Image of the Day - Vintage Photo, May 23, 2012
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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The Photographer, 1938. Vernacular photograph of the West from the My-West.com photography collection. |
Image of the Day, May 18, 2012
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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Demand for paintings by Henry Farny’s (1847-1916) best work is consistently driving prices at auction beyond the high estimate...way beyond. On May 1st Farny’s Southern Plans Indian Warrior (1894) sold for $362,500, a surprising $162,500 above estimate. |
Image of the Day - Vintage Photo, May 15, 2012
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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Howard, c. 1940s. Vernacular photograph of the West from the My-West.com photography collection. |
Shane Yellowbird - Rising Star (Update)
Posted in Music: Music Reviews
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In November, 2011 the 12th Annual Native American Music Awards (Nammys) were announced at a gala show and concert in New York. ... One artist who really stood out was Shane Yellowbird. Yellowbird grew up in Hobbema, Alberta and is Cree. He exploded onto the country music scene in 2006 with the release of his debut album Life is Calling My Name... |
Image of the Day, May 10, 2012
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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Photographed by David F. Barry (1854-1934), “Sitting Bull,” mounted albumen print. Lakota chief and holy man, Sitting Bull (1831-1890) was famous for his 1876 victory over George A. Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in southern Montana. The cabinet card of Sitting Bull, photographed in the 1880s is for sale at Bonhams, Auction in San Francisco, June 5th 2012 at 10:00 a.m. (although the web site reads June 4th at 12:00). |
Image of the Day, May 7, 2012
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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Before the 1960s (and color TV), most television stations turned off all programming at midnight. After 12:00 p.m., and until early in the morning, the only image you could tune into was the test pattern. The dominant and most famous test pattern was the grey scale pattern known as the “Indian Head.” It was introduced by RCA in 1939 and became “an important icon in the 1940s.” It was such a popular image that it was also used in Canada, Rhodesia, Venezuela and Sweden…and Poland. |
Image of the Day, May 5, 2012
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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While Jeff Pugh’s interest in agrarian scenes echoes that of his famous mentor, Gary Ernest Smith, he has created his own unique feel and style. While Smith’s Post-Regionalist work evokes nostalgia for a lifestyle that is rapidly fading from rural America, Pugh’s work is pre-reflective. His minimal forms and reductive colors place one in the immediacy of the scene. When I see his depiction of cows on a field, I feel like yelling “Moo.” |
Image of the Day, May 4, 2012
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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Road trip through New Mexico, 1923. Vernacular photograph of the West from the My-West.com photography collection. |
Dillon, Montana (Repost - January 1, 2011)
Posted in Go West: City Guides
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Five thousand people, one for every foot above sea level. ... 14 bars. ... Seat of a county larger than three US states. Home to an all-round champion rodeo rider and endless supplies of talc. Home also to a cold blooded killer who used a pack of camel cigarettes as a blueprint to build a magnificent stone gate as a gift to his gal, Gracie. |
Image of the Day, May 1, 2012
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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“…always a new horizon—but always back to the deserts of America.” - Ed Ainsworth writing about the artist Don Louis Perceval |
Image of the Day, April 29, 2012
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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“I decided very early that I would be an American painter. I travelled the county over, and the West appealed to me. There is no phase of landscape in which we are not richer, more varied and interesting… ” – Thomas Moran |
Image of the Day - Vintage Photo, April 27, 2012
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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Cowboy coffee, c. 1920. Vernacular photograph of the West from the My-West.com photography collection. |
Image of the Day - Vintage Photo, April 24, 2012
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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This photograph is spooky. Initially, we thought we had added a nice photograph depicting two women fishing to our My-West collection. After scanning it, however, the eerie silhouette of a man in the upper right corner of the photograph was revealed. Any ideas? |
Lodges of the American West (Repost - January 27, 2011)
Posted in Art and Architecture: Architecture
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Gilbert Stanley Underwood crafted a uniquely western brand of architecture whose grandeur derives from its perfect harmony with the most stunning natural landscapes the west has to offer. Underwood designed many of the west's most memorable lodges, including Timberline Lodge, featured as the first installment in our series on Lodges of the American West. |
Image of the Day, April 22, 2012
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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While evidence of human endeavor is obvious, Cobble’s images are unpopulated; an edgy silence and sober clarity pervade the small town scenes. In “Prom Nite,” the mannequins act on layers of shared memory of small town life, holding the promise of youth suggested by the title, but also evoking tension and ambiguity inherent in a plastic model of perfection and its connotation for the persona of a community. |
Image of the Day - Vintage Photo, April 17, 2012
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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Brilliant accidents…the double exposure, 1938. Vernacular photograph of the West from the My-West.com photography collection. |
Image of the Day, April 16, 2012
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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Chief Joseph (1840-1904), Beaded War Shirt, mixed media, variable inches. Estimated to sell at auction for between $800,000 – 1,200,000. Chief of the Nez Perce tribe, Chief Joseph’s given name was Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, translated as Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain. In 1877, this great man whose very name made men tremble, gave his now famous surrender speech,“Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.” |
Image of the Day, April 9, 2012
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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In celebration of Edward Muybridge's 182nd birthday, Google took Muybridge's famous stopgap photography for their logo. Check out the Google video… |
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - The Cross of Snow (Repost - April 5, 2011)
Posted in Writers Camp: Poetry
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Happy Easter! In 1873, a group of explorers led by Clarence King found and photographed a legendary mountain in Colorado called the Mount of the Holy Cross. ... In 1879, the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was looking through an illustrated book of western scenery. There he saw the Mount of the Holy Cross, and he subsequently wrote this poem ...
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Image of the Day, April 7, 2012
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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Another fascinating painting from Carel Pieter Brest van Kempen-- not only does he offer this detailed work, but also lists the species of every image in the painting! “Incidental species in this painting include Field Mushrooms (Agaricus sp.), Milfoil Yarrow (Achilles millifolium), Northern Sweetvetch (Hedysarum boreale), Tapertip Onions (Allium acuminatum), Big Sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata), Curlycup Gumweed (Grindelia squarrosa) Common Dandelion (Taraxacum officianale), Early Paintbrush (Castilleja chromosa), Oregon Grape (Berberis repens), …” |
Impressions of the West: Wallace Stegner (Repost - March 1, 2011)
Posted in Writers Camp: Books
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"Back to Wendell Berry, and his belief that if you don’t know where you are you don’t know who you are... He is not talking about the kind of location that can be determined by looking at a map or a street sign. He is talking about the kind of knowing that involves the senses, the memory, the history of a family or a tribe. ..." The Sense of Place, by Wallace Stegner |
Impressions of the West: Thomas Hart Benton (Repost - Feb. 15, 2011)
Posted in Writers Camp: Books
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"There are great flat stretches of land in Louisiana, there are prairies in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, but the experienced traveler in the United States does not confuse these with the West. Even though these more eastern prairies may present the same great vistas which are connected in our thoughts with the West, they lack the character of infinitude which one gets past the ninety-eight-degree line." - Thomas Hart Benton |
Fashion Week in Paris
Posted in Best Of: Products
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Reporting on Fashion Week in Paris, German Vogue focuses on Isabel Marant’s 2012 Winter Collection, described as easy-going Western-Style. … |
Gary Clark - The Savior of the Blues
Posted in Music: Music Reviews
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Hailing from Austin, Texas, Gary Clark has taken the rock and blues world by storm. He was heralded by Rolling Stone as “the best young gun” and by the Seattle Weekly as “a musical force to be reckoned with, a serious songwriter and a [expletive deleted] of a guitar player,” and he deserves every accolade you could ever dream up. |
The Valentine State
Posted in Go West: Hit the Road
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100 years ago yesterday, Arizona became the 48th state, the last piece of the puzzle in the contiguous US. “May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome dangerous, leading to the most amazing view ... May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.” |
The Rhine's Own Cowboys - The Boss Hoss
Posted in Music: Music Reviews
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Rhine as in Rhine River. These cowboys from Berlin are hugely popular in Germany, and are selling out concerts through much of Central Europe and Britain with their blend of country, rockabilly boogie and plain old good time rock and roll. OK, some sex appeal doesn’t hurt either. In their new CD, The Boys have teamed up with Nena, of 99 Red Balloons fame. I had the hots for Nena in the early 80s and it appears she has only gotten better with age. |
Elegant Eyesore - The Kolb Legacy
Posted in Picture This: Photography Challenge
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The brothers settled on the rim of the Grand Canyon at the head of Bright Angel Trail…in a time and landscape where just getting water pure enough to develop prints meant trekking down into the depths of the canyon and back up…often three times per day. Initially they earned a living taking photographs of tourists. |
Snow Alert
Posted in Best Of: Apps Wrangler
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And if the Snow Alert App sends you up Little Cottonwood Canyon above Salt Lake City, you might just get a glimpse of this gal … Caroline Gleich … professional skier, model, and lots of other stuff … |
State of the Union Station
Posted in Art and Architecture: Architecture
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“We have tried to express the distinctive character of the railroad: strength, power, masculinity.” -- Gilbert Stanley Underwood – Architect, Union Station – Omaha, NE |
Cowboys & Kiwis - AKA Beauty & The Bodice
Posted in: Picture This: Movie Reviews
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The film is called ‘Good For Nothing’ and will go down as the first western movie ever filmed in New Zealand, which I guess is good for something. It’s been doing the rounds of the film festivals to generally positive reviews and will see limited US release this spring. |
Norah's Country-Side
Posted in Music: Music Reviews
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Long years in the Big Apple have neither extinguished that Texas twang, nor the torch Norah Jones carries for country. “I love playing country music,” she says. “More than any other genre, it makes me feel at home.” That from a jazz artist who has sold over 40 million albums since her stunning debut in 2002. |
Hey Doll, Where’d You Get That Kachina Dress?
Posted in Best Of: Products
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My-West’s fashion savvy friend, Diane, turned us on to the latest fashion to hit Paris this year. Japanese designer Issey Miyake who was inspired as a youth by Japanese artist Isamu Inokuma’s paintings and sketches of Kachina Dolls, has created a new line of summer clothing based on those early sketches. |
BOOKS: The Schopenhauer Reading Society
Posted in Writers Camp: Books
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My great great aunt, if I can believe what my mother told me when I was a child, started the Schopenhauer Reading Society in Idaho Falls, Idaho in the 1880s or 1890s. My mother was proud of this aunt – proud that she’d been an intellectual in the early days of the state, and that she’d read books that didn’t make it on her religious community’s list of approved works. Even the title – the Schopenhauer Reading Society, named after the philosopher, professional curmudgeon and pessimist Arthur Schopenhauer – seemed to be a statement of my aunt’s independent spirit. ... |
Gary Cooper – Enduring Style
Posted in Writers Camp: Books
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“He conveyed a straightforwardness and an honest, American handsomeness that seemed to both ignore and rise above the contrived glamour and studied posturing that had characterized so many other film heroes...No matter what costume he put on, he looked like he owned it. The camera loved him, and so did the box office.” – Gary Cooper: Enduring Style |
The Morning of the Morning
Posted in Writers Camp: Poetry
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By Mary Crow, Poet Laureate of Colorado: Why let it matter so much?: the morning’s morningness, |
Impressions of the West: Willa Cather
Posted in Writers Camp: Books
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"'Because,' he roused himself from his abstraction and looked about at the company, 'because a thing that is dreamed of in the way I mean, is already an accomplished fact. All our great West has been developed from such dreams; the homesteader`s and the prospector`s and the contractor`s. We dreamed the railroads across the mountains, just as I dreamed my place on the Sweet Water. All these things will be everyday facts to the coming generation, but to us--' Captain Forrester ended with a sort of grunt. Something forbidding had come into his voice, the lonely, defiant note that is so often heard in the voices of old Indians." |
Unbridled Enthusiasm
Posted in Go West: News of the West
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December 13th is the ‘National Day of the Horse’ in the US. Yes, we realize you weren’t aware of that fact. That’s why My-West is here! The congressional resolution reads in part: “Whereas the horse is a living link to the history of the United States; Whereas, without horses, the economy, history, and character of the United States would be profoundly different.” |
As a Matter of Fact I WAS Brought Up In A Barn!
Posted in Art and Architecture: Architecture
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We come honestly by our barnyard bona fides. Our Grandpa was a rancher and gifted builder, responsible for one of the most beautiful barns in Beaverhead County. In those days hay was for horses and horseplay was for haylofts and I doubt that in his wildest dreams Grandpa could have imagined humans might someday want to inhabit his equine temple. |
Painting Mount Olympus - No Easy Task for Mere Mortals
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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Mount Olympus is not the tallest mountain in the Wasatch Range, but anyone who has seen this natural wonder will agree with the early pioneers who bestowed upon it the Greek name for ‘the home of the gods.’ Mount Olympus acts as an anchor in the Salt Lake Valley, an unchanging reference point locating residents both in their environment and their history. |
Rifleman Redux
Posted in: Picture This: Movie Reviews
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Oh my God! This is too good to be true! Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, The Rifleman is returning to a home entertainment system (AKA boob tube) near you! CBS is working on a reboot of the original hit that made Chuck Conners a household name in the early 60s ... |
The Artist's Studio: Part 1
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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Even with the familiar smells of turpentine, linseed oil and paint dominating your sense of smell, the artist’s studio can be a mysterious place to visit—an alchemical chamber where elements are mixed, stirred and modeled to become valuable impressions of beauty. Although most studios have high ceilings, towering north facing windows and waxed wooden floors, they can tell a lot about how an artist chooses to work, the props they use and the ambiance they need to be inspired. |
Paintings Without Color: The Grisaille
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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Grisaille paintings are often offered for sale by western art auctions and galleries today. Oftentimes you’ll hear viewers wondering why the artist “didn’t finish the painting.” The simple answer is the works are finished. Newspapers and magazines in the latter part of the 19th century and early 20th needed black and white images for their publications—especially as they tried to fill the high demand of their readership for images of the West. |
Before Lassie, There was Rin Tin Tin
Posted in Writers Camp: Books
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”He believed the dog was immortal,” is the opening line of the book Rin Tin Tin, The Life and the Legend written by Susan Orlean. The story begins when Corporal Lee Duncan found the pup in a bombed out kennel in France during World War One. The dog went on to make over 23 films, and he was the subject of books, radio programs and television. In the end it was not the tricks or the feats of power that made the dog a star, it was and remains the unwavering bond between humans and man's best friend that made him a household name and an icon of Hollywood history. |
The Navajo Code Talkers
Posted in Special Features
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The Navajo code talkers accrued praise throughout the war for their skill, speed and accuracy. At Iwo Jima, six code talkers working around the clock sent and received over 800 messages in the first two days of battle. The 5th Marine Division signal officer said of their dedication: ‘Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.’ |
A Closer Look: Paintings by Connie Borup
Posted in Art and Architecture: Painting, Photography and Sculpture
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Connie Borup’s depictions of fall foliage are not inherently nostalgic, in fact far from it. She avoids the spectacular colors of fall using instead a tonal palette of dry grays, and browns and yellows. But the images act as a mainline for deep memories of fall, perhaps because as P.D. James wrote, “It was one of those…autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.” |
The Race Against Summer - Haying Season
Posted in Picture This: Photography Challenge
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Stacking was by far the worst chore, a summer sentence of sweat and swirling hay dust and the sense of constantly climbing up out of quicksand. The one reward at season’s end was a slightly heavier paycheck and a body that was way beyond buff. |