001- FROM THE ARKIV

The North American West: plains and the prairie, sprawling deserts and clay-colored rock formations, heavily wooded mountains, expansive lakes and heavy snowfall. Places where clothing historically had a job to do before it  evolved to have an aesthetic to uphold.

I was born in Cheyenne with roots stretching north through Calgary. Somewhere between those landscapes, my family history and the mythology surrounding the North American West, is the visual language that became Arkiv. 

"Arkiv" is the Norwegian word for "archive." In this context its pronounced the same as in English. An homage to my families history and my fasciation with the Norwegian diaspora of the 1880s, and its contribution to the culture of the North American prairie.  

Part anthology, part shop, Arkiv is an attempt to collect the pieces of the West and see what happens when they're placed in a new context.

My dream as I continue this project, is to curate clothing, objects, and lore into an ever-evolving vision of what the West might become. I want to collect the practical, the beautiful, the strange, and the enduring to form a distinct character. An Arkivist, the Cowgirl King of the Rodeo: shaped by the West, but not confined to its conventions. 

You may have noticed that Arkiv is now based in Nashville. A city with its own legend, but one that decidedly isn't  Western. Oftentimes, tourists come here dressed hat to boot sticking out like a sore thumb. 

The country music we know today is the collision of Appalachian tradition and Western working songs, repackaged  the self-reliant Hollywood Cowboy. Nashville is a place where the idea of the West is packaged, performed, recorded, and continually reinterpreted. Arkiv is where lived landscape meets interpreted landscape. Music is an essential world-building block. From the stages at Frontier Days and the Calgary Stampede to life in Music City, Arkiv Radio collects sounds, new and old, that have shaped and continue to re-shape our idea of the West. 

From The Arkiv will continue as a place to pull one at a time on the threads I keep returning to. Some entries will look backward, others will look at the ways those histories continue to resurface in contemporary fashion and culture. Sometimes, it will simply be a place to share something worth collecting.