Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2022/ No. 180 i Western Art Collector

Welcome to the August issue of Western Art Collector! This month we are supporting our sister publication, Native American Art magazine, the official magazine for SWAIA’s Santa Fe Indian Market. The market is celebrating its 100th year and team Western Art Collector will be there August 20 and 21 to represent and participate in the festivities. There will be 800-plus Native American artist booths in the Santa Fe Plaza that expands throughout the city during this great celebration of art. Please see our coverage of the event beginning on Page 118. This issue of Western Art Collector also spotlights the C.M. Russell Museum’s annual auction, The Russell, which runs from August 18 to 21 in Great Falls, Montana, the same weekend as the Santa Fe Indian Market. Our feature, Modest…

THROUGH SEPTEMBER 4 DESERT CABALLEROS WESTERN MUSEUM Cowgirl Up! Art from the Other Half of the West Wickenburg, AZ – (928) 684-2272 www.westernmuseum.org THROUGH SEPTEMBER 5 BRISCOE WESTERN ART MUSEUM Sons of Charlie Russell: The Cowboy Artists of America San Antonio, TX – (210) 299-4499 www.briscoemuseum.org THROUGH SEPTEMBER 12 CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART Let’s Talk: Art of the West Bentonville, AR – (479) 367-7500 www.crystalbridges.org THROUGH SEPTEMBER 30 HIGH DESERT MUSEUM Art in the West Bend, OR – (541) 382-4754 www.highdesertmuseum.org THROUGH OCTOBER 3 MT. KEARSARGE INDIAN MUSEUM One Hundred Years of Hopi Katsinas Warner, OH – (603) 456-2600 www.indianmuseum.org THROUGH OCTOBER 16 THE BRYAN MUSEUM Of Birds and Texas: The Art of Stuart and Scott Gentling Galveston, TX – (409) 632-7685 www.thebryanmuseum.org THROUGH OCTOBER 23 NATIONAL COWBOY &…

1 PAINTER LEAH LUCAS UNVEILS NEW WORK Fresh off the easel at Leah Lucas’ studio is this cowboy work titled “…Think you lost your shoe along here.” She says of the piece: “It is reminiscent of my days riding on the ranch. I wanted to evoke the feeling of space—the kind of space you can only get on the open range. Although the horse and cowboy insist on being in the foreground, they are set against the wildness, the expansiveness and the clarity of a crisp winter day. The cowboy and his horse have been down this road before—you can feel the patience and the respect they have for each other. And neither of them is in too much of a hurry for the afternoon to end. Almost as though it…

Few places in the art world are as exciting as downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico, during late August: The weather is not quite perfect, but very close, with ideal temperatures and magnificent rain showers in the afternoon. There is a new art opening on nearly every corner. The atmosphere is festive and jubilant and people stream into town to participate in the Santa Fe Indian Market. Santa Fe truly becomes the center of the Southwest. Joining that wonderful mix this year is Oreland Joe, who will be presenting approximately 20 new works at a solo show opening August 19 at Manitou Galleries, which sits barely a football field away from the Santa Fe Plaza. Joe is no stranger to these historic streets—he guesses he’s shown in Santa Fe for 18…

For the month of August, Mockingbird Gallery in Bend, Oregon, examines new paintings by seasoned Western artists Tom Browning and John DeMott in Western Traditions—two bodies of work that are complimentary and yet, very different. Both artists note that there isn't a lot of crossover of subject matter and they have very different styles, but their portrayals of varying historical time periods are truly breathtaking and illuminating placed side by side. “My work will represent a little more of a Northwest feel, while John’s subjects are more of the Rocky Mountain regions,” Browning explains. “Both of us love to paint subjects of the great American West.” DeMott notes, “Tom and I have been around painting the West a long time—probably around 100 years or so combined…so when I was asked…

Now painting the things that accompanied those memories of yesteryear—ephemera like Western pulp magazines, old-school lunchboxes and Western movie posters—Robert Rodriguez spent most of his life as an illustrator, and is responsible for the Cowboys of the Silver Screen series of postage stamps, Willie Nelson’s album cover for A Horse Called Music, the movie poster for City Slickers II, the Gatlin Bros. album cover for Alive and Well and Livin’ in the Land of Dreams, as well as many movie posters, and several Broadway theater posters. Rodriguez doesn’t paint the Old West as it was; he is more focused on the West as a part of American mythology. As far back as the late 1800s, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows tried to bring eastern audiences a vision of a West…

You just can’t ever escape Charlie Russell. The cowboy Y artist influenced almost everything in Western art. The artists idolize him, the curators fill their walls with his work and collectors scramble for a Russell when it hits the market, which is why his pieces so regularly sell for six and seven figures. We’ve been recording episodes for our American Art Collective podcast and Russell comes up so frequently we’ve come to refer to him as a “friend of the podcast.” And he died 95 years ago! Russell is also the central figure of the C.M. Russell Museum and its annual event The Russell, which is previewed in this issue. The auction portion of the weekend usually gets some terrific works by Russell, and this year is no exception. As…

SEPTEMBER 9-11, 2022 Quest for the West Indianapolis, IN – (317) 636-9378 SEPTEMBER 15, 2022 Western Visions Show + Sale Jackson, WY – (307) 733-5771 SEPTEMBER 16-17, 2022 Jackson Hole Art Auction Jackson, WY – (866) 549-9278 SEPTEMBER 19-24, 2022 Buffalo Bill Art Show & Sale Cody, WY – (307) 587-5002 OCTOBER 8-9, 2022 Cherokee Art Market Santa Fe, NM– (877) 779-6977 OCTOBER 29, 2022 Lone Star Art Auction Dallas, TX – (469) 608-7600 NOVEMBER 2022 (DATE TBA) Cowboy Artists of America Show & Sale Fort Worth, TX – (817) 247-1200 NOVEMBER 2022 (DATE TBA) Christie’s American Art Sale New York, NY – (212) 636-2000 NOVEMBER 2022 (DATES TBA) Sotheby’s American Art Sale New York, NY – (212) 606-7000 NOVEMBER 1, 2022 Hindman’s Western & Contemporary Native American Art Sale Denver, CO…

During The Russell this year Din Great Falls, Montana, the C.M. Russell Museum will honor Medicine Man Gallery owner Mark Sublette with the Charlie Russell National Heritage Award. The award is given to one person annually who has made significant contributions to Western art. Past winners include Howard Terpning, Larry Len Peterson, William Matthews and many others. “I was surprised and a little shocked,” Sublette says. “I’m very grateful because this is a prestigious award. I don’t see myself in the realm of some of these great recipients, but I’m honored to be included.” Not only is Sublette a gallery owner, he also has a hit podcast, Art Dealer Diaries, and is a published author. His most recent book was on Maynard Dixon, a topic he will speak on in…

Honoring the extraordinary history of the horse in all its nobility and strength, the annual Hold Your Horses! Exhibition & Sale returns to the Phippen Museum in Prescott, Arizona, for its ninth year. Taking place in the museum’s expansive Marley Gallery, the invitational show and sale highlights artwork from 50 of the top Western artists in the country known for their superb equine art. Barbara Meikle is one of the many talented artists in this year’s show and sale. “Color and texture are two things that excite me about painting,” she says. “They help me transport my equine visions on canvas in an extraordinary way. The Hold Your Horses! Show at the Phippen is a great venue for my creative work—a chance to experiment, play and go wild with my…

The month of August is a busy one for Manitou Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico, as the ever-popular Indian Market descends upon the town for four days, bringing people from far and wide to enjoy art, events and festivities. Manitou joins in all the fun beginning August 5 with Statements, a show of new paintings by BC Nowlin, who uses Western imagery to depict what he describes as “the journey of mankind.” Opening August 18, the gallery will also host JD Challenger’s new Native American portrait paintings in Stories of the Ancestors—a show to inspire and educate viewers on the Indigenous peoples of North America. Nowlin’s show, displayed through August 15, will be a continuation of his renowned, colorful style that often combines a landscape setting with figures walking…

A my Lay is not your garden-variety wildlife artist. She does not work from reference photos. Carefully rendering fur and feathers doesn’t interest her either. Instead, Lay’s singular style reveals foundations in drafting and observation, movement and gesture. “I think I’m just becoming more and more rebellious as I get older,” says Lay as she prepares for her one-woman show at Mountain Trails in Jackson, Wyoming. She notes that gallery owner Adam Warner has played a pivotal role in her ability to take risks in her career. “He lets artists be artists. I get to kind of experiment, and I think my style needs that,” says Lay, an artist known as much for her hand as for her brush. She’s created a mode of mark making that incorporates graphite and charcoal…

The Santa Fe Indian Market, formed in 1922, will celebrate its centennial this summer in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The event, which started out in Santa Fe’s Armory Building as a modest yet successful art showcase for Native American artists, has ballooned to be one of the largest open-air art events in the world with more than 800 artist booths, music and dance performances, a fashion show and much more. Western Art Collector’s sister publication, Native American Art, is returning as the official magazine for this year’s market. “We are very excited, especially coming out of last year when we were very much dealing with Covid-safe practices. We will still be working with Covid-safe practices, but this year’s market is bigger and it’s truly going to have a new perspective,”…

The return of the in-person event known as Bighorn Rendezvous at the Brinton Museum, is highly anticipated after last year’s virtual only event. While the exhibition portion of the event opens July 9, to include contemporary style paintings and bronzes by 13 artists of merit in the Western category, many look forward to the popular Quickdraw and Art Auction to occur on the closing day—August 27. “The goal is fresh, high-quality work,” says director and chief curator Ken Schuster of the selection process this year. “[In addition] these artists have the confidence of our curatorial staff and most of them have participated in past museum shows, or we are familiar with their work from other recognizable shows and events.” Schuster also notes that the exhibition keeps things fresh by adding…

Arizona painter and sculptor John Coleman will be unveiling his newest batch of work at a solo show opening October 8 at InSight Gallery in Fredericksburg, Texas. The still-untitled show will feature 10 new works from the prominent artist, whose last two shows in Scottsdale, Arizona, were huge milestones in the Western art market. The show will feature a mixture of paintings, drawings and new bronze works, including a sculpture of Crazy Horse. “The point for me is to have some balance among all the work, from drawing, painting and the sculptures,” Coleman says. “I also try to have a mixture of men, some women and then also some children as well. It provides that balance that I want.” For several of the larger works on paper, Coleman is not…

To mark an important Tmilestone in Denali National Park, artist Veryl Goodnight created the painting Lucky Puppies – The Denali Park Canine Patrol. “This the 100th year that Denali National Park has used dog teams to patrol the vast wilderness,” Goodnight says. “I flew into the heart of Denali in March 2019 to observe the patrol at work. Among their many tasks in addition to patrolling 2,000 miles of trail in the dead of winter, is monitoring scientific equipment that has been installed to track climate change. Many of the human rangers are young women such as Julie Carpenter. Julie is now the head Canine Patrol Ranger.” Goodnight says the title of the work refers to five free-running 8-month-old pups in the painting. One litter is raised each year by…

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Like many people before him, Winold Reiss was lured to the West by the books, and illustrations therein, of James Fenimore Cooper, author of quintessential classics such as The Last of the Mohicans and The Deerslayer. In 1913, after leaving his German home and sailing to the United States, Reiss was somewhat shocked not to see the American West splayed out in front of him beyond the dock where he landed. Broke from the voyage, Reiss would spend seven years in New York City before making that fateful journey west. When he arrived in 1920, it didn’t take much to get him hooked. He would return to Montana annually for nearly three decades after. One of the places Reiss ended up was in Browning, Montana, where he painted the Blackfoot…

“There are metaphors about going from the frying pan into the fire,” Sean Michael Chavez laughs, recounting his plunge into the Western art world. Just three years since his first solo show in Santa Fe, New Mexico, his gritty portrayals of cowboys and the landscapes they call home have caught the eye of collectors and museum curators across the country. “It’s just blown me away,” says Chavez, whose CV includes the curator’s award at New Western Talent, a spot at the Couse-Sharp Historic Site benefit La Luz de Taos, and a second invitation to the Coors show in Denver next January. “The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is particularly poignant for me,” says Chavez, a frequent visitor to Oklahoma, where his wife’s family lives. “To be able to hang…

Mateo Romero was brought up in Berkeley, California, educated at Dartmouth College, the Institute of American Indian Arts and the University of New Mexico. Although much of his experience has been urban, he is deeply connected to the Rio Grande Pueblo world through his father’s Cochiti Pueblo roots. In 2019, the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico, named him and his brother Diego as recipients of the Native Treasures Living Treasures award. He explains: “The Rio Grande Pueblos worldview is different from that of mainstream America. Whereas Western European culture can be said to view man as distinct from the landscape and his environment, Indigenous culture tends to view man as an active part of the land. The Tewa have a word for this, ‘Poeh…

When Star Liana York was in high school on the East Coast, she took an arts and crafts class where she learned to cast using a centrifugal machine. “It’s a small and inexpensive machine that they used to use for things like dental casting,” she explains. York purchased her own casting machine and started working in miniatures. After some early successes, she felt the pull to create larger works. “Miniatures are all about action and energy, but with larger pieces, I realized I could work with subtle energy that seemed to be coming from within,” she says. “I got hooked on that.” But it was difficult finding a reliable foundry on the East Coast, so York packed her bags and moved to Santa Fe. The move suited her, as she’s…

Prior to John James Audubon’s paintings of birds, ornithological drawings were wooden and static. Audubon (1785-1851) stuffed the dead birds with cotton and arranged them in life-like compositions with wire. Penelope Gottlieb uses reproductions from Audubon’s extraordinary portfolio of engravings, Birds of America, as the basis for her own contemporary observations. She comments, “The painful paradox of Audubon’s work remains that his wonderful images of nature relied on its ghoulish and insatiable exploitation.” She sites Audubon remarking that “a day without shooting a hundred birds is a day wasted.” She notes, as well, that at the time Audubon hunted and painted, nature was thought to be abundant and would perpetuate itself indefinitely. In her Invasive Plant series, she says, “The images stage an invasion of this historical imagery, enacting the…

Patricia Griffin’s vibrant compositions are a contemporary manifestation of humanity’s earliest muse. Her oil paintings of animals on linen burn slowly as they stir the mind into daydreams of travel and encounters with exotic and indigenous beings. She goes to great lengths to study, photograph and sketch her kinetic subjects. Griffin utilizes subject matter as a testing ground for concepts of color, value and structure—all notably unique and memorable in every painting. Along with being a well-known painter, Griffin is also a great photographer, which is a skill that lends itself to the creation of her paintings. She spends lots of time photographing wildlife on all of her trips, including numerous trips to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, every year. “We say she is an honorary local after she fell in love…

August 19, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Best of Show Ceremony and Luncheon Santa Fe Community Convention Center, 201 W. Marcy Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501 Ticketed event; $150 August 19, 2-4 p.m. Members Only: Sneak Peek of Award-Winning Art + Silent Auction Santa Fe Community Convention Center Ticketed event; $75 August 19, 4-6 p.m. General Preview of Award-Winning Art Santa Fe Community Convention Center Ticketed event; $40 August 20, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Santa Fe Indian Market Santa Fe Plaza and surrounding streets Free August 20, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Plaza Entertainment Santa Fe Plaza Free August 20, 2022, 6-9 p.m. SWAIA Gala: “Shiny Drop” Centennial Party, Fashion Show and Auctions Santa Fe Community Convention Center Tickets required; $250 August 21, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Santa Fe Indian Market Santa Fe Plaza and surrounding…

The High Desert Museum’s annual Art in the West exhibition and silent auction will unveil a stellar collection of traditional and contemporary art this summer. The invitation-only, juried exhibition showcases more than 90 works of art by dozens of the top Western artists in the country. “The High Desert Museum explores the Intermountain West through wildlife, science, history, art and cultures. And every year, Art in the West reflects that same varied exploration,” says executive director Dana Whitelaw. Ranging from traditional to contemporary, visitors can explore sculptures, paintings and photography, as well as several mediums new to the exhibition this year, including sagebrush, plexiglass, sandstone and enamels. “The gallery walls will be filled with everything from detailed wildlife paintings, such as the wolves in Doyle Hostetler’s Companion Comfort, to the…

Santa Fe Art Auction wrapped up another successful Art of the West sale on May 27 and 28, earning $565,750 in total sales across the 464-lot sale, with 85-percent sell through rate. “There was strong bidder activity and [clearly] the Western market continues to perform,” says auction president Gillian Blitch. “A lot of it is because this is our expertise, this is what we do best—demonstrate the diversity of Western art.” The first session, on May 27, was a sale of textiles and multiples, and session two on May 28 yielded strong results for originals. A John Nieto 1988 painting, Big Horse Southern Cheyenne (est. $12/18,000), soared above estimate at $26,840, earning the top lot for the sale. “[The piece] is just such an iconic Native American image,” Blitch remarks,…

There was a sparkle on much of the Prix de West as it celebrated its 50th year at the Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. The show was a bit fancier. The artists pushed themselves just a little harder with their artwork. Even some of the rugged cowboy-types ditched their Wranglers and went black-tie for the evening. The red carpet was rolled out to mark a milestone. On June 17, hundreds of visitors descended on the Oklahoma City museum for the opening weekend, which included receptions, art demos and several speakers, including Greg Beecham, who spoke about his career as a wildlife artist. The main event took place June 18 during the by-draw sale, followed by an auction that achieved more than $600,000 in the course of an hour. Top auction…