“Sole Mates: Cowboy Boots and Art” celebrates the art of the West and views cowboy boots as important symbols of Western life. The exhibition, which will be on view at the New Mexico Museum of Art May 14⁓eptember 5, includes paintings, drawings, sculptures, postcards, advertisements, 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.
Exhibition organizer Joseph Traugott, PhD, summarized the goal of the exhibition, saying, “‘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.
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 a playful tone for the exhibition. Western songs will play in the background of the exhibition.
The historic section of the exhibition includes works by Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell and Herbert “Buck” Dunton. This section also describes the construction of boots through the work of Deana McGuffin, a third generation bootmaker from Albuquerque, N.M.
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.
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 Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons, but also presents a powerful antiwar commentary.
On view will be Oklahoma artist Lisa Sorrell’s leather sculptures, such as “Butterflies and Bluebirds,” which is a pair of cowboy boots and captures the essence and irony of the West.
James Drake’s waterless lithograph “Valley of the World” relates to his Tony Lama boots with inserts of red snakeskin 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 snakeskin 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.
Accompanying the exhibition is Sole Mates: Cowboy Boots and Art , published by the Museum of New Mexico Press.
The exhibition was organized by the New Mexico Museum of Art, Department of Cultural Affairs, Santa Fe.
The museum is at 107 West Palace Avenue. For information, www.nmartmuseum.org or 505-476-5072.
