Cheyenne L. Rouse has spent more than three decades photographing the American West, and these days she lives inside the picture. She shows her work at more than 30 juried art shows and festivals a year across the Western United States, and home is wherever her RV is parked. Her photographs of rusted trucks, painted barns, red rock and mountain chapels are also on Brakebee, gathered on her <a href="https://brakebee.com/u/CHEYENNE%20L%20ROUSE%20PHOTOGRAPHY">Cheyenne L. Rouse Photography artist profile</a>.

Cheyenne was born and raised in South Florida. She spent winters in the Florida Keys and summers on her family's farm in the mountains of North Carolina, and that upbringing gave her a lifelong connection to the land. Photography was her favorite subject in school, and apart from one high school class, she taught herself.

In 1989 she traveled through northern New Mexico and southern Utah with friends, and the trip changed her plans. "The light, the colors, the smells, everything about the Southwest intrigued me," she told the Arizona State Press. At the time she and her twin sister ran a design business in Miami. She went home, broke the news to her family and moved West to photograph the desert. When her family told her nobody makes a living as a photographer, her answer was short. "'Watch me,' I told them."

She built her first career on film. Through the 1990s she shot stock and assignment work in extreme adventure sports, outdoor recreation, health and fitness, and Western and Southwestern culture and landscapes. Her clients included Sunset Magazine, Outside Magazine, Outdoor Photographer, Backroads, Outdoor Research and the U.S. Postal Service. She wrote as well, with photo essays and columns in Outdoor Photographer, Park City Traveler and Utah Outdoors, and she co-authored the book Camping: An Outdoor Action Guide.

After 9/11 the stock photography business took a hard hit, and she stepped away from the camera for a reset. She worked as a personal trainer and earned a real estate license, but the pull never left. In 2008 she bought her first digital SLR. The red Canon box sat on her kitchen counter for months until she took the camera on a short trip to Moab. "I had found love again, and this time, it was with a digital camera," she said. She came back to photography with a new focus on digital fine art.

That second start came with a new specialty. From 2010 to 2015, Photomatix sponsored Cheyenne as an HDR specialist, and she taught workshops and spoke at events across the United States. In 2012 she also launched an eBook series for other photographers, Cheyenne's Top 10 Photo Locations, with guides to New Mexico and Southern Utah.

You can see her eye for light in <a href="https://brakebee.com/products/4675">Sedona Reflection, an HDR photograph of Cathedral Rock mirrored in water</a>, with a cactus heavy with red fruit in the foreground. Her artist statement explains what she is after in a frame like that. "My photographs are more than just images, they are moments in time that spoke to my soul. Through my work, I invite you to see what I saw and feel what I felt when I pressed the shutter."

Cheyenne is known for bold images of the American West and Southwest, and her favorite subjects are often the quiet ones: rusted relics, forgotten homesteads and timeworn details. She calls it the "Vanishing West." On her website she describes her photography as a celebration of the fading nostalgia and Americana of the West, stories she sees disappearing fast.

The old pickup in <a href="https://brakebee.com/products/4667">Dodge Bootlegger, a rusted Dodge truck photographed in Utah</a> is a good place to start. The Arizona State Press ran the image with its 2012 profile of her. From there, take a drive with <a href="https://brakebee.com/products/4676">Route 66 Vette, a classic red Corvette on Route 66 in Hackberry, Arizona</a>, or stop at <a href="https://brakebee.com/products/4691">Lavender Adobe, a weathered adobe facade in Tucson's Barrio Viejo</a>. <a href="https://brakebee.com/products/4703">Life & Liberty, a red barn with an American flag in western Idaho</a>, carries the words "In God We Trust Life Liberty" painted across its side.

None of it is set up. "Nothing in my photographs is ever staged, what you see is exactly what I saw when I arrived," she writes. She travels across the West and lets her scenes reveal themselves. These days, she says, "I only photograph what moves me, what stirs something deep inside."

Some of her strongest work sits where landscape and history meet. <a href="https://brakebee.com/products/4680">Sunburst Kiva, an ancient kiva in southeastern Utah</a>, catches a burst of sun through a rock overhang. <a href="https://brakebee.com/products/4684">Teton Chapel, the Chapel of the Transfiguration beneath the Grand Teton Range</a>, sets the chapel against the peaks of Wyoming. And <a href="https://brakebee.com/products/4695">Desert Duel, two wild horses from Utah's Onaqui herd</a>, shows the free-roaming side of the West.

Cheyenne knows both sides of the gallery wall. From 2010 to 2013 she owned and ran Ancient Light Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, and since 2018 she has traveled full time from show to show. Back in 2012, as she got ready to leave the gallery for the road, she said, "The road is where I thrive and where I create my best work to show with the world."

Collectors who find her booth get something they can't order online. Her Metal on Metal pieces and her vintage Leather & Watercolor Paper mixed media pieces are sold only at shows, and each one is one of a kind. At select shows she also shares a combined booth called The American West Gallery with photographer James C. Tunell. His gold and copper toned work draws on the style of Edward S. Curtis, and her color photographs bring a contemporary view of the same land. For promoters, it's a good example of two artists building one booth around a shared story. Her current season runs from Cave Creek and Prescott, Arizona, to Whitefish, Montana, and Teton Village, Wyoming, and her <a href="https://gallery.ancientlightphotos.com/page2">art show schedule</a> is the place to see where she'll be next.

She doesn't travel alone. Her French Bulldog, Poptart, rides along, and their life on the road led Cheyenne to a second craft as a children's book author with the Poptart's Happy New Life series. The first book comes to every show, signed with a Poptart pawtograph.

Most of Cheyenne's prints on Brakebee are satin aluminum. On her own site she describes the satin finish as sleek and modern, with no gloss and no reflection, which suits images full of deep shadow and bright desert sky. For a full room of the West, browse every print on <a href="https://brakebee.com/u/CHEYENNE%20L%20ROUSE%20PHOTOGRAPHY">Cheyenne's Brakebee profile</a>. If you're looking for western photography prints with a story behind each one, start with her rusted trucks and barns. To read more about her life behind the lens, visit <a href="https://gallery.ancientlightphotos.com/about/">Cheyenne L. Rouse Photography</a>, and find more artists like her in our <a href="https://brakebee.com/topics/artist-stories">Artist Stories</a>.

Source: About Cheyenne L Rouse, Cheyenne L. Rouse Photography, https://gallery.ancientlightphotos.com/about/

Source: Art Murmur: Cheyenne Rouse, The Arizona State Press, https://www.statepress.com/article/2012/11/art-murmur-cheyenne-rouse

Source: Introducing the Photographic Faculty, Shutterbug, https://www.shutterbug.com/content/introducing-photographic-faculty

Source: Sedona Reflection, Brakebee, https://brakebee.com/products/4675

Source: Art Show Schedule, Cheyenne L. Rouse Photography, https://gallery.ancientlightphotos.com/page2

Source: Fine Art Photography by Cheyenne L Rouse, Cheyenne L. Rouse Photography, https://gallery.ancientlightphotos.com/

Source: Dodge Bootlegger, Brakebee, https://brakebee.com/products/4667

Source: Route 66 Vette, Brakebee, https://brakebee.com/products/4676

Source: Lavender Adobe, Brakebee, https://brakebee.com/products/4691

Source: Life & Liberty, Brakebee, https://brakebee.com/products/4703

Source: Sunburst Kiva, Brakebee, https://brakebee.com/products/4680

Source: Teton Chapel, Brakebee, https://brakebee.com/products/4684

Source: Desert Duel, Brakebee, https://brakebee.com/products/4695

Source: Fine Art Print Pricing & Ordering Info, Cheyenne L. Rouse Photography, https://gallery.ancientlightphotos.com/page1

Source: CHEYENNE L ROUSE PHOTOGRAPHY, Brakebee, https://brakebee.com/u/CHEYENNE%20L%20ROUSE%20PHOTOGRAPHY

Cheyenne L. Rouse is a self-taught photographer of the American West who shows at more than 30 art shows a year. Meet the artist behind the aluminum prints.

Cheyenne L. Rouse: Photographing the Vanishing West

Kim Seyesnem Obrzut and her daughter, Krystal, make bronze sculpture together as <a href="https://kimandkrystal.brakebee.com/">Seyesnem Bronze</a>. Their work tells Hopi stories, and much of it is about Hopi women. Both are enrolled members of the Hopi Tribe. Kim is a Native American artist whose bronze career spans more than four decades, and she is one of the first Hopi women to work in the medium.

Kim was born Kim Seyesnem, a Hopi name meaning "fresh living flower." Her art began in childhood, when she found rocks in the Arizona washes and painted figures on them. Her family still keeps those rocks.

She started as a potter, working with the coil method passed down through generations and the scrape-and-smooth technique Hopi potters have used for thousands of years. Then came a bronze-casting class at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. Five minutes in, she knew she would dedicate her career to sculpture. "I fell in love with it, all of it, and in every way," she told Southwest Art. "It was fate." She went on to earn her Fine Arts and Sculpture degree there, summa cum laude.

Kim's first great inspiration was her grandfather. As a girl she watched him carve dolls from cottonwood root while he sang and prayed. "My grandfather was a Kachina carver, but traditionally women don't carve, so he didn't teach me," she said in 2009. "When I went to college I started to do my own thing." Looking back, she has said, "I now think back to my childhood and being with my grandfather, and how he was persistent in quality and traditional accuracy in how he carved dolls, and these beliefs still influence me today."

Her bronze Hopi maidens grew from that experience. Sorrel Sky Gallery describes them as "a powerful feminine counterpart that honors the women's equally vital role in Hopi culture and spirituality." "I do mostly women because that is what I know," Kim said at the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market, "and they all have a story or a path and they all represent something of the Hopi culture." <a href="https://brakebee.com/products/4648">Matriarch, her bronze Hopi grandmother</a>, carries the wisdom and guidance a grandmother gives her family.

Kim has been casting bronze for more than 43 years. She is one of the first American Indian women to work in bronze, a field long dominated by men, and her work is held in museum, corporate and private collections around the world. Her artist statement puts the heart of it in her own words: "I speak with my hands. The clay becomes my voice. My work seeks to capture and symbolize the spirit of my Hopi culture: the oneness of us all, the beauty in harmony, and the importance of nature and its gifts."

She has said her sculptures reflect the history of her people and "transcend the traditions of an ancient people into an ancient art form of bronze. I am trying to capture a moment in time of my people and have it remembered for many generations to come."

Kim gives her time to other Native artists too. She served two terms on the Board of Directors of SWAIA, the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, which produces the Santa Fe Indian Market. Sorrel Sky notes that she would rather serve on boards and support emerging artists than compete for ribbons. By 2009 she had shown at the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market in Phoenix for more than ten years. "It is very much an honor to show with all these great artists," she said then.

Each sculpture begins with hand-coiled clay, which Kim forms with a hard tool in the scrape-and-smooth method. Many of her figures are built on a gourd shape. "We use gourds as seed storages, rattles and as dippers to water our corn," she has explained. "That is the reason I use that form. It gives you the feeling of being of nature, which we all are."

From the finished clay, the studio makes a mold and casts the piece by the lost wax process. Kim keeps close control of each step, from mold-making and wax work to the final patina, with a team she has trained since her university days. Her patina specialist has been with the studio for more than 30 years, and together they create the custom colors and finishes that suit each sculpture's story.

Kim's figures have no faces. "She has no face, which symbolizes the egalitarian society of the Hopi people," Kim said of her sculpture Look to the Mesa. "She represents a people, not an individual." Krystal puts it this way: "We walk together as one people: one mind, one body, one spirit."

Butterflies appear again and again in Kim's work. Poliesva, "The Place Where the Butterflies Land," is her family's Hopi name. Butterflies are honored as pollinators of corn and as signs of spring and renewal, and young unmarried Hopi women are called butterflies and wear the butterfly whorl hairstyle. <a href="https://brakebee.com/products/4660">Polimana, whose name means Butterfly Girl</a>, wears her hair that way, and so does <a href="https://brakebee.com/products/4659">Peaches, a young maiden with a basket of peaches</a>.

Look to the Mesa, a bronze woman carrying corn, welcomes visitors at the University of Arizona Poetry Center in Tucson. It was given in memory of Helen Schaefer, for whom the Poetry Center's building is named. "She is looking toward the mesa to find answers to life's problems," Kim says. "We often look toward where we came from for our prayers."

In July 2026 a nearly four-foot Hopi maiden by Kim was unveiled at the entrance of the Taawaki Inn in Clarkdale, Arizona. Krystal has said a six-foot Hopi maiden is on display at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe.

Sorrel Sky Gallery in Santa Fe began representing Kim in October 2025. Her work has been featured in Southwest Art, Cowboys & Indians, First American Art Magazine and American Art Collector. You can browse her pieces on <a href="https://brakebee.com/u/kimobrzut">Kim Seyesnem Obrzut's Brakebee artist profile</a> or in the <a href="https://kimandkrystal.brakebee.com/shop">Seyesnem Bronze shop</a>.

<a href="https://brakebee.com/articles/embracing-tradition-krystal-obrzuts-artistic-journey-wp28221">Krystal Obrzut</a> has helped run the business since she was 15 and earned a marketing degree from Northern Arizona University. She spent three years on her first major sculpture, "Becoming," and unveiled it in 2024. We tell more of her story in a separate feature.

The family's own site describes how the partnership works. Kim brings years of traditional Hopi artistry and a deep understanding of the symbols in Hopi culture. Krystal brings a fresh perspective, along with new techniques and ideas.

Kim has said she has a lifetime of work ahead. "The Hopi Tribe of Northern Arizona is thousands of years old," she says. "I have a lifetime to fully explain my people and their history. I know many of my collectors now understand more about the women and their powerful place in Hopi history." With Krystal working beside her, that work now spans two generations.

Source: About Us, Seyesnem Bronze, https://seyesnembronze.com/about_us.html

Source: Sorrel Sky Gallery Announces Representation of Pioneering Hopi Bronze Sculptor Kim Seyesnem Obrzut, Sorrel Sky Gallery, https://sorrelsky.com/pages/kim-seyesnem-obrzut-pr

Source: Portfolio | Bronze & Beyond, Southwest Art, https://www.southwestart.com/featured/portfolio-bronze-beyond

Source: Celebrating a rich, creative tradition, ICT, https://ictnews.org/archive/celebrating-a-rich-creative-tradition/

Source: Meet Kim Obrzut, kimobrzut.com via the Wayback Machine, https://web.archive.org/web/2023/http://www.kimobrzut.com/meet_kim.html

Source: Matriarch Bronze Sculpture by Kim Seyesnem Obrzut, Brakebee, https://brakebee.com/products/4648

Source: Prescott Fine Art & Wine Festival, PR Newswire, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/prescott-fine-art--wine-festival-301344808.html

Source: Hopi maiden takes her place outside Taawaki Inn, Navajo-Hopi Observer, https://www.nhonews.com/news/hopi-maiden-takes-her-place-outside-taawaki-inn/article_54dfda81-7c3c-593d-b52f-74f5cc9a705f.html

Source: A Sculpture for Remembrance, Arizona Alumni Magazine, https://alumni.arizona.edu/arizona-magazine/spring-2023/sculpture-remembrance

Source: Polimana Bronze Sculpture by Kim Seyesnem Obrzut, Brakebee, https://brakebee.com/products/4660

Source: Peaches Bronze Sculpture by Kim Seyesnem Obrzut, Brakebee, https://brakebee.com/products/4659

Source: Artist Focus: Kim Seyesnem Obrzut, American Art Collector, https://www.americanartcollector.com/issues/249/kim-obrzut

Source: Publications, Seyesnem Bronze, https://seyesnembronze.com/publications.html

Source: Kim & Krystal Obrzut Headlining as Featured Artists at the Mother's Day Fine Art Festival, PR Newswire, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/kim--krystal-obrzut-headlining-as-featured-artists-at-the-mothers-day-fine-art-festival-held-at-the-yavapai-county-courthouse-plaza-in-downtown-prescott-302137265.html

Meet Hopi sculptor Kim Seyesnem Obrzut, one of the first Hopi women to cast bronze, and Seyesnem Bronze, the studio she shares with her daughter.

Kim Seyesnem Obrzut and Seyesnem Bronze: Mother and Daughter

Krystal Obrzut grew up with the rhythm of sculpting tools in the house. Her mother is <a href="https://brakebee.com/u/kimobrzut">Hopi bronze sculptor Kim Seyesnem Obrzut</a>, and studio days and art shows were ordinary family life. Today Krystal is a sculptor in her own right. She is an enrolled member of the Hopi Tribe and works with her mother under the studio name Seyesnem Bronze.

Art and Hopi culture were part of Krystal's life from the start. At 15 she began helping her mother run the art business, and those years at shows and in the studio gave her a real feel for the business side of being an artist. When the organizers of a 2024 festival introduced her, they wrote that she had been honing her craft alongside her mother since she was very young.

She studied at Northern Arizona University and graduated with a degree in marketing. The day after graduation she was already on her way to the next art show. After years spent at the busy shows, time in the studio gave her a fresh way of looking at her own career, and she took to it fully.

Krystal spent three years on her first major sculpture, Becoming. She unveiled it at the Mother's Day Fine Art Festival on the Yavapai County Courthouse Plaza in Prescott, Arizona, on May 11 and 12, 2024. The Mountain Artists Guild presented the festival, and that year it featured Kim and Krystal as its headlining mother-daughter sculptors. Organizer Candy Vermillion said the festival was excited to include "artists whose works narrate a story and pay tribute to Mothers" that weekend.

The piece follows a young Hopi girl tracing the footsteps of the generations before her. Guided by her mother, she learns the dances of tradition, the songs of the earth and the storytelling that holds their heritage together, and along the way she finds her own voice. A story about a daughter learning from her mother made a fitting debut for Mother's Day weekend.

Like the studio's other figures, Becoming has no face. In the studio's words, "She represents a people, not an individual."

Krystal keeps making work of her own. Sorrel Sky Gallery in Santa Fe, which represents her mother, lists the bronze Rhythms of Nature under the name Krystal Seyesnem. The piece is about the earth as a living thing, with people as its caretakers, keeping the balance between what people need and the health of the land. In its announcement about her mother, the gallery describes Krystal as a sculptor who "continues the family's artistic legacy with her own bronze works." On the family's own site, Krystal's story ends with what she does now: blending tradition with new ideas, and inviting others to share her love of sculpting and storytelling.

When reporters and galleries write about the studio, Krystal is often the one explaining what the pieces mean. In July 2026 a nearly four-foot Hopi maiden by her mother was unveiled at the entrance of the Taawaki Inn in Clarkdale, Arizona, and Krystal talked with the Verde Independent about it. She explained that Hopi society is matrilineal. Clans pass through the mother's line, households are typically managed and owned by women, and land and property pass from mother to daughter. "Women own the land," she said.

She has also explained how her mother came to sculpt maidens. Kim watched her grandfather carve when she was young, and by tradition only men carve kachinas. Krystal told Sorrel Sky: "This is her version of the Hopi maiden. She couldn't carve kachinas, so she created something entirely her own." You can see that in <a href="https://brakebee.com/products/4659">Peaches, a Hopi maiden bronze by her mother</a>, who holds a basket of peaches and wears her hair in the traditional whorl.

On the faceless figures, Sorrel Sky quotes Krystal directly: "Hopi means 'the peaceful people.' The figures have no faces because they represent one people. Everyone is equal. We walk together as one people: one mind, one body, one spirit." She gave the Verde Independent a shorter version of the same idea: each figure represents "one kin."

The studio they share has its own story in our feature on <a href="https://brakebee.com/articles/bridging-generations-the-impact-of-seyesnem-bronze-on-contemporary-hopi-art-wp28979">Seyesnem Bronze and Kim Seyesnem Obrzut</a>. To see their show schedule and more of their work, read about <a href="https://kimandkrystal.brakebee.com/about">Kim and Krystal Obrzut</a> on their own site.

Source: Becoming, Seyesnem Bronze, https://seyesnembronze.com/becoming.html

Source: Rhythms of Nature, Sorrel Sky Gallery, https://sorrelsky.com/products/rhythms-of-nature

Krystal Obrzut is a Hopi sculptor who works with her mother at Seyesnem Bronze. Meet the artist behind Becoming and her bronze Rhythms of Nature.

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Cheyenne L. Rouse: Photographing the Vanishing West

Kim Seyesnem Obrzut and Seyesnem Bronze: Mother and Daughter

Krystal Obrzut: Hopi Sculptor Finding Her Voice in Bronze

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Cheyenne L. Rouse: Photographing the Vanishing West

Krystal Obrzut: Hopi Sculptor Finding Her Voice in Bronze

Kim Seyesnem Obrzut and Seyesnem Bronze: Mother and Daughter