Detail, shot by Monique L. Roberts

 ​Rip it Up and Start Again
This is what happens when you hand an art punk his grandfather’s leather tools, and the deep desire to honor a legacy runs into the heady compulsion to put it all through the shredder and see what comes out the other side. 

Since 2009 Santa Fe based artist Scott Horn has been driven to reinvent leatherwork for the 21st century, using old-school tools to make one-of-a-kind art and apparel built for the trail but right at home in the city.

A lifelong creative, Scott earned a BFA in Theatre Design from the University of Kansas in 2004 and fell in love with visual art along the way. He dabbled in sculpture and mixed-media work until the day he inherited his grandfather Milt Horn’s set of leatherworking tools in 2009.  

Once he picked up the mallet he never looked back. Totally self-taught, he has spent years developing a one-of-a-kind visual style defined by detailed illustration, rich geometric patterning, and complex folding. His work has been shown in Dallas, Seattle, Chicago, and Salida.

Scott is driven by the twin desires to honor traditional craft and totally reinvent it for the 21st century. His work pairs a self-aware playfulness with an obsessively detailed illustrative and patterning style.