On View November - February
New Western Landscapes
Sponsorship Opportunities Available
The American West is interpreted and reinterpreted through a variety of perspectives in this group exhibition.
Artists include Wendy Bowman Butler, Rachel Dory, Felice House, Sheila Miles, Michael Namingha, Micah Ofstedahl, Greg Piazza, Alan Ross, and Dana Younger.
New Western Landscapes features a diverse group of artists from the southwest and beyond who interpret terrains through their own backgrounds, perspectives, and preferred medium. Some have enhanced the traditional landscape, while others are expanding the idea of what a landscape can be. The collection includes photography, sculpture, and works on canvas in oils and acrylics. The result will be a mosaic of the southwest landscape.
About the Artists
WENDY BOWMAN BUTLER is an American artist concentrating in photography, painting, and videography. Bowman specializes in portrait, editorial, fashion, family and lifestyle, as well as commercial advertising, corporate headshots, and film production photography. For the past 12 years, her career has been defined by versatility—from working on her own individual projects and exhibitions, to apprenticing an internationally acclaimed artist, and collaborating with major brands. Bowman’s work confronts the layers of perception through a synthesis of the natural and artificial. Her subjects are often isolated—their essences both accented and undercut by their context. Her urban landscapes appear as if they are fabricated movie sets saturated in hard light, while her human subjects are often caught at night illuminated only by the synthetic light of the city. The fragmented composition and vivid color in her photographs evoke intrigue with everyday artifacts and people that would otherwise be overlooked as ordinary.
Texas artist RACHEL DORY is known for her evocative paintings depicting life along the American roadside. Artist Statement - My art examines the “in-between” along the American roadside. These places are familiar to us all; our companions as we travel from one destination to another. Lonely as they may seem, roadside scenes and objects serve as a common language and help us to connect and understand one another. Each piece I create documents a real location that compelled me to stop the car and take another look. While onside I sketch, take notes and shoot photographs. These later serve as reference materials when I sit down in my studio. I use many layers and materials as I paint, building up and scraping away to drill down to the core experience. My intent throughout the process from first sight to final paint stroke is to unlock the mysteries of the location, answer the questions that it poses, and provide an opportunity for others to do the same. A finished painting can take weeks, months, or years to complete. I note the latitude and longitude of each location, and many can be revisited virtually via Google Maps street view. Each piece is meant to serve as a doorway to our own unique stories and memories. I feel that a painting has succeeded when a person approaches and begins,
FELICE HOUSE is a figurative painter who strives, through her portraits of women, to provide a counterpoint to the passive female representations found in art historical tradition and culture at large. Her work endeavors to challenge stereotypes and empower her audience, women in particular, to change their preconceived notions of gender and power. House has exhibited in museums and galleries across the country, as well as internationally. You can find her work in both public and private collections, including The Booth Museum of Western Art, New Mexico State University, Austin City Limits Music Festival, Google Headquarters, Prentice Women’s Hospital, and Pecos Hospital. She has been featured in Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine, Vice Magazine’s The Creators Project, the BBC News, This is Colossal, Upworthy, GirltalkHQ, Hypertext, Refinery29, Boing Boing, Fubiz, El Diario (Spain) and Tabi Labo (Japan). She received a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, an MS in computer graphics from Texas A&M University and an MFA in painting from the University of Texas. She studied classical painting and portraiture at the Schuler School of Fine Arts in Baltimore, MD. She is an Associate Professor in the Visualization Program at Texas A&M University. She is a member of the Baha’i Faith.
SHEILA MILES’ work has been exhibited in over 300 exhibitions, and more than 200 of her works have been collected by public institutions, including New Mexico Arts in Public Places, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Yellowstone Art Museum and Missoula Art Museum. Miles earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Art (Painting & Drawing) from Purdue University. She was Director of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum from 1974 to 1977, Senior Curator at the Yellowstone Art Museum from 1986 to 1990, and has been an Adjunct Instructor at MSU-Billings, MSU-Bozeman and UMT-Missoula. Miles lived in Montana for over 27 years and Santa Fe for 15 years. She now resides in Oracle, AZ.
MICHAEL NAMINGHA (Tewa/Hopi) is a photographer that utilizes his work to document environmental changes and the impacts of industrial excavations. Through his work he's able to create dialogue between the ancestral landscapes of the Pueblo people and the oil industry. His non-confrontational approach invites audiences to engage with his works in ways that allow them to witness the true environmental effects of the oil and gas industries. He aims to bring attention and awareness to the treatment of Pueblo homelands.
MICAH OFSTEDAHL - Born in 1982, in Austin, Minnesota, Micah's early memories of connecting with the creative process began at an early age. From asking his parents for the White-Out when he went outside the lines in his coloring books to later finding inspiration from M.C. Escher and Salvador Dali. Micah took as many art classes as he could in high school and would go on to win the Artist of the Year award as a senior, which propelled him to pursue a BFA at Minnesota State University, Mankato. There, Micah focused on sculpture and ceramics which would later inform his clean, organic, surreal work in acrylic.
GREG PIAZZA - Born in Houma, LA in 1979, Greg Piazza grew up surrounded by nature in the sugar cane fields and bayous of South Louisiana and moved to Dallas, Texas in 2002. Greg began making art to cope with the loss of his brother in 2004; finding peace in creating minimalist compositions focusing on contrasting color, shape, and texture. In 2007, Greg’s work shifted as he explored how the environment shapes our thoughts and emotions. Following the Latin phrase, “Inveniam Viam Aut Faciam - I shall find a way or make one," he seeks out remote landscapes through which he can find a simple and calming connection back to his brother. In 2022 Greg’s wife, Jennifer, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and this inspired the creation of his “Time” series, documenting time in the smallest increments, before Jennifer passed away in 2023. Greg’s photographs consistently include permanent subjects such as mountains, boulders, or architecture, metaphors to everlasting memories of his brother and Jennifer, juxtaposed with moving elements such as clouds or water.
ALAN ROSS is a renowned photographer whose unique vision combines traditional photographic methods with today’s technology. He worked side-by-side with Ansel Adams as his photographic assistant, and was personally selected by Ansel to print his Yosemite Special Edition negatives. Alan is a sought-after teacher who inspires professionals and amateurs to prepare their minds for the moment when light, beauty and chance, define opportunity.
DANA YOUNGER is a Texas sculptor who earned a BA in Theater from the University of Texas at Austin. His experiences in the theater, as well as in construction and boatbuilding, led him to a career in fabrication. Younger began his work as an artist as a founding partner of Blue Genie Art Industries, an art fabrication company, and the Blue Genie Art Bazaar, an annual holiday art show now in its 18th year. Currently he is the Exhibits Manager for Texas Parks and Wildlife where he works with writers, designers and fabricators to make exhibits for Texas state parks. His sculpture work has been featured in galleries throughout Texas and the US including the Meijer Sculpture Garden in Grand Rapids, Michigan, New Mexico State University, the Louise Hopkins-Underwood Center for the Arts in Lubbock, Texas, Wright State University in Ohio, Purdue University in Indiana, Abilene Christian University, Texas A&M and Stephen F. Austin University in Texas . He says, “Sculpture is a complex puzzle that provides a steady stream of unique challenges to solve, that’s why I love it.”