• Job: Director of special projects, Booth Western Art Museum, Cartersville

Karl W. Ritzler/Special (ENLARGE)

Among the artworks that Dunham discusses at the Booth Western Art Museum are the oil painting 'Red Butte With Mountain Men' (behind him), created by Maynard Dixon in 1935 for a San Francisco restaurant called Kit Carson's Grill, and Truman Bolinger's 1973 bronze sculpture 'Rendezvous, Rendezvous!'

Photo courtesy of Jim Dunham (ENLARGE)

Jim Dunham's job incorporates his love of art, history and the West.

• What I do: Jim Dunham isn't a real cowboy, but he plays one on television, at lectures, in performances and at the Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville.

As director of special projects and historian at the growing, new art museum, Dunham dresses the part of a movie cowboy, complete with an authentic reproduction of a 19th-century shootin' iron.

"The difference between me and the average person is that most consider this a hobby," said Dunham, 65. "It's my love."

Dunham's job at the museum calls on that love as well as his extensive knowledge about Western history and art. He has curated an exhibit of Western paraphernalia; is putting together a seminar of contemporary authors of Western fiction and history; writes and paints accompanying materials for the museum's exhibits; lectures about art, history, movies and noted Georgians who went out West, such as Doc Holliday; and even performs fast-draw demonstrations and gun tricks at the museum and on the road.

While Dunham has been an artist and "played cowboy" since childhood, his gun tricks got him into show business. His knowledge of Western history has kept him there. He remains a student of the West, voraciously reading both fiction and history.

After graduating from the University of Colorado with an art degree, he went to California with the idea of becoming a commercial artist. A friend with connections in the movie industry suggested Dunham show his gun tricks to a 20th Century Fox studio executive.

He wasn't offered a job in the movies but, instead, as a performer in Western shows on studio tours. He did the shooting, while stunt men fell from the buildings.

Dunham has appeared as an expert on Old West firearms in several episodes of the History Channel's series "Tales of the Gun." He also was called upon to teach gun handling to actors, including Bill Bixby and Robert Culp, as well as Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell for an episode of the TV show "Quantum Leap."

Dunham joked that he never had to teach any tricks to stars such as John Wayne, who was making Westerns before Dunham was born.

"You don't get rich" doing occasional work for studios, Dunham said, so he became a performer at Western dinner shows and tourist destinations.

Dunham doubts he would have made it as a real gunfighter, describing himself instead as someone who is interested in history.

"If I lived in the Old West and walked those streets in Tombstone, I probably would have been the leading expert in Elizabethan sword fighting," he said.

• What got me interested in this: Dunham's mother is a watercolor artist in the Chicago area. As a child, he saw her teaching in their home, and soon he began drawing. He always was fascinated by cowboys.

He went to college in Colorado, partly because it was in the West, where he earned his bachelor's degree in art with a dual major in acting and "took every class on American Indians and the Western and frontier movement."

• Best part of my job: "Getting to use the information I've filled my head with over the last 40 years," he said. "It's fun because I've spent my whole life learning."

He can even tell you what the weather was like for the notorious gunfight at the OK Corral — cold, and it had snowed the night before.

• Most challenging part: "Working with youth," he said. "They haven't been raised on Westerns," so they aren't familiar with the terms and characters of the Old West.

For movie and television work, he's also out of the loop living in Georgia rather than Los Angeles. "Even if you're in the loop, there's not enough work to make a living."

Dunham and his wife, Suzanne, moved to Georgia from Arizona when she took a job as an executive with a local company.

• What people don't know about my job: "How responsive the public is to realistic art," Dunham said. Much of Western art is highly realistic, almost photographic, while also telling a story.

"In the art world, abstract art is the work for museums," he said. "The average person doesn't have an emotional response to that art. People who come to this museum have an emotional response to the paintings. They have memories associated with these paintings."

• What keeps me going: "I never lost my love of the learning process," he said, and there is always new information coming to light about the history of and life in the Old West.

• Preparation needed for this job: Dunham acquired his knowledge of history and art through reading, he said. He learned gun tricks as a teenager in Illinois from an expert.

"I had never thought about being in a museum," he said. "I knew the subject matter, I knew the artists, I knew everything I was looking at. I interpret the art."

- By Karl W. Ritzler, for ajcjobs. Got an interesting job that you love? E-mail your story to jobseditor@ajc.com.