THE ART OF OUR PHOTOGRAPHY

BY: Kathy Montgomery,Robert Stieve

William Ahrendt Old Pals

2021

Oil on linen canvas

19.5 by 24 inches

$8,000

William Ahrendt

William "Bill" Ahrendt recalls being 7 years old, lying on the floor in front of the radio, drawing the Lone Ranger. "I was in Cleveland, Ohio, and I was already a Westerner," he says.That was also the age at which Ahrendt began his many years of formal art training, starting with classes at the Cleveland Art Museum. After high school, he earned a bachelor's degree in painting from the Cleveland Institute of Art, then spent 11 years in Europe, studying the old masters. Settling in Arizona upon his return, he earned a master's degree in art history from Arizona State University.

Since then, Ahrendt has spent his long career applying the techniques of the masters to the Western subjects that have interested him since childhood. And while his focus has always been fine art, he also spent many years as a contributing editor to Arizona Highways. In the 1980s, his drawings and paintings interpreted a wide range of Arizona history for the magazine. For this project, it was the old cowboy who drew Ahrendt to J. Peter Mortimer's photo, and his painting places that subject in the context of the stories the cowboy might tell, if he could.The painting changed as "different ideas appealed to me and new ideas seemed to improve on old ideas," Ahrendt says. "But the one anchor point of my response to that photograph was the character in the face of the old cowboy. Everything else grewout of that."

It's not surprising that the artist, 88, gave the old cowboy a dog. Ahrendt owns four, and his love of those animals is behind his decision to support the Humane Society of Central Arizona, which operates a shelter, mobile clinic and spayand-neuter program. Ahrendt says it's a group whose objective is making animals' lives a little better.

BENEFICIARY: Humane Society of Central Arizona, Payson, 928-4745590, humanesocietycentralaz.org

Amery Bohling

Amery Bohling couldn't decide on a photo to re-create. So, she picked two: Her version of Jack Zehrt's Navajo Camp appears on the back cover, while her re-creation of Esther Henderson's The Land of Snow and Mist appears here. Bohling says she liked the atmosphere in Henderson's photo and wanted to paint the distant temples coming in and out of the light and clouds.

Bohling has been a participant in the Grand Canyon Celebration of Art since the show's inception in 2009, and the Canyon is a subject she revisits again and again. But it started on a lark. On her way home from painting at Canyon de Chelly, she saw a turnoff to the North Rim and took it, then lucked out by securing a room overlooking the Canyon. "I painted that night, I painted in the morning, and it was hard to leave," she recalls. "I just kept painting it. It never gets boring."

Bohling had a good reference photo of the South Rim's Yaki Point made during a similar season and time of day as Henderson's shot, so she lined up the two using Adobe Photoshop, then added her own narrative. She says her interpretation is about the "memory you have when you look at a place, not necessarily the photograph of it."

And, just as she couldn't choose just one photo, she also chose three nonprofits: Western Spirit: Scottsdale's Museum of the West, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, and Grand Canyon Youth. "I wanted to support something that would respect the subject matter of what I'm painting," she says about the first two. And Grand Canyon Youth helps connect children to a place that's served as inspiration for her best-known paintings. "Seeing the Canyon at a young age can be a life-changing experience," she says. "It's where I learned to paint outdoors."

BENEFICIARIES: Western Spirit: Scottsdale's Museum of the West, Scottsdale, 480-6869539, scottsdalemuseumwest.org; National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, 405-478-2250, national cowboymuseum.org: Grand Canyon Youth, Flagstaff, 928-773-7921, gcyouth.org

Naomi Brown

Naomi Brown enrolled in the University of Utah's arts program, but she hated it. “I didn't like all the rules,” she says. “You couldn't draw or paint. It was all wire sculpture or stuff I didn't want to do.” The one class she enjoyed was watercolors. It became Brown's only formal training as a painter. But she learned from her husband, an artist, and practiced by painting miniature watercolors from photos in Arizona Highways. “It really taught me how to paint,” she says. “I think it helped me really understand detail to take something larger and squeeze it down.” Eventually, Brown transitioned to acrylics, but clouds presented a problem. No matter how hard she tried, her clouds looked stiff. Then, she received a flash of insight. After laying down a gradient sky with acrylics, she tried painting the clouds with oils. “I was like, This is a whole new world,” she says. Brown still enjoys painting from other people's photographs — always with permission and giving credit — so this project seemed custom-made for her. And it felt likecoming full circle.

She chose Don Keller's 1956 image partly because she sees the Superstition Mountains every day while living with her second husband in the San Tan Mountains. And she loved that there's nothing around the mountains in the photo. “I love the old photos,” she says, and she enjoyed the challenge of giving her painting a vintage look. Because of her experience with divorce, Brown chokes up when talking about the nonprofit she's chosen to receive the proceeds from her painting. A transitional housing community, House of Refuge offers homeless families comprehensive support. “I was a single mom for over a year and worked three jobs,” she says. “It was tough. And just being a mom, you want the best for your children.” BENEFICIARY: House of Refuge, Mesa, 480-988-9242, houseofrefuge.org

Michelle Condrat

Utah artist Michelle Condrat always liked art supplies and enjoyed arranging them by color as a kid. It's not surprising, then, that after graduating from the University of Utah with bachelor's degrees in art and art history, she took a job at an art supply store. And when she was bored, she tried out all the colors.

Working at the store part time, Condrat kept painting, and her work steadily gained traction. But the 2016 Grand Canyon Celebration of Art marked a turning point. It was her first year participating, and she didn't know how her unique style - sometimes described as pixelated, with bold colors and hard edges - would be received. At the quick-draw event, she asked what would happen if no one bid on her painting.

To her surprise, though, the piece sparked a bidding war. Then, when the doors opened at the exhibition, patrons made a beeline to her wall and bought everything on it. It wasn't long before she quit her job to paint full time.

Condrat was drawn by the colors and contrasts in Paul Gill's image: the blue snow against the red rock, the clouds against the sky. She'd always wanted to paint Monument Valley but had never been there, and she liked that the image was unmistakably Arizona. Other than cropping the scene a bit and giving it a digital feel, her painting remains true to the photo.

Indirectly, the art supply store introduced her to her chosen charity, a Salt Lake City no-kill shelter called Best Friends in Utah, which she used to drive past on her way to get coffee before work. The owner of two adopted feral cats, she always looked in the window at the animals. "I just really like that place, and I'm all about a no-kill shelter," she says.

BENEFICIARY: Best Friends in Utah, Salt Lake City, 801-574-2454, utah.bestfriends.org

Linda Glover Gooch

Linda Glover Gooch has never visited Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, where Joel Hazelton made his 2019 image, but she does have a nostalgic connection with that corner of Arizona. As a kid, she traveled from her Southern California home to spend summers with her grandmother in Duncan.

"We would go out and walk the hills," she recalls. "There would be all these storm clouds that would begin to billow up. I loved the thunderstorms out there. I loved the smell, and I have such déjà vu when the rains come in here, because I smell the very smells of when I was a kid walking with her and those storms."

Not surprisingly, it was the clouds in Hazelton's image that attracted Glover Gooch.

Clouds have slowly crept into her landscapes since she moved to Arizona 20 years ago, and they've become a major focus of her art.

In her painting, Glover Gooch did some landscaping and got moodier with the sky, painting a squall in the background to add drama and romance. If you look closely, you'll find the meadowlark that inspired the painting's title.

An associate pastor at Christ to the Nations Church in Mesa, Glover Gooch will be supporting MorningStar Missions, a children's ministry serving the rural villages of Honduras where she has gone for several years to help. "Their learning is all done through art projects," she says. "That's just so near and dear to my heart... because I started as a kid with art."

Glover Gooch says her position in the church has greatly affected her work. "I used to just paint because I love to paint," she says. "Now, I really put my faith into each piece. I really believe the love I put into my paintings comes back out and affects people in a positive, spiritual way."

BENEFICIARY: Morning Star Missions, Radcliff, Kentucky, 270-505-4636, morningstarmissionsblog.org

MORE ON THE ARTIST: masterfulpainting.com

Tamara Hastie

Artist, photographer and rock climber Tamara Hastie began her professional life on the other side of the camera, first as a child model and later as a climber. "Honestly, I thought to myself, I've been in front of the camera so much that I can see the image they're trying to capture," she says. "I really wanted to capture my vision. That's how that creativity started. Painting was always something Hastie did, but for a long time, climbing and photography took over her life. About five years ago, she began to question how she was investing her energy and what she got back. For Hastie, digital photog-raphy lacked the intimacy of film, and many of her images sat on herhard drive. She felt like a memory hoarder. But when she painted, she put herself into every stroke. "There's just something that's part of my experience going into that," she says. "That's why I got back into painting. Because I really needed to focus on those memories, what was most important to me as a person, and to be able to share that with others."

David Muench's Lukachukai spoke to Hastie on many levels. The location feels "out there and primitive and just wild," she says. "As a climber, I love those places. I like to feel like I'm the first woman on the moon... and that image reallyspeaks to that. You can almost hear the wind. But then you can also feel the calmness." In contrast, Oak Creek is heavily visited, and, especially during the pandemic, the impact on this important watershed has been felt. That's why Hastie chose to support the Oak Creek Watershed Council with this project. "It's one of the most spectacular scenic byways in the country," she says. "It needs protecting."

BENEFICIARY: Oak Creek Watershed Council, Sedona, 928-978-2515, oakcreekwatershed.org

Dyana Hesson

Botanical artist Dyana Hesson's connections to Arizona Highways run deep. The first cactus flower she ever painted, an Engelmann's hedgehog, came from a photo on the magazine's March 1990 cover. Before that, in the 1980s, Hesson's husband used an Arizona Highways subscription to lure the California native to Arizona. It worked. But what ultimately sold Hesson on moving was the road trip they took through the state. “We've been exploring [Arizona] ever since,” she says.

And that first cactus flower? “Not so good,” Hesson recalls. But she got a do-over in the magazine's March 2020 issue. “That was fun to revisit that and do it well,” she says.

For this project, Hesson chose another cover image of a cactus flower, a 1959 photo of prickly pear blooms by Josef Muench. “I loved everything about it,” she says. “The blue sky, the puffy clouds, the light on the prickly pear pads, the glorious wreath of yellow blossoms, the rugged mountains.” The description said the photo was made on a sunny day in April at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. No problem, Hesson recalls thinking: “We'll go down there in April and find these rugged mountains... because I wanted to feel what he felt and collaborate in that way.”

But none of the park rangers

could tell her where they were. She never did find them. And the cactuses weren't blooming well. So, she gathered blooms from around her neighborhood and assembled them with toothpicks on a cactus pad in her backyard to replicate the light and quality of Muench's image. Then, she painted her blue Jeep driving into the mountains.

For her charity, Hesson chose Hospice of the Valley. Helping people at the end of their lives is important work, she says. And she loves that the organization does art therapy with clients so they, too, can experience the joy of creation.

BENEFICIARY: Hospice of the Valley, Phoenix, 602-530-6900, hov.org

Dyana Hesson Cactusland USA Opuntia Blooms, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

2021

Oil on canvas 71 by 55 inches $21,500

Kevin Kibsey

As a child, Kevin Kibsey dreamed of working as a cowboy. And he did, for a while, on the Eagletail Ranch, juggling those responsibilities with his longtime work as an illustrator and map designer for Arizona Highways. The magazine introduced Kibsey to cowboying and to photographer Ken Akers. When contributor Gail Dudley pitched the magazine a story about Arizona Cowboy College, Kibsey was intrigued. “I thought, I’ve got to be part of this,” he recalls. “It turned out I was there when she wrote the article. And that was my first meeting with Ken,” who made the photos for the story.Akers and Kibsey subsequently worked together as wranglers for the Verde Vaqueros. But it wasn't Kibsey's relationship with the late photographer or the subject matter that inspired him to choose Akers' 1984 rodeo photo. It was the composition. “Ken’s image is something I would have done had I created a painting from scratch,” Kibsey says. “It couldn’t be improved by much… and it appears that that image just occurred by happenstance. I think that’s one of the reasons why it struck me so much.” The challenge was capturing the photo’s dynamic qualities while making the painting his own. Kibsey’s answer was to reimagine the scene from above — taking the inverse perspective of the ceiling frescoes he admired on a recent trip to Italy. He used a bendable mannequin and other techniques to get the horse’s anatomy and perspective right. Kibsey chose Scottsdale Artists’ School to benefit from the sale of his painting. After he graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in graphic design, the nonprofit school was one of the places Kibsey honed his fine-art skills by taking workshops taught by professional artists. “They offer incredible access to some of the greatest artists in the country,” he says. BENEFICIARY: Scottsdale Artists’ School, Scottsdale, 480-990-1422, scottsdaleartschool.org

Marcia Molnar

Of all the places she's traveled, Marcia Molnar loves the Navajo Nation the most. "I'm not sure why I connect to it so much," she says. "But I do. There's that flat horizon and big sky. Maybe it's the freedom of that big sky." But what drew Molnar to Debs Metzong's photo was the girls. Born to a family of artists, Molnar grew up in California and recalls that her grandparents always kept copies of Arizona Highways on their coffee table. She met her husband, George, when she was 14. They married at 19 and decided to be painters. Her father was a gallery owner and told her, "All you have to do is sell one painting a month, and you've got a career."

"So, I believed him," she says. George wanted to move to Arizona to paint Navajos and cowboys, so the couple came to Prescott for the Phippen Museum's first show. They've stayed for 40 years. But while Molnar appreciated Western art, she never felt its masculine sub-ject matter spoke to her experience. "When I paint women, I'm painting myself," she says. "So, when I saw these girls, I related to them." Within minutes, she saw the image just as she painted it: the Three Sisters formation, representing the ancient and the timeless, and the sisters herding the sheep In the present, all set against that expansive turquoise sky. Her love of that big sky was partly behind her decision to support Grand Canyon Conservancy. "I got really on board with them as they took on the dark-sky initiative," she says. Aside from feeling a connection to the sky, the stars and the moon, she also believes it's important for children to see the stars.

As for her grandparents, she says, "They would have been thrilled to see my painting in the magazine."

BENEFICIARY: Grand Canyon Conservancy, Grand Canyon Village, 928-638-2481, grandcanyon.org

MORE ON THE ARTIST: thepaintedjournal.com

Marcia Molnar Shil Hózhó (With Me There Is Beauty)

2021

Oil on linen

58 by 38 inches

$12,000

Frank Ybarra

A second-generation Arizonan of Mexican heritage, Frank Ybarra has history with Mission San Xavier del Bac. Arizona landmarks are frequent subjects of Ybarra's work, and they often highlight his cultural heritage. He's revisited San Xavier, a Catholic icon, as a subject over the years. Ybarra first painted the mission about 15 years ago, and the painting was so wellreceived that he was asked to paint another. He did. He's also done paintings that focused on smaller details, such as a bell tower or the domes. So, when he saw Richard Maack's 2010 image, he thought, That's the one.

Known for his colorful cubist style, Ybarra felt drawn to Maack's composition and to the dark blues contrasting with the yellows and oranges. "It's just real striking," he says. His interpretation retains Maack's composition, but, as is his style, everything looks slightly askew. "Some of the angles might be a little crooked," he says. "It's kind of subtle, but it's there. I just like making things look a little bit unusual [or] quirky, like where shapes and colors intersect."

As a nod to the mission's nickname, Ybarra painted a dove overhead and titled his painting White Dove Over the Desert, again retaining the substance of the original photograph while adding his own twist to the final piece. A two-time cancer survivor, Ybarra is donating to Cancer Support Community Arizona. The nonprofit provides support groups, counseling and workshops to people affected by cancer. Ybarra never needed those services, because he was fortunate to have a lot of assistance. But he's taught painting classes there to both children and adults.

"I asked them to express their experiences with cancer," Ybarra says. "Some people were cancer survivors, while others were caregivers, so everyone would paint about their experience and we'd talk about it." Making art, he says, can be a good way to share what you're feeling.

BENEFICIARY: Cancer Support Community Arizona, 602-712-1006 (Phoenix) or 928-236-2333 (Flagstaff), cscaz.org