When Dorothy Stevenson met the artist Quincy Tahoma, she was a young woman and he made a big impression on her. Later, as an adult, she became a teacher at St. Michael’s High School in Santa Fe and eventually wrote a musical play based loosely on Tahoma’s life.

Entitled Navajo Night Song, the musical was performed at the Greer Garson Theater at St. Michael’s school for three nights in 1977. In the play, the Tahoma-like central character was married and lost a baby son. Yet, in more than 12 years of research into Tahoma’s life, we never found evidence that he had married or had a child.

Can you shed any light on this perplexing subject? Do you know anything about the production of Navajo Night Song in 1977 in Santa Fe?

Tesuque Drive-In Theater with Mural Quincy Tahoma Painted

August 31, 2004

“History is documented with ‘personal recollections.’”

Mona Ortiz Stetina wrote that in an e-mail to Anne Cavanaugh at the Santa Fe New Mexican.

We had written an article for the New Mexican telling people a little bit about Quincy Tahoma and our project and asked for their help. Along with the article, we printed a picture loaned to us by Dan Fannell whose step father Jim Wilson was one of the many people who had befriended Tahoma. A drive-in movie had provided a giant canvas for one of Quincy’s favorite subjects—a horse being spooked by a skunk. We did not know the name of the drive-in, but had been told it stood on Cerillos Road in Santa Fe. (more…)

September 17, 2004

What is that old story about searching the world and finding treasure in your own back yard? I am here to tell you that is the way it happens.

I live in Arizona. Ever since Charnell Havens asked me to help track down information about Quincy Tahoma so that we could write a book that would share his life with people, I have been taking periodic trips to New Mexico to sift through library and museum files, have gone to other cities to interview people, have even looked in a Los Angeles museum and a New York City museum for paintings done by Tahoma. Finally, after having run all around the country for five years, I decided to take a look at a museum in my own home town.

When I e-mailed Alan Ferg at the Arizona State Museum in Tucson, he said, “I don’t think we have any documents. But we do have ninety paintings.”

How’s that again? NINETY?? And so I spent two days looking at and describing ninety small paintings that Quincy Tahoma painted between the age of 16 and 18 and one that he did in 1940 when he was 19 years old. I have seen how his natural talent for telling stories with line and color was present before he had achieved technical proficiency. And his love of certain subjects started way back when he was in the ninth or tenth grade. If you want to look at the ninety paintings, contact Alan Ferg, to make an appointment.

Have you seen the Tahoma collection at the Arizona State Museum? In what other museums have you seen Tahoma’s paintings? Please share with the other readers of the Tahoma Blog.

Quincy Tahoma Strikes a Pose for the Photographer

Quincy the movie star? Yes, Quincy Tahoma did star in a movie, sort of. He walks, he paints, he wears jewelry. Artists Simon and Herta Moselsio, from Bennington College, traveled to Santa Fe in 1943 and made short films of the young artist.

In one film clip, Tahoma emerges from a hogan and carefully closes the door. He wears a Navajo rug slung over his shoulder and is weighed down with silver concho belt and heavy silver squash blossom necklace. In the next scene we see the artist seated at a table painting. The table is covered by a rug and he is still wearing all his finery as he paints. No reality prizes for props and costumes for this film!

The short films include brief shots of several paintings, and give the viewer a chance to see the painter in action as he deftly makes a rabbit appear with a few brush strokes. Amerind Foundation in southern Arizona showed two of the three films as part of their 2004 exhibit of Native American master painters. Tahoma’s master work, Going to the Sing, which included more than sixty individual figures, hung beside paintings by Andy Tsihnahjinnie and Harrison Begay and others.  The photo above was given to a girl friend three years after the actual filming of the movie.

We have not been able to find anyone from Bennington who accompanied the Moselsios on that trip in 1943. Might you know someone?  Have you seen the movie? Please share your experience with us.

September 5, 2004

I grabbed the manila envelope from my husband as he walked in from the mailbox. I had eagerly looked forward to hearing the tapes of Charnell Havens interviewing Jean Wallace McSwain about dating Quincy Tahoma.

Jean evoked the Santa Fe of the 1940’s and the parties where young Anglos and young Indian artists met and talked about art and life. As Jean recounted the story of the unlikely romance of a young woman who had grown up in Connecticut and attended a private school with a Navajo who had grown up in a hogan and attended Santa Fe Indian School, Charnell asked about prosaic things like transportation. Jean said she and Quincy mostly walked around town, but sometimes he would come and pick her up in a taxi. Charnell wondered what the fare would have been, and Jean did not know for sure, but said it was cheap.

Meanwhile, back in Tucson, I had been reading Turn Left at the Sleeping Dog, John Pen La Farge’s collection of oral histories of Santa Fe. There I learned that you could take a taxi anywhere within the city limits for fifty cents. Now we can picture Quincy fishing two quarters out of his jeans pocket to pay the cab driver. You never know when a detail like the price of a taxi ride may fit into the story of a life.

Ice delivery? Milk in bottles? What detail captures your life long ago?

January 10, 2005

Who are you?

The questions come right after an exchange of names. Where did you come from? What do you do for a living? Do you have children? We tend to quickly try to categorize the people we meet. People think of the questions as friendly exchanges, not prying, and the information exchange helps oil the way to understanding between strangers.

If you come from Ohio, Charnell and I will follow up with, “Where in Ohio?”, because we both came from there. We’ll probably recognize the name of the county and know if you were close to Columbus, Cincinnati or Cleveland. We’ll likely wind up talking about the Ohio State Buckeyes. Likewise, we’ll bond if you’re from Arizona or Texas or Virginia or from Santa Fe. If you have children, we may whip out our PDAs and show you pictures of our families. Of course if you mention Navajo Art as an interest, we’ll talk your ear off.

In the Navajo culture, clan comes first. According to the Saganitso family that took Quincy in as a small child, Quincy was born to EdgeWater and born for Many Goats. (more…)