Indian Market Awards
Navajo artist Sarah Paul Begay won Best of Show and the Best of Classification award in textiles and basketry at August’s Santa Fe Indian Market, sponsored by the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts. The Artists’ Choice award went to Phillip John Charette (Yup’ik), and the following artists were honored with Best of Classification awards: Edison Cummings (Navajo), jewelry; Russell Sanchez (San Ildefonso), pottery; Alex Jacobs (Akwesasne Mohawk), paintings, drawings, graphics, and photography; Aaron Fredericks (Hopi), wooden Pueblo figurative carvings; Marvin Oliver (Quinalt), sculpture; Rhonda Holy Bear (Cheyenne River Sioux), diverse art forms; Jamie Okuma (Luiseno/Shoshone-Bannock), beadwork and quillwork; and Jessica Growing Thunder (Assiniboine Sioux), youth.
Out & About
Carol Swinney received the Best of Show award for view from the top at the Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters show held this summer in Winter Park, CO…. John Lunsford, a former curator at the Dallas Museum of Art, has donated oak cliff, a painting by Robert Jenkins Onderdonk (1852-1917), to the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, TX…. Colorado-based nature photographer John Fielder has relocated his gallery to 833 Santa Fe Drive in Denver. John Fielder’s Colorado shares the space with Reed Photo Art Gallery…. loyal friends, a painting by Canadian artist Paul Van Ginkel, has been chosen as the image for the 2007 Calgary Stampede poster…. The Berlin Gallery at the Heard Museum Shop and Bookstore in Phoenix, AZ, is scheduled to open on November 17. The new retail gallery presents American Indian art by established and emerging artists, including Steve Yazzie, Doug Hyde, Fritz Scholder, and Norman Akers.
Record Crowds at Western Rendezvous
The annual Western Rendezvous of Art in Helena, MT, held in August drew record crowds with sales totaling more than 
$411,000. The John Scott People’s Choice Awards went to Jim Wilcox for his oil painting winter frost and to Rosetta for her sculpture red fox. Huihan Liu won the Ben Shahl Artists’ Choice Award for his entire body of work, and Barry Eisenach took home the Heritage Award for his sculpture medicine shield. Josh Elliott’s ulm ranch was recognized with the Legacy Award and added to the Montana Historical Society’s permanent collection. Elliott, Wilcox, Ralph Oberg, Matt Smith, George Strickland, and Laura Robb received Awards of Excellence.
Top Sellers
Altermann Galleries’ record-breaking sale in August at the Eldorado Hotel in Santa Fe, NM, totaled $531,855. Of the 262 artworks on view, Oleg Stavrowsky’s oil painting washington heights was the top lot, fetching $31,050. Other top sellers were Tim Solliday’s husking corn at $17,250 and evading trouble by Edmund F. Ward at $16,100.
Art of the New
California figurative painter Ryan Wurmser won the Grand Prize award for his charcoal drawing, turbulence, at the Artists for the New Century show held in August at the Bennington Center for the Arts in Bennington, VT. Brent Cotton received the Southwest Art Magazine award, and the following artists took home other top honors: Shanna Kunz, Calvin Liang, Peggy Watkins, Michael Shankman, and Greg Wilson.
Western Artists and Collectors Converge
Artists and patrons from across the country converged at the Hubbard Museum in Ruidoso, NM, for the annual Western Artists of America show and sale held in August. Arturo Chavez won the Best of Show Award for his painting where the buffalo roam, which sold for $65,000. Phil Beck received a Gold Medal and the Artists’ Choice award for his painting soft & gentle. Ken Rowe also took home a Gold Medal award for his sculpture blue heron. Other Gold Medal winners include William George and Roger Archibald.
Featured in November 2006