This issue's opinion The current cowboyartshow.com/CAPA Cowboy Art & Photography online competition is now history, and for an initial event, it turned out very well. The competition attracted thirty artists contributing 45 entries. Artists were allowed to enter more than one subject category, but only one work in each. The work exhibited covered a wide variety of styles, ranging from oil painting to computer generated art. There were also a larger number of photography works presented, which was good to see. and even more interesting, the Overall Winner an d Runner-Up were a work in oil and a black/white photograph. The competing artists should be proud of their work - those visitors who took the time to send in their votes and comments enjoyed the exhibit, and their remarks played an important role in the competition. Comments provided by some of the voting viewers are found in this document. Since the reasons the works of art were enjoyed, or chosen, are varied, this information is, or should be, helpful to all artists. Artists who participated in the competition are listed below, and their work is on display in the six competition groups: Melanie Stoltz Brown, Caroline Obejero, T Branson, Julie Rice, Don Vernon, Julie Rice, Baru Spiller, Gene Stewart, Donny Marincic, Beth Ledbetter, Charles Dearing, Lee Kendall, Phillip Anneler, Sara Wirth, Dee Doige, Toni Blake, Elizabeth Jacobson-Garlock, Lori Musil, Anita Klein, Deb Howard, David Gafford, Jeanne Nations, Stephane Boren Baldwin, Dick Reed, Maureen Mulvihill, Tammy Gatten, Caroline Mundt, D.Enise, Heather Fogus, and Stanley Newton. Joe Chernicoff, CAPA Exec. Director A reader responds to a recent editorial about a lack of interest in cowboy art in the Las Vegas Valley One only need to look as far as the Belagio and the Venetian casinos and resorts to see the strip casinos aim at borrowing European culture to decorate their halls. In other words, Las Vegas strip casino and resort operators need to be educated on the roots of Las Vegas. Cowboy art in Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tombstone,Denver and elsewhere in the West use drawing cards besides art and photography. I don't mean they do not feature cowboy art and photography but Native American arts and crafts, natural attractions such as the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park (including other photographic sites that are not included in the national parks and monuments) and dude ranches. Another drawback is country western music has been evolving into something else in recent years. Lots of senior citizens favor the old time country western music and movies and television programs of the cowboy genre. The Sons of the San Joaquin are one of my favorites.

Cowboy poetry also has a following, but could be viewed as amateur (even though I do not believe this is true). The magazines (Cowboys and Indians and The American Cowboy) have picked up on features and advertising aimed at Westerners and seniors. I sympathize with the Western and cowboy artists, but most of their good stuff is way beyond my limited (retired) budget. Still, that does not stop me from going to their shows at rodeos, fairs etc. Here, in St George, for example, I have found our annual western arts and crafts fair features prices at all levels. And I particularly enjoy attending the annual Cowboy Christmas exposition in Las Vegas. Could MGM Grand be talked into a cowboy film festival since their founding company was a major film studio in Hollywood. Best of luck, Bill Patterson A reader suggests a way to make the newsletter more helpful May I make a suggestion? Can you place a link in the newsletter to the main Cowboy Art Show web site? I had been receiving mailings at my office for various Cowboy Art Show things and would visit the site from time to time with links there. I decided to subscribe to the newsletter from home and just received confirmation of my subscription with a link to the current newsletter. I thought I'd land on the main site. Thanks! And happy trails! Mike Goettee Good suggestion, Mike - see top of page) cowboyartshow.com receives an interesting daily message from Art Quotes, and, in particular, some quotes from Robert Hughes, Art critic. What he has to say should have value to all of you who buy art, as well as sell art, and who may not be sure of what you are doing. His comments may appear caustic, but in any event, they're interesting. The auction room, as anyone knows, is an excellent medium for sustaining fictional price levels, because the public imagines that auction prices are necessarily real prices. Most of the time they buy what other people buy. They move in great schools, like bluefish, all identical. There is safety in numbers. If one wants Schnabel, they all want Schnabel, if one buys a Keith Haring, two hundred Keith Harings will be sold. Art prices are determined by the meeting of real or induced scarcity with pure, irrational desire, and nothing is more manipulable than desire. The idea that money, patronage and trade automatically corrupts the wells of imagination is a pious fiction, believed by some utopian lefties and a few people of genius such as (William) Blake but flatly contradicted by history itself. With its hacked contours, staring interrogatory eyes, and general feeling of instability, Les Demoiselles is still a disturbing painting after three quarters of a century, a refutationof the idea that the surprise of art, like the surprise of fasion, must necessarily wear off. No painting ever looked more convulsive. The museum has very largely supplanted the church as the emblematic focus of the American city. On the whole, money does artists much more good than harm. The idea that one benefits from cold water, crusts and debt collectors is now almost extinct, like belief in the reformatory power of flogging. A fair price is the highest one a collector can be induced to pay