Fred King is an interesting guy. I've known him since 1990 but he started dealing in Native American material back in 1967. He's one of the earliest individuals to have had a Native American art gallery in San Francisco. It's interesting to hear about the early days and what it was like to be in the bay area back then participating in both the music and art scenes. When it comes to music and movies specifically, Fred is quite erudite - plus, he loves early British motorcycles. It shows you the t...
Jul 13, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 202
I had Steve Elmore on the podcast today and I've known Steve since about 1995. He's an interesting guy with a unique story. You see, Steve grew up about 100 miles away from where I did in Carlsbad, New Mexico. He had an intimate relationship with Carlsbad Caverns, which, if you haven't ever been to, is this immense natural wonder of the world. It's not unusual that he ends up specializing in Pueblo pottery years later (you know, clay, earth, all that good stuff) Steve's journey from teacher, to ...
Jul 06, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 201
I had Logan Maxwell Hagege on the podcast today. He's such an interesting person and a wonderful artist. I think you'll really enjoy this podcast as it's my 200th podcast. It's appropriate for Logan to be my guest on this milestone episode just because of the ride we've had together and how I’ve had the pleasure of watching him mature as an artist over the past 20 years. I remember him when he was in his early twenties. You could see there was a mountain of talent there, but he was struggling to...
Jun 29, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 200
I had Matt Fitzsims on the podcast today and he wrote a wonderful book called 'The Counterfeiters of Bosque Redondo: Slavery, Silver and the U.S. War Against the Navajo Nation. I read this book twice, actually. There's so much in-depth history. I feel like you can actually hear the voices of the people sharing their perspectives of these dark times. Truth is, it was a devastating time for the Navajo people from 1849 to their release from Bosque in 1868. The book not only tells the story of the t...
Jun 22, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 199
I had Jeff Mitchell on today. I've known Jeff for around 27 years and he's a really interesting guy and a very sweet man who loves art and has a unique background like so many art dealers do. This podcast tells the story of how Jeff became a leader in his field, primarily dealing in art by deceased artists, with a specialty in Maynard Dixon, which is an area that he and I have in common. We hear about the constant evolution in Jeff's life, from joining the marines to being a construction worker ...
Jun 15, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 198
I had Philip Garaway on the podcast today. I knew it would be a very interesting podcast and I also knew it would also go very long (which it did). It was over two hours so we're going to break this into two episodes. Part 2 of the Philip Garaway interview is about his transformation into a leader in the field of Native American art. He started selling items in 1975 as a 23-year-old and even had a show at the gift shop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Philip goes on to discuss the ...
Jun 08, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 197
I had Philip Garaway on the podcast today. I knew it would be a very interesting podcast and I also knew it would also go very long (which it did). It was over two hours so we're going to break this into two episodes. Episode one is about his early life and how he became who he is spiritually and emotionally from a walkabout in India for a year to living on a kibbutz in Israel and just all these interesting components of his life that make him who he is. We also speak on the Vietnam War and how ...
Jun 01, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 196
Peter Nesbit came by today and we actually recorded on a Sunday (something I never do). I did that because I really wanted him on this podcast and sometimes you have to work around a person's schedule to capture important stories from important people. Anyway, Peter was in Tucson and I thought: "God, I got to have Pete on my podcast." Peter is just a really interesting individual. I've known him for 30 years, but you don't know somebody until you sit down and have an intimate talk about how they...
May 25, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 195
I had Tom Figarelle on the podcast today and he's the Executive Director of the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana. This podcast is unique because we get to hear the extent of Tom's love for his hometown which is Great Falls, MT. It's where he's from, where his parents are from, and where he lives and works to honor a historical figure that loved Great Falls just as much. The idea that a Western artist who died in 1926 can have such an impact on the world of art, but also have an immens...
May 18, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 194
I had Krystii Melaine on the podcast today. She was born and raised in a very small town in southeastern Australia called Bairnsdale and followed her love of art up and down, trying to find her path. Eventually, she found her way into America and started painting Western art, which was a thing she didn't even know existed. Fast forward to today and she's one of the top artists in America painting wildlife and western figurative realism. She's done Native American subjects as well as cowboy subje...
May 11, 2022•1 hr 30 min•Season 1Ep. 193
I had Kim Wiggins on the show today and, wow... He's such an interesting guy. It's fun to be able to have such an erudite and wonderful artist that has such a unique story. He's from a ranching community in southeastern New Mexico (really close to where I grew up, actually). His father was a photojournalist, a very well-received photojournalist and he started his own paper. He had his own gallery and wrote books on Alfred Morang, Emil Bisttram, and William Lumpkins. Kim was around some of these ...
May 04, 2022•52 min•Season 1Ep. 192
I had Kim Wiggins on the show today and, wow... He's such an interesting guy. It's fun to be able to have such an erudite and wonderful artist that has such a unique story. He's from a ranching community in southeastern New Mexico (really close to where I grew up, actually). His father was a photojournalist, a very well-received photojournalist and he started his own paper. He had his own gallery and wrote books on Alfred Morang, Emil Bisttram, and William Lumpkins. Kim was around some of these ...
Apr 27, 2022•53 min•Season 1Ep. 191
Juraj Skalina was my guest on the podcast today. I've known Juraj for.. gosh.. 25, almost 30 years? I started using him as a framer in 1996 and I think it's so important (when we talk about the business of art and the world of art) that we don't forget it's not just artists and art dealers. It's also people that work to optimize art for display in homes, galleries, museums, etc. such as framers, a critical component of our business. The craftsmen and craftswomen that work in framing often get ov...
Apr 20, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 190
I had Mike Fox on the podcast today and we spoke for almost 3 hours. I knew that was going to be the case when I started because he's a very unique individual with a rich background in the arts. He's had a lot of different jobs throughout his life, and when I say jobs I mean they were all museum or nonprofits type jobs. Mike has done great work for the likes of the Heard Museum, Museum of Northern Arizona, the Muhammad Ali Museum (an institution that he helped start in Louisville, Kentucky), and...
Apr 13, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 189
I had Mike Fox on the podcast today and we spoke for almost 3 hours. I knew that was going to be the case when I started because he's a very unique individual with a rich background in the arts. He's had a lot of different jobs throughout his life, and when I say jobs I mean they were all museum or nonprofits type jobs. Mike has done great work for the likes of the Heard Museum, Museum of Northern Arizona, the Muhammad Ali Museum (an institution that he helped start in Louisville, Kentucky), and...
Apr 06, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 188
Jan Mapes dropped by the studio today to give us some paintings and a new bronze that she's recently produced. Luckily, I managed to wrangle her into the studio to do a podcast (which is not easy because she lives out in the middle of nowhere in eastern Colorado). Jan is a professional sculptor and painter and is very successful having shown in many museums and galleries, and is represented by my gallery here in Tucson. Her most recent museum show (at the time of recording) was the Briscoe Museu...
Mar 30, 2022•54 min•Season 1Ep. 187
Oil painter Matt Ryder is my guest on the podcast today. He flew 23 hours from the U.A.E. to get to Tucson that's a commitment for your art. Matt reached out to me after hearing a podcast I had done with Eric Rhodes for his Plein Air Podcast, and now I represent him in my gallery, sometimes it can be that simple or hard if you are the one doing the flying. I love his work. He's gifted, as you can see when you look at his artwork, he's got the drive and that's what it often takes to succeed. I do...
Mar 23, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 186
One of the reasons I do podcasts is not only to understand the guests I have on, or the art world for that matter but also to gain insight into my own creativity and who I am. Jill Carver really brought that home for me today because she was willing to share her incredibly personal journey leading up to her 2022 exhibition "The Wild Southwest, Forces and Form" She had to go through some major uncertainty, and quite frankly, some really scary stuff. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer durin...
Mar 16, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 185
Today's podcast is a little different. Instead of me doing the interviewing, I am actually going to be one of the people on a panel. The panel consists of myself and Davison Koenig, who is the director of the Couse-Sharp Historic Site in Taos, New Mexico. It's a great museum and I highly recommend going and visiting it. The moderator is Michael Clawson, who is one of the editors at the Western Art Collector, as well as Native American Art Magazine. It was a really fun and interesting discussion ...
Mar 09, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 183
I'm always amazed when I do a podcast and somebody I've known for 25 years or longer like Veryl Goodnight manages to surprise me, and not just surprise me, but enchant me. Her enthusiasm for what she does and her love of animals is and has always been the driving force for her creativity, from childhood to now. So, artists out there who are wondering, you know, "How do I make a living or what can I do? Or How do I find my passion?" Just listen to this podcast and you're going to see passion on a...
Mar 02, 2022•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 183
I had Charles Fritz on today. He's such an interesting person, not just as a painter, but also as a guy who really loves the outdoors. Charles not only likes to hunt and fish, but he's also an individual that really believes in conservation. He believes that you have to get out and do plein air paintings to be able to capture what you hope to capture in the studio and this shows in his paintings and the major projects he takes on. One major project began in 1998 when he was camping along the Sou...
Feb 23, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 182
I had painter Sue Rother on the podcast today. Sue is married to oil painter Francis Livingston, and, you know, they're a dynamic duo of artists. Both of them started in illustration almost 50 years ago and moved into fine art over the last 20 years. It was fun to talk to Sue about her trajectory and how she made her way through the illustration world, especially in the timeframe of the early and mid-seventies. During that time she had to compete for jobs in a primarily male-dominated industry. ...
Feb 16, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 181
Today's guest was Mark Hilbert, and he has his own museum. That alone is a very unique and amazing thing. This is an individual who started his career in engineering and invented a module that made climate control devices more energy efficient. He was able to patent the technology and then ultimately sell the company, helping him establish a commercial real estate business in California. As you can tell, Mark is a very entrepreneurial individual. Lucky for Southern Californians, he's also a guy ...
Feb 09, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 180
Today was a two-for-one. I had Pat and Kim Messier on and it was fun because I had them in-house in the studio and we sat side by side and really just had a discussion about their history and how native arts have affected their lives. Pat is a native Tucsonan who first started working with native arts in 1949. So she's been in the trade and has worked for 60 years with the early Tucson Indian art dealers and knows all the players and is undeniably an authority in the field. Pat's daughter Kim, w...
Feb 02, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 179
I had Miriam Shulman on today. Miriam is such an interesting human being and she had to overcome some serious adversity to get where she is today. Miriam got an art history degree, but because of the way things sometimes go in life, she ended up doing other things. You know, I was a physician who became an art dealer. Well, Miriam was a Wall Street banker and hedge fund associate, but she really needed to be an artist because that's what she was on the inside. Ultimately, she found her path, but...
Jan 26, 2022•55 min•Season 1Ep. 178
I had Michael Clawson on the podcast today. I've known Michael for quite a while, he's the executive editor of "Western Art Collector" and "Native American Magazine" and the editor of "American Art Collector" and "American Fine Art Magazine". You don't hear the backstories of the publishing world or the art world unless you do the sort of deep-dive we did in this episode. I wanted to find out how he became executive editor versus becoming a film critic, which is really something he loved doing a...
Jan 19, 2022•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 177
Today's guest on the podcast was Jay Dusard. He's one of the best known Western photographers of the 20th century (not to mention a Guggenheim scholar winner) who I've known for quite a long time. I've had the pleasure of seeing his work in numerous museum shows spanning several decades and I was really thrilled that he took the time and effort to come down and join us for an episode of Art Dealer Diaries. Jay's book "The North American Cowboy: A Portrait," released in 1983, showed the life of t...
Jan 12, 2022•1 hr 38 min•Season 1Ep. 176
Today I had contemporary Western artist Josh Gibson on the podcast. I've known Josh since he was five years old and he's the youngest artist I represent at my gallery. He's almost 29 and was professionally trained at the California College of the Arts in the Bay Area. When Josh first cracked into the art scene, he was more of an illustrator/animator than a fine artist. He's done some very interesting projects already, including working with the Jimi Hendrix Estate. Ultimately, Josh is an Arizoni...
Jan 05, 2022•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 175
I had artist Mark Bowles on the podcast today via zoom. One interesting component of doing this podcast is that I never really know what I'm going to learn about my guests. That's one of the reasons I like doing them so much. You know, the discovery aspect of it all. In this episode, Mark and I went down some of the deeper, darker holes of life. Things like how the way a parent treats you can effect your life tremendously. In this case, we learn that Mark had a very tough father. Sometimes it's ...
Dec 29, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 174
It's always fun when you get to talk to somebody that you haven't spent time with on an intimate level and he's the guest today, Dr. Jerry Smith. I've known Jerry for 25+ years and we've had lots of conversations over the years, just usually in a museum setting. Here is an individual who was literally moving boxes on the night shift for almost ten years in his twenties and when he turned 30 he said "I've got to do something else" and had this epiphany. We talk about that epiphany and how a singl...
Dec 22, 2021•59 min•Season 1Ep. 173
