By: Sabina Dana Plasse
Distinctive mediums & enduring legacies
Sun Valley’s art scene has always drawn strength from contrast, and while defined by natural beauty, it’s never limited to landscape alone. Across galleries, studios, and exhibition spaces, artists continue to interpret our region in various ways, blending history with satire, memory with material, and form with unexpected mediums. Together, they continue to expand how we view and understand this place, and ourselves.
In this section, Western Home Journal focuses on artists and galleries that reflect the vitality of Sun Valley’s creative scene. Jon Nasvik turns concrete into fine art, revealing to us its texture, color, movement, and emotion. Thom Ross revisits the mythology of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West at Hemmings Gallery. Gail Severn Gallery marks 50 years of championing artists, collectors, education, and cultural conversation in the Wood River Valley.
Later, Bex Wilkinson reimagines the alphabet as a sharp, playful, and unsettling framework for contemporary commentary, while Anne Crumpacker’s bamboo works explore nature and the spiritual resonance of handmade art.
What connects these stories isn’t a single medium, or subject, or location, but a shared commitment to explore further. In Sun Valley, art continues to define our community and remains more than something to collect or admire. It’s a way of interpreting the world through the eyes of the artist, questioning narratives and finding meaning in what surrounds us.
‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West’ Arrives at Hemmings Gallery
This summer, as the U.S. approaches its 250th anniversary, many of the country’s defining moments will be honored and recognized. The West’s past, one that is uniquely American, has long conjured some of the most compelling subjects and stories. Through allegory and the painter’s lens, Thom Ross brings those stories into focus.
Ross is an American painter known for his dynamic reinterpretations of Western history and mythology. His work explores the intersection of narrative, memory, and cultural identity, offering a contemporary perspective on iconic figures and events of the American West. Ross’s pieces are widely exhibited and held in numerous public and private collections, and the artist has dedicated his latest body of work to reimagining the world of William Frederick Cody, better known as “Buffalo Bill,” whose legendary touring spectacle helped define how America, and the world, imagined the frontier.
Cody, a Pony Express rider, U.S. Army scout during the Civil War, and buffalo hunter, created Buffalo Bill’s Wild West in 1883. The touring show featured reenactments of frontier life with cowboys, Native Americans, and sharpshooters such as Annie Oakley. It toured for 30 years.
“CONCRETE VARIES IN COST AND CAN BE TRICKY TO FORM, DEPENDING ON THE STRUCTURE OR ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN. ADDING COLOR ADDS ADDS CONSIDERABLE EXPENSE AS IT TAKES SEVERAL POUNDS OF PIGMENT IN A BATCH OF CONCRETE TO ACHIEVE THE COLOR YOU ONLY SEE ON THE SURFACE.”
-Carter, Cowboy Cyclist | Acrylic on canvas | 60″ x 30″
Ross’s new exhibition, also titled Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, will be on view at Hemmings Gallery from June 23 through August 1, with an opening reception on July 3 from 5:30–7 p.m. Ross will be in attendance.
Owned by Glin Varco and Edward Hemmings, Hemmings Gallery presents a curated program that includes paintings, drawings, and sculpture by established and emerging artists whose work offers a sampling of contemporary culture at its best, including many who live in and interpret the West and its many environments.
For Ross, Hemmings Gallery is a fitting venue for this historic moment in our nation’s story and for a body of work that will envelop the gallery in the round, becoming a study of “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.” Each painting will convey the who, what, and where that became part of the historical interpretation of the American West through Ross’s unique storytelling, while providing key details and interests that expand and open one’s mind to the idea of interpretation.
-Night Show | Acrylic on canvas | 48″ x 60″
“Thom has created a new body of work for a show that is a microcosm of America’s story,” says Varco. “Millions of people around the world saw Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, including the Pope and the Queen of England, whom he met.” She adds, “Thom presents Buffalo Bill’s story through paintings that suggest the idea of the West as a frontier was a myth, constantly retold. The settling of the West has always been complex, and Thom is astute at reminding people—reality versus myth.”
Keeping history alive and sparking conversation, Ross continually refines his work to tell history’s story with his Southwest flair and imagination, featuring purposefully pointed, oversized figures or rounded men, usually faceless or shaded by a large cowboy hat, powering through a rodeo or lining up for their revenge. Native American figures appear with chiseled faces and detailed clothing, often atop colorful horses or in colorful surroundings.
Ross’s paintings vividly bring this world to life. Through expressive brushwork and dynamic compositions, he captures the arena’s energy and the presence of its iconic figures, while also reflecting on the layered, often complex, cultural narratives embedded in the spectacle. From high-drama action scenes to quieter, more introspective moments, the works reveal a nuanced perspective on a defining chapter of American cultural history—one in which performance and reality became inextricably intertwined.
“THOM PRESENTS BUFFALO BILL’S STORY THROUGH PAINTINGS THAT SUGGEST THE IDEA OF THE WEST AS A FRONTIER WAS A MYTH, CONSTANTLY RETOLD.”
-Annie Oakley | Acrylic on canvas | 60″ x 48″
“The West we think we know was staged, performed, and retold long before we ever saw it,” says Ross. “I’m interested in that space—where fact and fiction blur, where reality becomes myth. And in how Cody seemed to move with ease from one to the other.”
Rather than simply revisiting the past, Ross reexamines. He invites viewers to consider how the mythology of the West was constructed, performed, and ultimately carried into the contemporary imagination.
“After more than 50 years of painting, Thom Ross has developed a visual language that is instantly recognizable and immediately engaging, but it’s the depth of storytelling, the ideas he unearths beneath the surface, that stay with you,” says Hemmings. He adds, “Hemmings Gallery has long admired Thom Ross’s ability to bring historical material into the present with intensity, wit, and emotional charge. This new series feels especially timely. It connects American spectacle, national mythology, and the image-making machinery of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West to a moment when the country is again considering how it tells its own story.”
-Shooting Glass Balls | Acrylic on canvas | 48″ x 48″
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