As someone who’s lived in New Mexico for more than 25 years, Kiki Martinez considers herself a “Westerner” and feels this identity appears in her art. Her home and studio are located near Santa Fe in a pine forest, and she loves waking up to...
For MacCracken Robinson Architects, everything concerning design springs from the creation of a concept. The concept itself can be as simple as the juxtaposition of old and new, but it serves both as the guide to conceiving a design and a base to return to...
Floating Stone Leather Cuff by Denise Hagood With a long career as a jewelry artist, Denise Hagood’s specialty is pairing vintage brass and sterling silver hardware with gemstones and aged leather to create one-of-a-kind necklaces and cuffs that can be worn anywhere, anytime. “I aim for...
San Francisco has a mood. While certain urban locales have their landmark sites and the right geography and weather, a city’s mood is something less definable, more atmospheric, enigmatic, mysterious, a sensation that hovers. When I travel to San Francisco, I pause atop any of...
Historic preservation and adaptive reuse shape urban architecture across America. In Colorado, there are few examples as significant as the Renaissance Denver Downtown City Center Hotel, in part because this particular effort has saved a masterpiece by Colorado mural artist and illustrator Allen Tupper True...
What is the true West, and why does our search for an answer matter today? Will James straddled a fine line between real and imaginary, fact and fiction, the mythological and genuine article. He traversed, as an artistic underdog, the boundary between invention and reinvention, often...
It was a revelation when Krystii Melaine realized she could step outside the box of Western American art, her realm for three decades. Or, more accurately, “My brain exploded,” Melaine says, laughing. Not that her paintings of wildlife, cowboys, and Native American subjects — internationally...
Chipeta Trading Company founder Don Siegel likes to discuss his “three rules of collecting” in the context of the historic Navajo and Pueblo jewelry he sells (or, to use his preferred term, “Indigenous wearable art”). “The first one is to find somebody who’s already made...
In the West, art and architecture serve not only to convey beauty but also to establish connections — to the land, history, culture, and others. This sense of connection is what we hope to promote at Western Art & Architecture by sharing creativity that is...
Blue Sky Red Rocks Bracelet by Diana Ferguson A perfect example of wearable art, Diana Ferguson’s work blends traditional peyote stitching with architectural and geometric interpretations to make bead-woven sculptures in jewelry form. “My goal is to create interesting pieces that work as fashion and also...