STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Every so often the UPS truck pulls up at a contemporary ranchette bordered by Shasta daisies and other flowers south of Bellevue.  Out comes a box of Texas longhorn skulls carefully wrapped in layers upon layers of bubble wrap.

Anette Wachter polishes the horns and goes to work layering dried pressed flower petals and leaves of all shapes and colors on top of the skulls. Three layers of Mod Pod glue and another four layers of Matte clear seal and she has a beautiful art piece capturing the spirit of the West, its canvas longer than her own arm span.

Wachter shows her longhorn skull and bison skull art at arts festivals throughout the West, her most recent coming this past weekend in Jackson, Wyo. And she will have some of her creations on display, along with her jewelry made of turquoise and other stones, at the Artists Studio Tour of the Wood River Valley Friday through Sunday, Aug. 22-24.

Wachter is one of 10 Bellevue artists who will be featured on the free self-guided tour, which runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day. Thirty other artists are spread throughout Hailey, Ketchum and Sun Valley. (See today’s Eye on Sun Valley story “Artists Studio Tour Includes Prizes for Tourgoers” for more information.)

Wachter began creating Texas longhorn and bison skull art by accident.

A native of an island off the coast of Washington State, she began competing in rifle marksmanship in 2006, shooting targets a thousand yards—or 10 football fields--away. In 2010 she joined the U.S. Rifle Team—an endeavor that took her to competitions all over the world and earned her a silver medal in the World Championship.

Tired of traveling and tired of the painstaking practice of loading her own ammunition, she retired when the COVID pandemic disrupted competition.

She retreated to her ranchette near Bellevue where she had just moved and put to use the meticulous hand work she had employed loading ammunition making cowgirl-style jewelry with leftover ammunition. She her new business RudyBlu after two of her dogs.

She was laying out pressed flowers for a necklace when she decided she didn’t like the design she’d arrived at. Disgusted, she threw the pressed flowers to the side where they landed on an elk skull she had bought at an antique store.

“I liked what I saw and so I decided to try it on Texas longhorn and bison skulls,” she said.

Wachter gets her Texas longhorn skulls from two ranches in Texas and one in Ohio. She picks out the skulls she wants using photos they send her, and they clean the skulls for her before sending them off to Idaho.

She gets her bison skulls from a young ranch couple who raise bison for meat near Boise and from a ranch in Montana. She often goes hunting for the flowers and leaves she presses, and she uses feathers from the chukars she hunts.

“I love making this type of art—it’s fun,” she said. “I like putting flowers and leaves on something natural so that it lives on. When I have an art show, I get a lot of crowds because the skulls are pretty spectacular. And it makes me feel good when someone likes what they see enough to take it home.”