Many of the artists and architects profiled inside this issue call our attention to the conversations surrounding the “New West,” a term that emerged among a group of academics known as the New Western Historians in the 1980s. Following the societal changes of the 1960s, they...
Good design, Chad Dorsey says, is all about emotion. “Our spaces tell our stories — the art that inspires us, the places we’ve traveled, who we love, and how we live,” he says. “My inspiration comes from the many different facets of my clients’ personalities.” [caption...
About five years ago, award-winning Western and plein-air painter Tim Solliday learned he’d have to vacate the Pasadena, California, studio where he’d worked for more than a decade. The one-time atelier of famed early-20th-century painter and illustrator Frank Tenney Johnson had provided Solliday with ample...
When the owners of a parcel on Santa Barbara’s vast, historic Hollister Ranch asked Dan Weber and Steve Willson to design a guest house, they suggested the architects hike up to the site, eschewing the usual dirt road, to take a first look. Fifteen-minutes, a...
During my first night at The Oasis at Death Valley, this city slicker was captivated by an eye-popping plethora of stars forming a hazy band of light across the black sky. This was outmatched the following morning when Mother Nature illuminated the panorama with a...
An Andy Warhol image of Elvis Presley, like the artist’s paintings of Marilyn Monroe, is pure Americana, a mirror reflecting early 1960s culture and its fascination with celebrity. Elvis as a singing teen heartthrob, a beach-scene matinee idol, is double Americana. But Warhol added another...
Dr. James Harken, a retired dentist in Spokane Valley, Washington, never dreamed of becoming an art collector. He spent his formative years in Cartersville, Montana, where his family lived without running water, indoor plumbing, or electricity. “My father became an attorney after putting himself through...
The gorgeous lady may be staring at you, but don’t feel self-conscious. She stares at everybody. If you are staying at Chicago’s Kimpton Hotel Allegro, you’ll inevitably meet Lady Lucent of Awakening, an 8-foot-tall self-portrait of artist Sarah Raskey that always surprises guests during check-in. [caption...
Pulling on a pair of borrowed rain boots, I hop into an ATV with Tim Soderquist, land manager of Spread Oaks Ranch. We drive off, splashing through the occasional puddle. It’s a foggy spring morning, a little moody out after last night’s thunderstorm, and there’s...
If you think Nashville is just about the music, you’d be right — and wrong. The city embraces the soubriquet “Music City U.S.A.,” but it’s so much more. Long before it became the home of country music, it was known as the Athens of the...