When you think of pop art, Andy Warhol’s Campbell's soup cans might come to mind. But he also turned his psychedelic palette toward the West. Some of his prints of Western subjects are in an exhibition opening at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West on May 24, called “POP! Goes the West!”
One of the exhibit’s living artists is originally from Holland. Willem Volkersz rode a motor scooter through Yellowstone National Park in his teens. That trip made a lasting impact. He went on to share his early impressions of the West and humorous takes on Yellowstone tourism in his art, using paint-by-number images, neon and found objects.
Wyoming Public Radio’s Olivia Weitz was there when he and some museum staff, including Susan Barnett, curator of the Whitney Western Art Museum, installed two of his works in the show.
Editor's Note: This story has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Susan Barnett: He makes his own crates out of insulating foam, so they're strong and they're light, and they're really easy to open.
My name's Susan Barnett. I am the Margaret and Dick Scarlett Curator of Western American Art at the Whitney Western Art Museum.
This [“Dreaming the West"] is kind of the front piece to the show with its bright neon colors. You're gonna come down the stairs and you're gonna see neon and it's gonna be a ‘wow’ moment.
Willem Volkersz: When I was in my teens and I started to explore the West, I started to see these neon signs, which were pretty grand in those days.
My name is Willem Volkersz. I was born in Holland. I'm an artist.
I was trained as a painter, and over time, just quote-unquote, just painting canvas on a stretcher wasn't enough. I wanted to build work, construct work that would come into the viewer's space.
SB: I love the title. It's called “Dreaming the West.” And it is a hand that is created out of neon tubing that seems to be drawing a Western landscape. To me, it seems like it's about the creation of Western imagery and Western mythology.
SB: There's also kind of a paint-by-number style going on. Can you talk about that a little bit?
WV: This image right here in “Dreaming the West” is based directly on a paint-by-number painting. I started to find those in junk stores. I had never seen it before. It wasn't part of the Dutch cultural aesthetic of the ’50s.
SB: I have my theory about the title of this. Can you talk about why you call this “Dreaming the West?”
WV: In this case, the dreaming is taking place with a hand, actually drawing a landscape in a barn, in a Western kind of landscape. The West that I dreamed of as a kid is sort of becoming a reality through the process of art, through a hand, an artist's hand, drawing the landscape.
When I was 13, my parents decided that we were coming to the United States, we're gonna immigrate. And of course, you start dreaming about the West.
My memories when I was a kid of the West were pretty grandiose, probably. I was thinking about cowboys and Indians and tall mountains. I had also heard of Yellowstone National Park. But I think that we idealized everything, of course, and indeed, the country was beautiful, but life for us as immigrants was difficult. We were only allowed to take a thousand dollars per person out of the country, so the whole family started with like $8,000. I've basically been working since I was 14 and had to contribute to the family budget.
[Sounds of shuffling and metallic clanks.]
This little black box is the transformer for this panel here. The other one has a similar transformer, but you can see how small and light they are.
Olivia Weitz: That will power the neon?
WV: Yeah, that powers the neon. Okay. Do we have power? That power isn't on, apparently.
SB: If a tourist touches this, what will happen to them?
WV: If they what?
SB: If they touch it?
WV: Oh, they'll never be back. [laughter]
SB: We're getting ready to hang your other work that's in the show, “Yellowstone Wildlife,” which is an image of Old Faithful in neon.
WV: Old Faithful is obviously iconic. It's been heralded by a lot of famous painters, and I'm kind of putting all of that in the more mundane medium of neon and found objects.
“Yellowstone Wildlife” takes me back to first encountering Old Faithful. When I was probably 16, I had a motor scooter, a bright red Cushman motor scooter. I traveled all throughout the West from Seattle exploring. After living in Holland at that point most of my life, I had not seen anything like a geyser. And so seeing that was quite delightful and quite beautiful.
I started to accumulate and collect objects that obviously were not Yellowstone souvenirs. It's called “Yellowstone Wildlife,” but it's obviously not. So that's the fun part of it. You'll see it.
There's a swan and there are a couple of birds and different deer and a couple of bears. And a lady that is wearing a slightly provocative dress, and a bear with a fish in its mouth, and a squirrel.
I like people engaging with a piece and saying, ‘Oh, I had one of those.’ Or, ‘I remember that.’ Or, ‘My grandmother had this.’ As a matter of fact, I often think of these objects that I buy in junk stores, of that being somebody's grandmother’s. And when she died, they didn't know what to do with it, so let's take it off to the Goodwill.
A lot of people would question whether this is wildlife or not. There's dogs in here, there are birds that don't belong in Yellowstone. Hopefully, people will kind of spend a little time looking at the objects and thinking about the title that I gave this piece, “Yellowstone Wildlife.” Would I find that there? No, probably not. Why? Why are they here?
Then all they have to do is think about me as an artist going through junk stores and giving these animals new life and placing them in the environment where they may or may not belong.
