Charnell Havens is a retired business executive, an expert in knowledge management, who has developed a second career as a REALTOR®. Long intrigued by Quincy Tahoma’s paintings and curious about his life, she began in 1996 to probe into details of his development as an artist, hoping some day to write his biography. The idea for the book evolved from her curiosity about several paintings that she inherited. Charnell’s skill with photography has made her the official photographer for the biography of Tahoma.

 

When Vera Marie Badertscher, a friend from the Ohio State University college days, interviewed Havens for an alumna magazine, Havens asked the writer if she would be interested in joining a project to re-discover the life of Quincy Tahoma and share it through a published biography. Badertscher is a freelance writer who specializes in travel and the Southwestern United States and blogs about travel and books. A resident of Arizona since 1963, she was a member of the committee that presented the Scottsdale National Indian Art Exhibition in the 1960s and ’70s, and has a deep interest in American Indian art.

The research partners have been gathering information about Quincy Tahoma and his paintings for many years and now are completing the process of writing a book about his life, tentatively title Quincy Tahoma, The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist.

Contact the authors at charnell@tahoma.info or veramarie@tahoma.info