In 1973, I was driving our company vehicle, a Dodge Maxi-Van, on a trip through Colorado to sell jewelry and rugs to some of the stores in the Estes Park and Denver areas.

We were doing business out of the front of my Dad’s Pepsi plant in Durango. At the time, you could never have called us an “upscale” establishment, but we had great rugs and jewelry and people seemed to find us.

For several years, Peter quit painting and focused on canvas art, sewing animal figures out of canvas and decorating them with feathers, beads and acrylic paints.

I kept asking him when he was going to start painting again and last year he broke out the easel and reached into his bag of creativity.

For more than 20 years, Cowboys & Indians magazine has been one of the most popular publications for people who love and appreciate the Western and Native cultures. The magazine is so popular that people buy and sell past issues online.

For the past several years, we have been featuring the Navajo Folk Art of Delbert Buck.

One of the best friends I have made in the art business is George Walbye, a sculptor from Loveland, Colorado.

Navajo sculptor Alvin Marshall has been carving works out of stone for about 40 years. When we opened our current location in 1983, he and Orland Joe often traveled the show circuit together, selling their works.

The two of them traveled to Europe and studied in Italy, learning to work with marble and visiting the great museums where they studied the works of the classic Italian sculptors.