Home, home on the web…
I’ll never look at a piece of humble A4 photocopier paper in quite the same way again after seeing the range of works by amazing Danish artist Peter Callesen.
Just look at the detail and creativity that must go into his paper scultures:
Cowboy
53 x 40,5 x 7 cm.
Acid Free A4 115 gsm paper, glue, acrylic paint and oak frame
Some days you just hit pay dirt - that was the feeling I had when I came across this fantastic store tucked away in Hakanoa St in trendy Grey Lynn, central Auckland.
The owner Tom is a wild west aficionado with genuine American connections and a passion for all things cowboy themed.
He self-built the store/home in the traditional adobe style of New Mexico - how much more passion for the American south west can you get that that?
Out the front of Trigger Happy is parked Tom’s yank barge and an assortment of selected clothes displayed in a small covered wagon reminiscent of so many settlers’ transport of choice. There’s even room to tie up your horse.
Inside there are racks of old western shirts and jackets, a selection of classic guitars (Tom and his wife play country music in their act Tennessee Sister), native American blankets and cowboy boots galore. More stock arrives regularly from contacts in the US.
If you’re in the area I highly recommend a visit!
‘The Long Walk’ is etched into the memory of the Navajo Nation as a time of death and defeat when many died during the forced migration from their ancestral home of the Canyon De Chelly area of northern Arizona, 300 miles south to Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
Stanley Stewart, writing a travel piece in The Times about this most magnificent part of the American south west, gives a great summary of this period in American history - the 1860s - now looked back on with a sense of shame.
To the Indians of the American Southwest - the Navajo, the Apache, the Hopi and numerous others - the great ellipse of red-rock country between the Rio Grande and the Colorado River is the sacred land of their own beginnings. It was here that the first of their ancestors climbed through the sipapu, the hole in the earth, to emerge in this world.
At the heart of the region is an area known today as the Four Corners, for the four states that meet here - Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. It is one of the emptiest and most dramatic parts of the continent. To the west, it abuts the Grand Canyon.
To the north, it fades towards the surreal rock formations of Monument Valley, which have played a starring role in countless films, from John Ford’s Stagecoach to Back to the Future III. And occupying the largest part of it is the Navajo Nation, a swathe of country almost the size of Scotland.
Read the comments written by readers and you understand the mixed feelings today about the ‘genocide’ of the native American tribes during the period of westward expansion. The strongly held views are wildly divergent.
Cowboy Country sits at the heart of this region and I’d highly recommend a first hand visit to many of the sites mentioned. For now though take in this set of Flickr photos by Sublime Dharma of the Canyon De Chelly and Hopi Reservation:
