By my friend Staci Matlock
Used with permission from The Santa Fe New Mexican
They wore them high, low, fancy-stitched and rough-out style. By the dozens, people young and old showed up at the New Mexico Museum of Art in downtown Santa Fe on Saturday to have their photos taken in their favorite boots.
It was part of opening-day activities for Sole Mates: Cowboy Boot and Art, an exhibit that runs through Oct. 17.
Along with glass-encased boots dating back to the early 1900s, the exhibit features Western theme paintings, sculptures, postcards and photos, plus a video about the historic allure of cowboy boots.
Among the boots on display are a pair of black Tony Lamas with gold-leaf toes by Santa Fe artist Martin Cary Horowitz and ones from the 1940s by Abraham Rios with playing cards engraved on the sides.
Santa Fe painter Ron Baker wore his “Kevin Costners” to the exhibit. The bone-colored calfskin with brown lizard tips and heels are actually made by the famous Tony Lama boot company, but after Baker bought his first pair in 1992 he learned that the film star has an assistant buy him a pair of the same kind every year.
Baker, who doesn’t own a horse but does paint pictures of horses, proudly owns 14 pairs of Western boots. He wears boots every day, except when he’s on the golf course. He doesn’t wear his boots to bed, he said. “I take them off each night and I change my socks,” Baker said, a smile hovering somewhere beneath his almost handlebar mustache.
His wife, Annie, said when boots become worn out they make great doorstops or bookends after something heavy is stuffed inside.
Steve Campbell, a fine-art printmaker with Landfall Press, held his camel-colored felt cowboy hat and wore his circa 1860s cavalry-style, knee-high black boots. Of his 10 pairs of cowboy boots, “these are the ones I reach for.”
The Sanders family posed for a picture before discussing their favorite cowboy boots. DL Sanders, who in his day job is chief counsel for the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer, wore his favorite Tony Lamas, one of eight pairs of cowboy boots he owns. His wife, Sherry Sanders, wore her only pair: green and cream Ariats. Their daughter, Emma, 4, wore her white Durangos without socks and carried her horse, Pinkerella, in a pretty purse.
Most of the cowboy boots displayed in the exhibit and worn by visitors were wearable art, not the kind meant for mucking out horse pens or riding all day chasing down cows.
Tyler Beard in his 1999 book The Art of the Boot claims the pointy-toed version favored by many today didn’t appear until the 1940s. He says the early film star Tom Mix, in his high-heeled inlaid boots and bejeweled silver spurs, did more than anyone to romanticize the cowboy boot for the masses.
But regardless of whether a cowboy boot is plain or fancy, there’s something undeniably cool about them, unless you are the animal from which said boot is made. “The beauty of cowboy boots is that they are genderless,” writes Beard. “They can be worn by anyone, with anything, for any occasion — or ‘with nothing at all.’ ”
They may be genderless to wear, but women bootmakers are still a rarity. Albuquerque’s Deana McGuffin figures she’s one of only 15 women among an estimated 250 custom bootmakers in the United States. She’s the third generation in her family to learn the craft. Her grandfather, C.C. McGuffin, opened his bootmaking shop in Carrizozo in 1917 and her father, L.W. McGuffin, ran a shop in Portales for years.
Deana McGuffin was in her 30s before she started begging her dad to teach her the craft. By then he worked for a mortician and didn’t think women could handle the hard, physical work required to make boots. In the end, she said, “He learned girls could do it.”
Photos of Deana McGuffin, now 60, in her shop along with a pair of boots she created that feature dancing turquoise-and-pink-clad skeletons for Day of the Dead, are in the Sole Mates exhibit. Also on display are tiny toddler-size boots her father made for his children and a beautiful, intricately detailed pair he made when he was 89 years old.
“Boots are sexy,” McGuffin said. “You just don’t get much more Americana than cowboy boots.”