Once a month, Arizona Oddities is featuring a Q&A with a talented Arizona artist who is influenced by our state’s people, places and history. This month, Ellen Jo Roberts shares her light-hearted collection inspired by the Southwestern landscape, old motels and vintage cars.
The old West was fading from reality into the realm of myth by the mid-1920s. Most of the bonafide gunfighters were gone and Hollywood took up the chore of telling how it really was. Tom Mix was earning over $17,000 a week performing super-human feats from atop his famous horse, Tony, and the public loved it. Nobody seemed to care much for the way it really was out in lotus land, so Americans were fed a heavy dose of tight-trousered, fast-drawing, hard-riding heroes.
