Michael Brohman "Frontier"

“Frontier”

1970 Chevrolet tailgate, cowhide, steel

The title of this piece is taken from the logo on the tailgate.  I bought this tailgate in a thrift store on Main Street in Sheridan, Wyoming and I was immediately drawn to it because of the color.  I had been hiking for hours each day in an open landscape and would stare at the blue sky with clouds that seemed to go on forever.

While hiking I would also regularly encounter groups of cattle that were on the ranch. There was a hill that overlooked a stream and each evening the cows would cross it to go into the next pasture.  I would spend these evenings watching the sunset and the cows following one another through the stream. A leather store in Sheridan sold remnants of cowhides and while I picked through the bins I would think of the cows that I had recently watched and their relationship to the land.

For me “Frontier” represents a physical and cultural landscape. The white of the leather becomes the clouds and the blue of the tailgate the sky.  The tailgate also represents the human inhabitants that have driven the roads and ranches, the leather the cattle that inhabit the landscape.  As I pieced together the hide, I created an aerial view of a topographical map.  Its interior seams reference the fence lines and boundaries on the landscape.  The overall form becomes an abstraction of a map of the United States.