“I love the creative process…solving problems in order to create something attractive that will give someone a reason to smile.” ~John T. Benedict

John was born on January 6, 1962 in Dallas, Texas.  He lived there with his parents and two brothers until after he graduated from high school in 1980.  After moving around to different places for a few years, he made his home in Tucson, Arizona, where he lives today with his wife and children.

John believes he was meant to be an artist from a very early age – as early as five years old.

He has done many different types of art, including murals, night-club theming, haunted house theming, gates, doors, faux finish painting, furniture, photography, and fossil and dinosaur egg restoration. John has since settled into metal art – creating sculptures, wall hangings, chess sets, and steampunk critters and fish.

John has public art located as far away as Taiwan, Tennessee, and right here in Tucson and has been published in “American Art Collectors”, 2012 and 2013 issues.

Are you interested in purchasing John Benedict’s work? Please contact Rogoway Turquoise Tortoise Gallery for more information.

“” ~John Booth

John was born in Austin, Texas. At the age of 5, he began playing with clay and took his first sculpture class in High School. He studied sculpture at Southwest Texas State University and from there his career as a sculptor developed. 

John’s collector list includes patrons in North America as well as abroad. His work has been shown in galleries in Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio, Texas, Scottsdale, Arizona and Chicago, Illinois. Over the years, John has studied the traditional regalia and masks of Hopi Kachinas as well as Plains Indian dress. He has perfected the art of raku firing, which he applies to his ceramic sculptures. Both his bronze and ceramic pieces reflect his painstaking attention to detail. 

Born in Austin, TX.

Lives & works in Pagosa Springs, CO.

Are you interested in purchasing John Booth’s work? Please contact Rogoway Turquoise Tortoise Gallery for more information.

“A flower blooming in the desert proves to the world that adversity, no matter how great, can be overcome.” ~Matshona Dhliwayo

Ana Thompson is an inspired, intuitive botanical artist based in Tubac, Arizona, creating hyper realistic interpretations of the landscape through a whimsical, surrealist lens.

With a background as a fresh floral designer beginning in 1992, Ana is a certified Arizona Master Florist and strives to think outside of the vase to reinterpret traditional design.

Trading the unlimited natural materials of the Pacific Northwest for the abundant sunshine and wide open spaces of the Sonoran desert,  Ana is currently working with preserved and permanent botanicals to create sculptural designs that reflect the Sonoran desert as well as the richly layered texture of the human experience.  Each piece is built to honor and immortalize a moment in the ever evolving natural world, and our experiences of it.

Are you interested in purchasing Ana Thompson’s work? Please contact Rogoway Turquoise Tortoise Gallery for more information.

“Our art is the synthesis of unlikely materials . . . strong and fragile, rusted and refined, light and dark forges a unique, yet timeless tribute to the Desert Southwest. ~Terry Alexander

Arizona based steel and glass sculptors, Terry & Marilyn Alexander, capture the spirit of the Southwest with a contemporary, abstract panache.  Bold colors achieved with a “watercolor” paint technique are matched with vibrant fused and dichroic glass, highlighting the rustic patina of raw steel, hammered copper and bright stainless.

After pursuing more traditional careers, Terry & Marilyn decided to combine their talents with their love of the Southwest culture. They design and source material for each piece.  Terry & Marilyn collaborate on glass and finishes as well as naming rights.  Each piece is signed in molten steel at about 8000F degrees with the initials, TM in a petroglyph logo.

Terry & Marilyn have been juried into many fine art shows in the Southwest.  Their pieces are included in numerous private collections throughout the U.S. and internationally.

Are you interested in purchasing Terry and Marilyn’s work? Please contact Rogoway Turquoise Tortoise Gallery for more information.

“Being an artist to me means being able to do what I love each day and to enjoy a lifestyle of creativity..” ~Thomas A. Tankersley

Thomas is a self-taught artist and metal worker. In 1972 he began his career in iron work and soon after opened his own company in Placerville, California.  His skills with metal developed rapidly and his fabricating business grew to be one of the largest in El Dorado County.  After 21 years in the industry, Tom longed for something new and creative to fill his working days.  Applying his metal skills with his natural artistic talents, he began creating steel sculptures.  His first two pieces, a covered wagon and a stagecoach sold immediately to a large corporation in San Francisco.  He was hooked on art and hasn’t stopped creating since.

In 1994 he entered his first art show and won first place for one of his famous stage coaches. His specialty is south western art, although he has a wide range of artistic styles including wildlife and human form, nautical and large abstract sculptures.

Thomas’ work is hand formed in steel. The feathers of an eagle are cut out individually and then hand pounded to create the look of real feathers.  The steel leather of a stage coach is heated and pounded until it really looks like leather, people have to touch it before they realize it is steel.  Each sculpture is approached individually making his work unique.  Tom enjoys creating rustic looking pieces with character, especially those that tell a story like his stagecoach in the sand.  Extensive research and meditation go into each piece he makes.

Tom also sculpts with Fresco Sculpting Clay, a medium he created to use in place of bronze. He mixes the clay and applies it over a steel armature building up layers until he has reached the desired effect. Then he does the final step of the patina finish. This technique looks similar to bronze but is much less expensive and also stays true to his one-of-a-kind approach to his work.

After living for many years in Northern California, Thomas and his wife Barbara relocated to Southern Arizona near the Tubac art colony in July 2017. Being a part of the regions thriving art community has his imagination stirring, creating new themes for his work incorporating the area’s unique beauty.

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Are you interested in purchasing Thomas Tankersley’s work? Please contact Rogoway Turquoise Tortoise Gallery for more information.

“Believing that the arts, in any form, make an incredible difference in a person’s life, I continue to work in many different mediums, trying different forms of expression and creativity. My passion, however, is my sculpture; its quiet strength reflects my obvious love and feeling for the three-dimensional form. “~Kathy Anderson

People of all ages fascinate me and I believe it shows in my gentle figurative bronzes. I am inspired by their stories and strive to capture those narrative moments in the lives of my subjects that are simple but cherished — a child reading a book, a father’s first dance with his daughter, a rabbit having trouble with his ears or a young Osage woman watching the daybreak.

Kathy Anderson

I specialize in bronzes that are representational in style.  My sculptures are most noted for their faces as I strive to capture the inner spirits of my subjects and transform them into clay and then bronze. As with many artists, my style has undergone an evolution over the years.  My earlier work was very realistic, academic, and classical; my subjects were very true to life, using strict proportions and anatomy while expressing emotion through movement and gestures.  For the past five years, I have focused on a series of Native American women and men whose bodies are very stylized and elongated while their faces still retain the representational style I enjoy sculpting.  This style suits me perfectly because I love the abstract form. Using reality only as a point of departure, I incorporate abstract lines in these sculptures and omit non-essential detail in an effort to express the simple but elegant essence of my subjects. When that essence is passed on to my viewers, I know I have accomplished something special. Are you interested in purchasing Kathy Anderson’s work? Please contact Rogoway Turquoise Tortoise Gallery for more information.

“My ability to find happiness, peace and to understand myself, has always been most easily expressed through horses.” ~Alex Alvis

Once Alex knew what a horse was, she drew, painted, and sculpted them.  But growing up in the suburbs meant borrowed time with horses – on her granddad’s ranch or at a friend’s house.  For Alex, horses symbolize the important qualities of confidence, strength, courage, and freedom, peace and beauty.  Horses are naturally emotionally wise, empathic and sensitive.  Often we find that in their presence we become more self-aware.

Alex and Mark Alvis

Alex’s expressionist style reflects the indefinable nature of the horse.  Art that is both flowing and static – minimalistic and specific – sculpture that occupies its own space while simultaneously existing in unexpected dimensions.Each horse is originally sculpted using light and fragile paper clay.  This challenging medium allows her to capture the muscle characteristics, facial expressions, details in the mane, tail, and hooves, and the essence of motion so characteristic of her work.  It is Alex’s goal to illustrate the significance of the spirit of equine life.  Her wish is that these sculptures symbolize everything horses are, and give all of that to you.

For Alex, as for many people – you have everything when you have horses.

Are you interested in purchasing Alex Alvis’s work? Please contact Rogoway Turquoise Tortoise Gallery for more information.

My newest passion is my Stacked Stone series. I take a piece of nature, a rock and change it, then balance it with other forms and cast into bronze.”

Warren Cullar opened his first art gallery as a senior in college. After receiving a BFA in 1965, he joined a staff of six artists in a commercial ad agency and as he says: “I learned more in that one year than I did in 5 years in college.” A bigger job was offered to him and he spent a brief career as an advertising director in a large department store. A move to Mexico to study art at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende was a major influence. The color of Mexico is evident throughout the art he has produced during his career. With an MFA degree under his belt, he received a teaching contract from Hardin Simmons University in Abilene, Texas and later opened the art department at Western Texas College, completing 8 years of experience as a college art instructor.

 After spending the summer of 1976 in Egypt on a study grant that he had received from the college, he made the decision to become a full time professional artist. He came to the Austin area and opened an art gallery and 5 years later moved into the Austin home he has now occupied for 30 years.

Warren started his art career by selling his hand pulled stone lithographs and watercolors. In the December 1978 issue of Southwest Art Magazine he was featured in an 11 page article about his art. He continued to produce watercolors and enjoyed selling his work in art fairs in Texas, Colorado, and California. 

 In 1982 he read a magazine article about the need for an adventure artist and began traveling the world using his skills as an artist on scientific expeditions in Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, Spain, and Easter Island, to name a few of the 38 countries stamped in his passport.Warren travels the world with a sketch book and watercolors to record his impressions of the various cultures and peoples he encounters. 

 In the early 90’s he built an 840 sq. ft. painting studio on the back of his wooded property and took up acrylic painting; then he produced hand pulled serigraphs and soft ground etchings. One of his collectors asked him to create a sculpture for women who had survived breast cancer. The sculpture was completed and he was captivated by working with clay. That was the first bronze he had created since his student days in Mexico. A large bronze commission was awarded to him and a new direction emerged. Today Warren laughs at the thought that for 20 years painting in watercolor was all he ever wanted to do. In 2004 he built a second studio dedicated to sculpture.

Are you interested in purchasing Warren Cullar’s work? Please contact Rogoway Turquoise Tortoise Gallery for more information.

“For 26 years, I have used my work to honor the Native American. I try to capture these likenesses with simplicity and elegance.” ~Felicia

Felicia is a nationally noted, award winning sculptress, specializing in miniature to monumental work. Felicia’s portraiture and figurative Southwest manner demonstrate the uniqueness of her elegant, recognizable style. Felicia appeared in publications / books titled Women Leaders of Colorado, Sculpture of the Rockies, and many news and magazine articles.  Felicia was recognized as one of the top women leaders in Colorado.

Most of her bronzes depict the Native American female, which is expressed in sensuous curves, tension of emotion, with minimal forms.  They  reflect  the spirit and richness of the mystical Southwest. I portray the Native American because they are the original inhabitants of our continent, they should not be forgotten.

In 1995, Felicia was inducted into the National Association of Women Artists in New York City. In 2010, her sculpture The Dancer was featured in the 2010 book Sculptors of the Rockies.

Felicia has been invited to display her work in many juried invitational shows, such as the Gilcrease Art Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Tucson Museum of Art in Tucson, Arizona; Charles Allis Art Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; the Old West Museum in Cheyenne, Wyoming; the National Arts Club in New York City; Mountain Oyster Club in Tucson, Arizona. She has won numerous awards and has received national acclaim. Her work is displayed in prestigious galleries throughout the United States, and in private and corporate collections throughout the world.

Are you interested in purchasing Felicia’s work? Please contact Rogoway Turquoise Tortoise Gallery for more information.