Archives for 2025 September-October Issue

By Western Hands

By Western Hands

August 7, 2025 | by

  If you aren’t familiar with By Western Hands, we’re going to change that. This unique organization, located in Cody, Wyoming, is dedicated to educating, conserving, and perpetuating the legacy of Western design and craftsmanship. “By Western Hands focuses on functional art—art that is beautiful and has a function,” says Harris Haston, an art collector and chairman of the organization. That craftsmanship includes Western furniture, leather goods, jewelry, accessories, and decorative items. By Western Hands’ artisans create art you can wear, display, sit on, ride on, lay your head on, or turn on. Read the full article in the September/October
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Beautiful Moments, Dramatic Light

Beautiful Moments, Dramatic Light

August 7, 2025 | by

  If you ever find yourself looking at a colored pencil painting by Eileen Nistler and want to climb inside it, you’re feeling exactly how the artist felt when she created it. “When I look at something from history, I feel like I want to crawl into it and have a look around,” she says. Nistler’s beautifully composed—and created—still life paintings are artistic jewels. In fact, many of those paintings include jewelry that she has inherited from family and been gifted by friends. Nistler is best known for her still life paintings, but her subjects also include figures and ranch
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Answering the Call

Answering the Call

August 7, 2025 | by

  Ten years ago, Starr Hardridge accidentally discovered the style that now defines his work. A citizen of the Muscogee Creek nation, he was invited to submit work for the Return from Exile show, which was planned to spotlight artists from the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee Creek, and Seminole tribes. Hardridge had been studying the basketry, pottery, and beadwork designs that those tribes had done before they were relocated to Oklahoma. He discovered that much of the traditional beadwork of his Muscogee ancestors was left behind when they left the Southeast. He wanted to resurrect that tradition in his painting
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Poetic Landscapes

Poetic Landscapes

August 7, 2025 | by

  June Dudley’s vibrant paintings capture a moment in time, an emotion, a ghost of memory. Combined with dynamic lighting and design, her attunement with color creates a mood that is sometimes whimsical, sometimes majestic, but is always inviting and approachable. “One of my collectors told me, ‘I have not seen anyone painting in the vivid and vibrant colors and detail you do, and at the same time being able to capture and convey such powerful moods,’” Dudley says. “That pretty well sums up my goal in art.” The Texas artist has always had one goal: painting. Life doesn’t always
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Keeping It Fresh

Keeping It Fresh

August 7, 2025 | by

  “I don’t like clichés,” says Western artist Brett James Smith. He recognizes that his chosen genre is replete with familiar tropes: the backlit pastoral scene, the regal Native American chief, the faithful dog, the sunlit brook, the swaggering cowboy. Although you will find those landscapes and figures in Smith’s portfolio, he is determined to paint them in such a way that you won’t mistake his work for anyone else’s. “I’m always looking for a fresher look at any subject,” he says. “My number one priority is to do things that haven’t been done, or at least to bring something
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The Beauty of Birds

The Beauty of Birds

August 7, 2025 | by

  As long as there are birds in the skies, Bill Rice will sculpt them. That’s essentially the work ethic, the focus, and the passion with which he has been operating for more than 40 years as an artist who specializes in avian wood carvings. The winner of several awards, including the 2024 People’s Choice Award at the Adirondack Experience Museum in Blue Mountain, New York, Rice’s home is in an area of Connecticut where he can walk outside and see different types of birds every day. Summer walks with his wife, photographer Brooke Rice, present endless subject matter. “This
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The Excitement of Plein Air Painting

The Excitement of Plein Air Painting

August 7, 2025 | by

  “I look at the world as color notes.” So says Michele Usibelli, and to realize the truth of that statement, all you have to do is look at one of her paintings. Splashes of color and bursts of light jump off the canvas, almost daring you to look away. You can’t do it, however; her brushstrokes sweep you into and around the painting, creating a visual journey that you don’t want to end. Usibelli’s own journey began when she was a young girl growing up in Seattle, Washington. By the time she was in second grade she knew what
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The Studio of Dustin Van Wechel

The Studio of Dustin Van Wechel

August 7, 2025 | by

  Before wildlife artist Dustin Van Wechel built his current studio, he worked at an easel standing alone in the corner of a “disturbingly sparse” room in his Arizona home. At the time, fellow artist Krystii Melaine stopped in for a visit and was excited to see the studio of an artist she admired. He tried to warn her that it was nothing to get excited about, but his words fell on deaf ears. “My studio hit her like a death in the family,” Van Wechel says, and jokingly adds that he thinks that his reputation diminished considerably in Melaine’s
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