Artist In Process | Caya Crum

In celebration of FWADA’s Fall Gallery Night, the Sid Richardson Museum invites you to experience Artist in Process, a unique opportunity to witness art in the making. Local artist Caya Crum will be painting live in our galleries, offering an up-close look at her vibrant, irreverent take on the American West.

Known for her bold murals at The Welman Project and The Bearded Lady, Crum brings a fresh and playful lens to Western iconography—think neon skies, smoking cowgirls, UFOs over desert landscapes, and cowboys delivering baguettes. Her work cleverly blends pop art, fashion, and frontier nostalgia to both celebrate and challenge the mythology of the West.

Crum’s live painting will take place against the backdrop of our special exhibition, The Cinematic West: The Art That Made the Movies, which explores how artists like Frederic Remington and Charles Russell influenced the Western film genre. Surrounded by historic paintings, silent film clips, and vintage movie posters, Crum’s contemporary vision offers a dynamic contrast—bridging classic Western art with today’s diverse and evolving narratives.

Stop by anytime between 1:00–3:00pm to watch Caya Crum at work and experience the West like you’ve never seen it before.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Caya Crum

My work explores traditional American western iconography through a modern lens alongside fashion and pop art. Using vibrant colors such as hot pink, I introduce reoccurring characters and motifs such as smoking cowboys, eggs, UFOs, and dreamy desert landscapes. My work plays with nostalgia and reinvention, drawing inspiration from past American painters such as Frederic Remington and Georgia O’Keeffe, in addition to old frontier photographs. By exaggerating the drama and aesthetics of the West; neon skies, unconventional situations such as cowboys delivering baguettes, and a diverse array of cowboys and cowgirls- I both celebrate and challenge the mythology surrounding it. Whether it is a handful of French fries or a playful homage to thrifted fashion, the juxtaposition surrounding my scenes causes viewers to rethink stereotypes surrounding the American Southwest.

When creating my artwork, I choose to use a combination of acrylic paint and oil paint to bring my artwork to life. The color palette of my work lends itself to extreme colors such as neon pinks and deep blues. The style of each of these paintings feels almost cartoonish- like a dream or a memory where the brain fills in the gaps or exaggerates characteristics and saturates color. The paintings I create are overflowing with magnified bits and pieces of information that I have gathered throughout my life and then pieced together in my artwork giving it a sense of familiarity.

My western scenes invite viewers to rethink the expectations society has when discussing western art. With my work, I highlight the marginalized communities that are often overlooked. In my Smoking Cowboys/Cowgirls series for example, I reflect the diversity of the ranching scene by representing Women, African Americans, Native Americans, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and more through portraiture. By reimagining the cowboy narrative, I challenge the traditional perspective of western art and recognize the diverse voices that have shaped Cowboy culture.