To Market, To Market

Post by Vera

We know that Quincy Tahoma created hundreds of paintings. We know that he gave some away, or traded them for food or drinks or a place to sleep. But many, many people bought his paintings during his lifetime. We know because we have heard their stories.

How did this Navajo man, separated from his family as a youngster, living in what amounted to a foreign country, become a professional–a person who supported himself by selling his art? How did he learn to navigate the sophisticated art world of Santa Fe, Scottsdale, Oklahoma, California?

It started when he was very young. Indian boarding schools had a tradition of selling items made by their students.  By the time he was going to school in Santa Fe and studying art with Dorothy Dunn at the Studio, the school store was selling students’ art and sharing the proceeds with the student.  After deducting a small amount to cover the costs of paint and paper–Miss Dunn was always short of supplies at the Studio–the student artists could make some money.

During the 1930′s this was very important for Quincy Tahoma in order that he could have money for an occasional ice cream cone at a store near the school, or when he was a little older to buy that hair slick that attracted the girls, or even to go to a movie on a Saturday night, he needed some pocket money.

Buffalo Hunt, 1939, painted before Tahoma entered his senior year in high school. Courtesy of Tim R. Johnson.

Dorothy Dunn believed that it was important for fledgling artists to learn how to market their work, as well as how to master the techniques. She introduced them to the concepts of pricing paintings, taught them the importance of Galleries and Museums, and entered their work in contests. Fortunate students like Quincy Tahoma were selected to go to San Francisco to the Golden Gate Exposition in 1939. There he fully realized that he had become a professional artist.

The back of the 1939 buffalo hunt painting. It shows the $15 price and where it was painted (Santa Fe Indian School).

Dorothy Dunn was just part of a larger circle of people who worked to see that there would be a market for the art of her students. The Gallery at the Museum of New Mexico (now the New Mexico Museum of Fine Art) and the Laboratory of Anthropology held exhibits and promoted the works of the young Navajo and Pueblo artists in Santa Fe. The photographer T. Harmon Parkhurst invited Tahoma to paint inside the photography studio near the Plaza, and displayed Tahoma’s paintings in the window along with his own high-priced photography.

Tahoma participated in all of these venues. He made friends with the owners of galleries.  He also had friends among other artists, and they helped each other out. We were fascinated to learn that the well known painter Harrison Begay had organized several of his friends, including Tahoma into a show–probably the first totally Indian organized and sponsored show of their own art ever to be held.  It would no doubt have become an annual event, but World War II intervened.

Tahoma even distributed pictures of himself, signed in his fancy script, that showed him wrapped in a Navajo blanket and wearing concho silver.

One of our favorite images of Tahoma selling his art involves his own door-to-door efforts.  In the fifties, when his drinking binges kept him perennially broke, and he was living at the home of “Eppie” Montoya a few blocks from the Plaza, he would set out each day with several of his paintings rolled up and tucked under his arm.  He walked down the hill from Eppie’s house and visited the offices of businessmen in the area, and lawyers and judges whose offices were around the court house just north of the Plaza.

As book authors, we have our own marketing to do these days, and Tahoma is helping us. For one thing, we want to tell as many people as possible about our book. Instead of art gallery shows, we will have book signings. Instead of going door to door, we will talk to groups about Tahoma’s art and about the making of the book. In addition to traveling to several states, we will travel around the Internet giving interviews, writing guest blogs and supplying books to reviewers.  But Tahoma is helping us sell the book because his paintings will be displayed in the galleries and featured on slide shows when we talk to a group.

We would like to keep you up to date about where and when we will be talking and showing slides and signing books.  In a few day we will email the second issue  of News About Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist, so if you have not yet subscribed, please sign up today for your own newsletter. We would not want you to miss any news.