Writing

Till there's no feeling left by Alex ZIv

Alex Ziv | Tailor Made for Today
Western Art Collector | Profile

Dialing in from Grass Valley, a Sierra foothill town where California’s hippies and cowboys collide, Alex Ziv curses his shoddy Zoom connection. Rural Wi-Fi is one tradeoff the artist made leaving the city for this, until recently, snow-burdened corner of the world. A tatted-up, bearded 30-something, Ziv sits in a lofty studio strewn with Navajo textiles, Western shirts, old toys, retro tattoo art and ephemera from across the ages.

As a collector of kitsch, he definitely has an aesthetic. These objects and ideas often make their way into his practice, although in altered forms. His art is a mashup of motifs lifted from his travels through the Southwest and his own take on life in the 21st century. An amalgam of corporate logos, pop culture references, ancient art forms and yesterday’s headlines, his paintings are beautiful, tense and as contradictory as America itself. READ MORE

Sophy Brown | Horse Power
Western Art Collector | Profile

Dripping spray paint. Lost and found forms. Dust, muscle, power and pain. Sophy Brown’s horses take you from chaos to calm and back again. Standing in front of one, it’s clear why they’re showstoppers. But as you spend more time with them, their glamor gives way to grit.

Barbara Van Cleve | Accidental Feminists
Western Art Collector | Booth Museum

In her decades-spanning career, Barbara Van Cleve traveled through country where feminism was and still is a dirty word. Born into ranching herself, the intrepid photographer pointed her lens toward women who weren’t looking for labels. They were busy doing what needed to be done: Raising kids and cattle. Mending fence and mending clothes. Some lived hours from the supermarket. Some off grid. And not because it was cool.

For Van Cleve, photographing women ranchers was a way to add them to the historical record, to give a voice to their vital, often unsung contributions. Opening April 15 at the Booth Western Art Museum, Barbara Van Cleve: Women of the West celebrates these vignettes of rarely seen ranch life. READ MORE

Whitney Gardner | Mojave Rising
Western Art Collector | Profile

Whitney Gardner paints a desert unknown to most, including visitors to Joshua Tree National Park. Dotted with odd-looking vegetation—ocotillo, jumping cholla, and the Dr. Seuss-looking trees that give the park its name, her boulder-strewn stretch of the Mojave quickly gives way to dry lakebeds and spare landscapes that double as training ground for U.S. Marines headed to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Her nearest town is 29 Palms, the northeastern gateway to the national park. She lives in Wonder Valley, a small, unincorporated community of ranchettes and desert people doing desert things, another 20 minutes past town. Beyond there lies the kind of landscape that rattles the faint of heart, inspiring names like Skeleton Pass, Lost Horse Mine and Devil’s Playground. Keep diving east and you’re at the Colorado River. Cross it, and you’re in Arizona. READ MORE

Sean Michael Chavez Western Art Collector

Sean Michael Chavez | ICONS
Western Art Collector | Acosta-Strong

“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. READ MORE

Doug West | Desert Solitaire
Western Art Collector | Blue Rain Gallery

At 75, Doug West is still chasing after that deep desert space. His latest show at Blue Rain Gallery, Chaco Canyon and Beyond, brings West’s vision of Arizona and New Mexico alive in oil. From White Sands to the Grand Canyon’s South Rim, the artist pairs desert landmarks with botanical elements in a design forward style that’s made him a New Mexico luminary. READ MORE

Sushe Felix | Rocky Mountain Modern
Western Art Collector | Manitou Gallery

Modernism is a loaded term. To some, it means the art of today. And to others, it’s a movement pioneered by bold new artists a century ago. For Colorado-based painter, Sushe Felix it’s a little of both. “It’s messing with it and turning it into your own interpretation,” Felix says of modernist landscape painting. “For some artists, that involved some cubism, for other artists, no,” she explains, referencing regionalist painters from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s who traveled west in search of fresh opportunities and inspiration. READ MORE