Adobe Gallery, Santa Fe

It was a treat to return to Adobe Gallery in Santa Fe last week. We had last been there in August during Indian Market, when the gallery hosted a reception and book signing for us.

Al Anthony

I wanted to see if Al Anthony had any new Tahoma paintings that I had not seen yet–yes, he did. It is called Indian Love Call. The painting, created in 1955, is similar to one painted in 1956 with the same name that is in our book, Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist. The main difference is that it is a mirror image. The painting is done in bright, bold colors and uncharacteristically for Tahoma, shows a scene that is Plains Indians (complete with teepees) rather than his own Navajo people.

And I wanted to ask Al about another Quincy Tahoma painting he recently sold  because he had told an interesting story on his web site about the owner. I was particularly interested in learning who had purchased that painting. (It is a losing battle, but Charnell and I TRY to keep track of the hundreds of Tahoma paintings.)

The Adobe website said that they acquired this  painting of a Navajo brave on a horse from an artist from Santa Clara Pueblo who had been a friend of Tahoma’s. The two of them were riding to Taos to sell two of Tahoma’s paintings, when a drink was spilled on one of the paintings. The artist friend took the “ruined” painting and kept it.  Now, more than 50 years later, the artist had decided to sell the Tahoma painting.  Adobe Gallery was able to have a restorer remove the stain so that the painting looked as good as new.

When I went in to see Al Anthony, I asked if he knew any more about the painting. He revealed that the artist-owner of the painting was a woman, and he surmised that she was Tahoma’s girlfriend back when they were riding in a car to Taos. (She must have been driving, since we have been told that Tahoma was always reluctant to learn to drive because of his impaired left arm).  He promised to contact the painting’s original owner and see if she would talk to us about her friendship with Tahoma.

Then I asked who had bought the painting.  It was purchased for the Buffalo Thunder Casino outside of Pojaque Pueblo, north of Santa Fe. It is very appropriate that Tahoma’s painting should find a home in a casino belonging to one of the pueblos, since he spent so much time with friends from the pueblos.

You can see several other paintings that illustrate how Tahoma copied his own creations when you look through Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

I made a trip last week to Santa Fe and to Window Rock to sign copies of Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist. (And don’t miss our special December deal–a free gift with purchase).

Quincy Tahoma leaning against porch

I did introduce the book to a lot of people, but I also accumulated more Quincy Tahoma stories. Since we completed work on the book a year ago, and it was published in April of 2011, people keep bringing us more information about Tahoma’s life–and new paintings that we have never seen. It would be enough for a volume two if we were going to write a volume two, which we are not. So you’ll just have to read these stories here in the blog.

The recurring theme of my recent traip was Quincy’s Girlfriends. Because there were more than one, I’m going to spread out the  stories over more than one post.

It just takes one look at a photograph of Quincy Tahoma to know that he was a chick magnet.  So it stands to reason that those we tell you about in the book are not the entire inventory of Girls Quincy Dated.

Collected Works Bookstore cafe area

When I gave a slideshow talk about Quincy Tahoma at the Collected Works Bookstore, people breezed in from the cold Santa Fe night and were happy to get a steaming cup of coffee at the snack counter.  Two of the early arrivals thumbed through the book and exclaimed over the beautiful paintings.

They listened attentively as I talked about Quincy in Santa Fe and nodded when I mentioned people they knew, like Tonita Peña, the painter from Cochiti Pueblo who  lived and taught at Santa Fe Indian School for a time. During the Q & A, one of the men said, “Do you know what happened to that big painting that hung on the wall in Tonita Peña’s house?”

Turns out he grew up at Cochiti Pueblo and saw a large Tahoma painting in the house next door. But Tonita passed on and the painting disappeared.

Then the visitor from Cochiti dropped the bombshell.  “Quincy gave the painting to Cerilia (Tonita’s daughter). She was his girlfriend.”

Although we had heard plenty of rumors of various girlfriends, we tried not to include information in the book that we could not confirm more than once. Thus Cerilia, the pretty daughter of Tonita Peña who later married and moved to San Ildefonso, is mentioned in the book  but not much is made of her relationship with Tahoma.

I visited with Cerilia at San Ildefonso, and she said that Tahoma was older and that he came and taught her class some painting when she was at Santa Fe IndianSchool. But she denied they were girlfriend and boyfriend.  Well that denial came as a surprise to the man from Cochiti, who said that everybody knew she was Tahoma’s girlfriend.

I took his phone number and will talk to him some more. Who knows? We may even figure out what happened to that missing Tahoma painting.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

A cocky Tahoma during the 1940's

Quincy Tahoma was a hit with the ladies. All through his life they flocked around him. Valentine’s Day might just have been his favorite holiday after Christmas, the date that he adopted for his birthday. Not that he did anything to discourage the attention.  Now we would not want to say he was vain, but while still a school boy, Tahoma did spend some of the money he made selling paintings on “hair slick.” Joe Sando, who grew up to become an expert on Pueblo history and author of many books, told me that the younger boys like Joe, used to sneak into Quincy’s dorm room at Santa Fe Indian School and “borrow” some of the pre-mousse hair stuff–most likely “Brillcreme, a little dab ‘l do you.” (If you are humming that advertising jingle, we know how old you are!) And the boy WAS good looking. Oh, my.  So many people have commented to us about his thick, wavy dark hair and his friendly smile. It is captured well in photographs that he liked to hand out to friends.

Quincy Tahoma. Check out his right eyebrow.

We can’t say for sure, but the well known photographer T. Harmon Parkhurst, who gave Tahoma a place to work in his studio near the Santa Fe Plaza, probably snapped some of those pictures.

Because so many of these photos, and others have come back to us, we know that the Navajo painter handed them out frequently. Now does that sound like a modest, retiring gentleman to you? Nah. Quincy Tahoma KNEW he was good looking. The picture shown here came from the daughter of his old friend, Kee Yazzie, but most of the pictures we retrieved came from old girlfriends.

Charnell wrote about a visit with one of the first people she found who knew Tahoma personally. Quincy had a serious, and rather surprising, romance with Jean Wallace (McSwain). A couple of people have told us stories about a Navajo girlfriend at Santa Fe Indian School, but after he left school, as far as we know, most of his girlfriends were non-Indian.  There is a romantic tale about the attraction between Tahoma and a quiet Pueblo girl which her mother put an end to, but that girlfriend, now a widow and a grandmother, is not talking.

Nina Bogard, on the other hand, was happy to talk to us and tell us about her summer fling at a guest ranch.  She was only 16 and thought that Tahoma was in his mid-twenties, but he was actually about thirty. They both enjoyed horses and riding and spent happy days on the ranch where her mother had a summer job. She gave us photographs and a long letter that he wrote to her.

Quincy and Nina in 1946

According to Harrison Begay, Taoma had a fling with a rich white woman from the East who came to New Mexico looking for sexual adventures with the “exotic” Native American men.  Artist Begay told us the story about the woman who took Quincy on a merry ride (quite literally) through northern New Mexico and Arizona. Quincy thought she was serious, and bought a ring and took a train back east to track her down, but she turned him down and sent him back to New Mexico.

You see, Quincy Tahoma was a hopeless romantic. He really wanted to get married, and he fervently pursued one possible mate after another, never with success.  He painted pictures for them, gave them his photograph, gave them elaborate gifts, somehow managed to hide his drinking sprees from them, but he remained single to the end of his life.

You can learn more about the romantic side of Quincy Tahoma in our book, Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist, published by Schiffer Books in April 2011. We even print a couple of pages from the love letter to Nina, and show you photographs of  Jean and Nina.

Do you have any theories as to why Tahoma apparently did not  pursue Navajo girls or women? He always claimed that he did not know his clan, although we believe he did learn as an adult that he was named for his mother’s clan. Would that have stopped him? Was he attempting to fit in to the white society? Did he not feel worthy of diné families because of his drinking and because he lived in a different society? We would like to hear your theories.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Christmas card, drawn and hand lettered by Quincy Tahoma, courtesy of Jean Wallace McSwain

A character in a novel starts as a blank page. The author creates a name, a birthplace, a locale, a personality and talents.

Meet Quincy Tahoma, the author of Quincy Tahoma.  In many ways, this creative Navajo artist made himself his greatest work of imagination.  True, someone else contributed the name, Quincy Tahoma, to a young boy who was known to the family who raised him as Bi-Gaani (his arm).

But it appears from school records and friends’ stories that Tahoma created his own family history and particularly invented his birth date. Birth records from the early 20th century are practically non existent for the Diné who lived on the reservation.  The school records are missing from Tuba City and from his one year at the Albuquerque Indian School, but a few years after he started school in Santa Fe Indian Schol, an official record lists his birthdate and year. We know that he shaved a few years off of his age about the time that he started playing sports in junior high school. It might be coincidence, but it also might be so that he would be eligible to play on the seventh grade basketball team.

And the record lists his birth date as December 25th.  Since most of the people he grew up with did not pay much attention to birth dates–saying instead as one man told us, “I was born when the apricot trees blossom”– it is highly likely that date was chosen by Tahoma. We know that he enjoyed non Navajo holidays like Christmas and New Year’s Day, and probably reveled in the attention he got by having a Christmas birthday.

He drew the card shown here for his girlfriend, Jean Wallace (McSwain),  in the early 1940′s, and we share its gentle holiday wishes with you.  Happy Holidays from Charnell and Vera Marie.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

It was a magical weekend.

I just returned from California, where I spent two days as the guest of Tahoma’s very special lady friend from the early 1940s.  I’d had many phone conversations with Jean and her wonderful husband Larry (now deceased) off and on for several years, but had been unable to visit her until now.

I photographed the Tahoma paintings she and Larry had acquired. Then Jean showed me the rawhide jacket and the turquoise jewelry Quincy had given her when she was Jean Wallace, the wonderful Christmas card he had drawn for her, and the magnificent sketches he had made of her and her mother.

The Christmas card featured a gangly colt and a greeting hand-lettered in the extravagant swooping script that he sometimes used. All had been lovingly preserved throughout the years.

As we talked, she reminisced about their times together and about how very special a person Quincy was.  After a while, she brought out this lovely lady’s compact with an embedded watch on its top. Tahoma had painted two beautiful scenes on it: a cottontail rabbit in the desert on the back and, on the front, an inquisitive little fawn gazing at the time. He had given it to Jean as a special present in 1944, the date still clearly visible in his miniature next-scene signatures. Then Jean gave it to me, and I cried.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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?

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.