New Mexico Museum of Art
Sole Mates: Cowboy Boots and Art
Teal McKibben's boots, made by Montana
Boots, courtesy of the estate of Teal McKibben, photo by
Blair Clark.
Santa Fe, NM —Sole Mates: Cowboy Boots and Art
celebrates the art of the West and views cowboy boots as
important symbols of western life. The exhibition
includes paintings, drawings, postcards, advertisements,
sculptures, video imagery, and of course boots. The
images define changing aspects of the West, from 1880 to
the present. The exhibition includes more than 130
objects and pairs of boots that investigate freedom,
loneliness, gender, fashion, allure and contemporary
art.
Joseph Traugott, Ph.D., summarized the goal of the
exhibition by stating that “Sole Mates broadens our
understanding of the West and western art, and
encourages discussions between western artists and the
general public.” He is curator of twentieth century art
at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico,
and the organizer of Sole Mates.
Two Cowgirls
Each section of the exhibition is titled with a line
from a well known western song. The introduction— I
See by your Outfit that You Are a Cowboy—sets the
tone for the exhibition which is simultaneously
stimulating, educational, and fun. Western songs will
play in the background of the exhibition.
Finished boots at Deana McGuffin's
shop, 2009, photo by Blair Clark.
The historic section of the exhibition includes works by
Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, and Herbert
“Buck” Dunton. These artists defined and then promoted a
view of cowboy life that is descriptive, inspiring, and
romantic. This section also describes the construction
of boots through the work of Deana McGuffin, a third
generation bootmaker from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Conceptual sections of the exhibition allude to western
attitudes that are infused into boots and art. These
sections incorporate popular culture images that help to
expand the notion of western art beyond the restrictive
stereotype of ranch workers as men on horseback riding
with a herd of cattle. For example, David Politzer’s
video self portrait, Rio Macho, shows the artist dressed
as a middle-aged dude-ranch cowboy bemoaning his lost
youth and his failure to become a working cowboy.
Painting from Dunton-Vigilem
The contemporary art in the exhibition presents the West
in a complex, provocative manner. The nationally known
contemporary western artists in this section include
James Drake, Betty Hahn, Martin Cary Horowitz, Luis
Jiménez, Bruce Nauman, Patrick Oliphant, Bill Schenck,
Lisa Sorrell, and Donald Woodman. The contemporary
artists’ point of view can be summarized by Horowitz’s
sculpture Baby Bomb that references Coyote and
Roadrunner cartoons, but also presents a powerful
antiwar commentary.
Lisa Sorrell, Butterflies and
Bluebirds, September 2008, kangaroo and
crocodile, courtesy and © of the artist.
Oklahoma artist Lisa Sorrell’s leather sculptures, such
as Butterflies and Bluebirds, are included in the
exhibition. In addition, this sculpture just happens to
be a pair of cowboy boots. Butterflies and Bluebirds
captures the essence and irony of the West— while the
sculpture can worn, it may never hit a dance floor.
James Drake’s waterless lithograph Valley of the World
relates to his Tony Lama boots with inserts of red snake
skin that are also in the exhibition. The print shows a
bridge over the Rio Grande connecting Juarez, Mexico,
and El Paso, Texas. A rectangle of snake skin attached
to the print can be understood as both a symbol of the
economic ties bridging the two countries, as well as a
reference to El Paso—the cowboy boot center of the
universe.
Of course, these categories often overlap. Carol
Sarkisian’s Maurice’s Boots, Galisteo, NM . Sarkisian
transformed tin-artist Maurice Dixon’s worn out boots
into jewel-like sculptures, encrusted with glass beads.
This work combines sculpture, popular culture, jewelry,
and western philosophy into a seductive form.
Photo by Greg Mac Gregor, Storm,
Highway 41, New Mexico, 2009, digital photograph,
courtesy and © of the artist
The content of the exhibition is further explained in
Sole Mates: Cowboy Boots and Art, published by the
Museum of New Mexico Press: http://www.mnmpress.org/ The
publication includes 130 full-color illustrations with
narratives by Traugott that further explain the concepts
underpinning the exhibition. The book is designed by
David Skolkin, the press’s award-winning designer.
Sole Mates: Cowboy Boots and Art was organized by the
New Mexico Museum of Art, Department of Cultural
Affairs, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
For more information on the exhibit go to
http://www.nmartmuseum.org/sole-mates.html |
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