Tom Mix Wept

Tom Mix Wept

Tom Mix Wept is a large-scale fiber sculpture in the form of an oversized white cowboy hat, hand-crocheted at monumental scale. The work takes its title from a historical moment of public vulnerability: film star Tom Mix—an icon of early Hollywood Westerns—openly wept at the funeral of Wyatt Earp, complicating the mythology of stoic cowboy masculinity that his on-screen persona helped define. The sculpture distills this contradiction into a single object, using softness, scale, and material to reconsider cultural ideals of strength and emotion.

Rendered entirely in fiber, the hat measures approximately six feet across and occupies space as both symbol and body. Crochet—a technique associated with care, patience, and intimacy—is deployed at a scale that resists its usual associations. By enlarging an emblem of Western authority and masculinity and constructing it through traditionally “soft” labor, Tom Mix Wept positions vulnerability as a structural element embedded within the mythology of the American West.

The work was first exhibited in Denver in 2021 as part of BRDG Project’s True West exhibition and has since traveled widely, appearing in multiple group exhibitions across Colorado, including Latitude 37 at the Arvada Center, where it was the sole fiber installation in the show. Tom Mix Wept marked a turning point in the artist’s practice, establishing a trajectory toward large-scale fiber works grounded in scale, material tension, and cultural reference.