Maker Monday: Tucson artist Greta Ruekgauer finds inspiration in the desert and thrift stores

From her childhood in New Mexico to Tucson’s Sonoran Desert, artist Greta Ruekgauer has found constant inspiration in the desert landscape and Americana of the Southwest.

Using thrifted clothing as a canvas, Ruekgauer, the artist behind Stubbornworn, captures the spirit of the Wild West in her illustrative block print designs, depicting cowgirls, bison and galloping mustangs.

For Ruekgauer, her love of the desert Southwest runs deep.

“I just had this most magical childhood (in New Mexico) of running through the desert with my friends, exploring, and playing, and it felt completely limitless,” she said.

After moving to the East Coast, Ruekgauer said she always wanted to return to the desert. It was on a cross-country road trip that she found Tucson and knew she wanted to make it her permanent home.

“I drove through Tucson and I fell in love with it,” Ruekgauer said. “How could you not be inspired when there's the desert and the saguaros and Mount Lemmon and the monsoons and the sunsets. It really is just looking around and being inspired by the desert and being lucky enough to be absolutely in love with where I live, so there's no shortage of inspiration.”

Ruekgauer, who has a bachelor of science in object design, officially launched Stubbornworn in January 2026, but said she got into block printing in the fall of last year, while experimenting with a “frenzy” of different mediums and projects.

“I was doing ceramics, collaging, I was painting, I even did Shrinky Dinks,” she said. “I finally picked up a block printing kit at Michaels for my, like, 20th visit to Michaels that week.”

Her first design, she said, was a desert scene with a UFO abducting a cow.

“Just cheesy desert liminal stuff that I love,” Ruekgauer said.

After that, though, she was hooked, and Ruekgauer said she found herself mesmerized by the carving and printing process.

“I realized that my brain kind of shut off, and I reached this state of meditation when I was carving, and it is really hard for me to do that, so I found this beautiful way to create art and shut everything else out, and so I stuck with that,” she said.

To create her works, Ruekgauer carves her designs into rubber blocks and uses fabric ink to stamp the art onto T-shirts, tank tops, button-down shirts and jackets. The ink binds with the fibers, making durable pieces of wearable art.

All of her pieces are printed on exclusively thrifted items, to combat the waste of used clothing.

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“I don't want to contribute to the carbon footprint of the world, and the world's clothing that's going into the landfill, so I only upcycle, but that makes it this fun hunting and gathering experience,” Ruekgauer said. “I'm out there two to three times a week because different thrift stores have different days with different deals.”

Because every article of clothing is thrifted, every piece is one of a kind, and Ruekgauer carefully designs each item, matching the subject to the garment.

“I really love creating different compositions, and figuring out how to arrange which designs go on to the clothes, where to put them, and how it would complement the clothes,” she said. “It's this combination of knowing what the printing ink will do well on, how big my designs are, and what they will look good on.”

Sometimes the design comes first, but other times, Ruekgauer said she is inspired by an item of clothing she finds thrifting and bases her piece around the garment.

“I do have a general style. I kind of have my own color palette, but that wasn't on purpose, it just kind of happens naturally, it's a lot of earth tones, and then I have some neon sprinkled in there,” she said. “Sometimes I'll just catch a piece and I'll say, ‘oh my gosh, I didn't know I needed this, but I do, and I know that my horse design is going to go on it really well.’”

Each piece can take her anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days to complete.

“Once I have the piece in mind, I draw it out, that can take a couple hours, or it can be really fast if it's a simple design. It just depends on the complexity,” she said. “The graphite transfers really well onto the rubber that I use, so I manually, physically transfer it onto the rubber, then I will go over it in a permanent marker, and carve it out. The carving process can take anywhere from like two to a full day of carving, depending on what I'm doing.”

Since March, Ruekgauer has been selling her block print clothing at various markets with Keep Tucson Crafty, Desert Goth Club and the Capricorn Market, and said the response to her work has been overwhelmingly positive.

“All of us have some sort of appreciation for the desert, and I think that my designs remind people of that,” Ruekgauer said.

Between markets, she also posts new pieces to her Instagram stories every Saturday morning at 10 a.m.

“They’re brand new designs and pieces, all one of a kind,” she said.

Going forward, Ruekgauer said she has a lot of plans for Stubbornworn. She is hoping to host more workshops and markets in the future, and maybe even some classes teaching linocut art.

“The goal is for this to be my full-time thing that turns into me being able to employ my friends and pay them a living wage,” Ruekgauer said. “Hopefully a brick-and-mortar would be the end goal. That's kind of where my mind goes. But the next right step, I think, is just getting more involved with the community and meeting more people, meeting more makers. The more makers and vendors that I meet, the better I am doing my craft, and being a community member in Tucson.”