the event, they shuffled past a hand sanitizer station and a sign asking for sick people to stay home. I remember a woman wearing a face mask. It seemed so surreal and strange at the time. A year later, it is the new normal. Here, in what is my first issue of Western Art Collector as executive editor, I find myself reflecting back on that time. Not because of some misplaced nostalgia—make…

What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why? The Denver Art Museum anticipates reopening its Gio Ponti-designed Martin Building in the late fall of 2021. This will include a reinstallation of all the permanent collection galleries, including the Western American art collection on the seventh floor. It will be an opportunity for audiences to see the collection like never before! What are you reading? For general reading, I have just started Barack Obama’s memoir A Promised Land. In the art realm, I have been reading Clyfford Still, a book edited by John P. O’Neill that accompanied the artist’s 1979 retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum. The latter is an interesting case of an artist allowing personal letters to shape the…

Oklahoma sculptor Paul Moore has been named as the recipient of one of the nation’s most prestigious sculpture awards, the Special Medal of Honor. The award will be presented to Moore this summer by the National Sculpture Society, which has only given the award 45 times in its 127-year history. Moore, an emeritus member of the Cowboy Artists of America, will be the 28th artists to receive the honor, joining artists such as Daniel Chester French, who created the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and Paul Manship, renowned for his sculpture of Prometheus in New York’s Rockefeller Center. Moore is widely known in the West for his evocative and sensitive portrayals of Native Americans, as well as for his massive 365-foot long Oklahoma Centennial…

Now open at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis is Hard Twist: Western Ranch Women, a photography exhibition featuring the work of photographer Barbara Van Cleve, who pointed her camera at the resilience of women ranchers throughout the West. The exhibition, which runs through April 25, features 62 black-and-white photographs. Van Cleve is a Montana rancher who grew up with firsthand experience of cowgirl life, pursued a second career in documentary photography after retiring from a career in academia. Inspired by her mother, Van Cleve spent much of 1986 through 1994 traveling the Rocky Mountain West on horseback, gathering images and interviews from women of the West in their natural elements. For more information about the show, visit www.eiteljorg.org.…

After a year of uncertainty, Colorado-based painter Jill Carver aims to keep things simple for her next exhibition. “I just wanted to do a showcase of small paintings from my travels,” she says. “Most of them tend to be intimate scenes, sourced from me wandering and hiking different [terrains].” The artist will present around 15 new works, mostly 20-by-20 and 12-by-16-inch pieces, and potentially a larger 30 by 60. “I think this is the first time since [I started painting] that everything was cleared off the calendar,” Carver says of all the free time she’d been unexpectedly given due to the pandemic. “So I decided this fall to hunker down, to get back to basics.” That meant taking several camping trips, often with her dog Ellie, to some of the…

Heritage Auctions introduced its Art of the West sales last year and has had great success catering to the Western art market at all levels with its offerings. The next iteration of the sale will happen online on March 12, but beginning February 19 collectors can start placing bids for their chance to take home new pieces for their collectors. Featured are primarily contemporary works, but there will be notable historic items hitting the block as well. “The sale includes everything from Western bronzes—we have Allan Houser, Fritz Scholder, Dave McGary, Dan Ostermiller—to a lot of work by great cowboy artists and Native American artists,” says Alissa Ford, Heritage’s director of Western art. She adds, “I really push this sale to young collectors who are just getting started, people who…

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, has acquired a major watercolor from Thomas Moran and is unveiling the work as part of the museum’s 60th anniversary celebrations in 2021. The work, painted around 1879 and titled Mount Superior, as viewed from Alta, Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah, will be the centerpiece of the exhibition Thomas Moran’s Mount Superior, which will bring together photography, works on paper and popular culture from the period while documenting a rarely explored time of Moran’s career. The work itself is lightly painted, but shows imposing mountain forms, subtle detail in the surrounding valley and Moran’s delicate use of color. Thomas Moran’s Mount Superior will be joining other exhibitions in the Amon Carter’s year-long festivities, including Photography is Art and An Expanding…

Now open at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, is The Equestrian West: Photographs by William Shepley. The exhibition, which runs through April 11, features the work of William Shepley, who started documenting Western horsemanship in the 1980s. His passion took him to rodeo arenas, the backcountry of the Sierra Mountains and ranches in cattle country. Images include those of trick rider and roper Janna Copley, who rode with the Riata Ranch Cowboy Girls. “It’s the colorful characters, their personalities and styles, projected on the big screen, the West, that attracts my lens,” Shepley says. The museum’s McCracken Research Library acquired the group of prints that make up the exhibition in 2018.…

For the past 11 years, InSight Gallery in Fredericksburg, Texas, has paid homage to its state by hosting an exhibition dedicated to Texas artists living and work today. The 12th annual Texas Masters Show will feature more than 40 works, paintings and sculpture, that highlight the individual talents, inspirations and voices of these gallery artists. Among those participating this year are Nancy Bush, Jill Carver, Cheri Christensen, Douglas Clark, Teresa Elliott, Jim Eppler, Bruce Greene, David Griffin, Francois Koch, Kyle Ma, Kay Northup, Gladys Roldan-de-Moras, Aleksander Titovets, Lyuba Titovets and Ann Kraft Walker, to name a few. San Antonio-based artist Tony Pro, who was born in Northridge, California, paints a number of subjects including people and places that represent the Old West. Among his works is the portrait Cowpoke, which…

With so many travel restrictions in place due to Covid-19, most of us have forgotten the luxury of getting out on the open road once again. Illustrator turned fine artist, Dennis Ziemienski, has painted people reminiscing of happier times of travel and leisure with his upcoming show Grand Canyon State. Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery will be hosting Ziemienski’s unique series of oil paintings inspired by travel poster art, old travel decals, matchbook covers and trading post shops, all of them featuring the state of Arizona. Ziemienski’s new work introduces text into his paintings, strongly reflecting his earlier career as an illustrator. “I’ve done things like a Kentucky Derby poster and a Super Bowl poster,” he explains. “I did a lot of graphic design and I thought, let’s bring some…

Thomas Moran (1837-1926) emigrated to the United States from Bolton, England, when he was 7 years old. He discovered the American West in 1871 on a trip to Yellowstone. It inspired him so much that he decided to devote his life to depicting the West. Andrew Bolam was born nearly 125 years later and about 150 miles from Bolton in Newcastle Upon Tyne. Times had changed. Bolam recalls, “I grew up watching cowboy and Indian movies and TV shows and wildlife documentaries. Nothing is more exotic and captures the imagination of children around the world quite so much as the recent history of the American West. As a boy I was enthralled.” He studied graphic design in England and moved to Southern California where he worked as a freelance illustrator.…

In 2020, the Briscoe Western Art Museum was set to host its annual Night of Artists exhibition and sale to a robust crowd of collectors, artists and sponsors. Two weeks prior, however, Covid-19 caused the museum to cancel all in-person events and change course to an online format. The online show was met with a great response and inspired the museum to revise its structure for 2021 as a hybrid format that will include events beginning March 13. Michael Duchemin, president and CEO of the Briscoe, says, “We are planning for 50 percent capacity, and instead of two days of events everything in-person will be taking place on Saturday, March 27. [We are] investing in the ability to livestream as well as have online aspects to the event.” Last year,…

Western Art Collector magazine has changed the way artists, galleries and collectors connect. It has closed the gap that previously existed in the Western art market. Spectacular and instant SOLD! stories keep rolling in. On this page you can read just some of the feedback pouring into our office from coast to coast on sales and connections achieved. And now that the virtual version of the magazine launches up to 10 days before the printed edition arrives, collectors can find new art even faster. 1. Edgar Payne goes above estimates at California sale At John Moran Auctioneers’ California & American Fine Art sale in Monrovia, California, were a number of fantastic Edgar Payne works. Among the highlights of the November 2020 sale was this gorgeous California scene from around 1922.…