Packing a one-two punch of vibrant art, Anna Stump and Ted Meyer convey their own individual and unique visions of the American West in the terrific 118 Degrees, Tales from the Desert now at Roswell Space in LA.
Stump offers a fantastic, delicate, and profoundly beautiful series of desert flora on paper with 100 Smoketrees or Fuck You, Cowboy Artists of America. Providing a deep dive into a lush and continually evolving desert weed, Stump serves up her vision of natural beauty along with a delightful scoop of disdain and for the once heralded so-called Cowboy Artists of America, who excluded women from their arts association.
Along with her Smoketrees, Stump has created a series of luminous, emotionally engaging desert landscapes, depicting homesteads and skylines and desert terrain on long discarded found objects such as buckets, cans, and shovels. These are precious and precise jeweled images that ache with the longing of open skies and sweet Western homecoming.
Meyer provides vibrant, colorful, story-telling art, with images that rejoice in Meyer’s recent transition to desert living. There are vividly colorful and whimsical horses, guitar players, fiddlers and lariat throwers, giant jack rabbits, and big-footed beautiful women. The images are filled with joy and a sense of fun, exuding the fullness of life. With a touch of Chagall and a whisper of Rousseau, Meyer gives viewers compelling, heartfelt, and richly amusing images that shape wondrous tall tales and swishy horse tails, too. The works are both dream and delight.
The artists, who both reside in California’s Mojave Desert, together provide a complete, witty, charming, and poetic depiction of western life. Their combined solo exhibitions are alternately playful and profound, with each artist exhibiting terrific and memorable works that are as perfectly realized as they are meaningful.
The exhibition closes February 25th, with a reception from 2 to 4 p.m.; the gallery is also open by appointment most days. So, hurry on in before this rainy month ends, and capture a little desert sunshine.
- Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis
Love their art and appreciate your introducing it to us readers!
Looks like a great show, and a great writeup too, Genie!
thanks so much 🙂