Lonesome Moon Studios

Jayden Starr · Live and in Person One night only · Friday, November 6, 2026 Join us for one night with Western artist Jayden Starr, founder of Lonesome Moon Studios. Meet the artist and see her hand-painted ceramics in person at Faust Gallery in Santa Fe. Jayden Starr is a Western artist and the founder of Lonesome Moon Studios, creating hand-painted ceramics inspired by the landscapes, wildlife, history, and visual traditions of the American West. With a BFA in Drawing, Painting, and Printmaking, Starr approaches clay as a painter, using wheel-thrown forms as a canvas for detailed imagery and layered, painterly surfaces. Raised in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Starr’s connection to the West is rooted in both lived experience and an ongoing fascination with its history. Her work draws from historical photographs, vintage Americana, rodeo culture, wildlife, and the people and stories that have shaped the region. Working across functional ceramics and one-of-a-kind fine art pieces, Starr combines traditional Western imagery with contemporary form and storytelling, creating work that reflects both the history of the West and her own experience within it. Her work was recently exhibited in the Unbridled exhibition at the A.R. Mitchell Museum of Western Art. “Some pieces are meant to hold butter. Some are meant to hang on a wall. Some somehow end up doing both. I like that.” I’m a Western artist and the artist behind Lonesome Moon Studios. My background is in drawing, painting, and printmaking, which is what I received my BFA in. I found my way to ceramics after art school, and it quickly became this really natural meeting point between everything I loved. I could build an object, paint on it, tell a story through it, and then send it out into the world as something someone could actually live with and use. That functionality became a really important part of the work for me. I loved the idea that a piece of art didn’t have to live solely on a wall or a pedestal—it could become part of someone’s everyday life while still carrying the same intention, storytelling, and attention to detail that I would bring to a painting. I still work across different mediums, and I’m continuing to explore where those mediums can take me, but painting has always been at the center of what I do. I took a ceramics class at a local art center in 2024 and pretty quickly became obsessed with it. At the time, I was working in a stressful career outside of the art world, but art kept calling me back. Ceramics became a way for me to reconnect with that part of myself and, eventually, to find my way back to being an artist full-time. Because I already had such a strong background in painting, I started treating the surfaces of my pots like canvases almost immediately. I was less interested in separating painting from ceramics and more interested in seeing what could happen when I brought the two together. That combination of painting, form, and functionality ultimately became the foundation for Lonesome Moon Studios and continues to shape the way I work today. The West has always felt like home to me. I grew up in Idaho surrounded by mountains, wildlife, and people connected to Western life—cattle ranchers, barrel racers, horse trainers—and my grandmother put me on a horse when I was very young. I think I understood just how deeply connected I was to the West when I moved away. Living on the East Coast created this persistent longing for home that naturally began finding its way into my work. Over time, that connection grew into a fascination with Western history and the real people, events, traditions, and stories behind it. I love digging through old photographs, historical accounts, vintage advertisements, and Western imagery and finding ways to interpret them through my own work. In a lot of ways, making Western art began as a way of returning home when I couldn’t physically be there. Now, it’s become a way of continually rediscovering it. My inspiration really began with my upbringing in Coeur d’Alene and the people I was surrounded by. I noticed early on that there was a certain grit to the people working in Western industries that I couldn’t ignore. Their stories were always richer and more complicated than what you might assume from a job title like rancher, horse trainer, or rodeo athlete. The relationship between people and animals is also essential to my work. I’ve always had a strong connection to animals myself, so I’m naturally drawn to the partnership and trust that exists between the two. From there, curiosity took over. I began diving into historical photographs and stories of figures who helped shape the American West, while also connecting with people who are carrying those traditions forward today. Ultimately, experience is my greatest source of inspiration. Traveling, meeting people, hearing their stories, and experiencing a place firsthand gives me something I could never find by simply looking at an image.