High priced Pottery and free dog biscuits

This photo is posted as part of Travel Photo Thursday, started by Budget Travel Sandbox where you can see a gorgeous Canadian sunset. You can also click on the names under her post to see more Travel Photo Thursday pictures.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Are you planning your summer vacation travel? Maybe Quincy can give you some ideas for travel in his own Navajo Land.

While he was still in school, he went to Chinle, near Canyon de Chelly one year, and spent some summers in California.

Canyon de Chelly, Photograph by Charnell Havens

We know that Quincy Tahoma did not stay in one place for very long.  He had a trader friend in Scottsdale who took him on a couple of long trips. One time Quincy wrote about going to several states with the trader. Jon Bonnell of Scottsdale told us that the pair once drove all the way to the mid-west.

We know that the Navajo artist rode along with photographer T. Harmon Parkhurst as Parkhurst photographed people and they went together to see some buffalo at a ranch near the Grand Canyon.

We know that Quincy Tahoma also traveled with photographer Elliott Porter. They went hunting, and Porter photographed nature while Quincy stored up ideas for paintings of places like Monument Valley.

Rider in Monument Valley, Photo by Sam Lowe, Arizona

We know from Harrison Begay that the two of them once took two women on a “vacation” all the way to the Grand Canyon from Santa Fe. And we know that Tahoma went to Flagstaff in Arizona and to Tuba City, on the opposite side of the reservation from his usual home in Santa Fe.

So it was only natural that we also traveled a lot of those roads as we did research for the book.  And recently I’ve been writing about trips on the Navajo Reservation, encouraging people to follow in Tahoma’s footsteps.

Navajo code talker and family, Photo by Sam Lowe, Arizona

You can read about a family trip to the Navajo Reservation at Mother of All Trips. Dinosaurs! Secret Codes! Making Movies!

For adults looking for some not too drastically extreme adventure travel, there are many things to do besides just gaze at the beautiful scenery. I gave five suggestions at My Itchy Travel Feet: where to go hiking, horseback riding, fishing, driving and camping on the rez.

Woman watching her sheep at Canyon de Chelly, Photo by Charnell Havens

When I did an interview with a travel writer in New Zealand, I was reminded that some people are not even sure what an Indian reservation is and whether they are welcome to travel there, so I wrote Ten Tips for Travel on the Navajo Reservation for the web site, BootsnAll. When do you need a permit? Where can you get a drink? What should you expect to eat? Where can you sleep?

If YOU are planning a vacation in Navajo land this summer, I hope one of these articles will help you. And if you are not personally going to northern Arizona and New Mexico this summer, maybe you can pass the information on to a friend.

Thanks to Charnell Havens and to my friend Sam Lowe for the photographs used here and in the articles about travel on the Navajo Reservation.

What is your favorite place to go on the Navajo Reservation?

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

We have already identified at least 500 paintings, and most of those were owned by individuals who do not travel in the usual Indian Art world, rather than by public institutions. So we know that there are many other family treasures out there that we have yet to see.

And some of his paintings probably went abroad and may still exist in a European country.  Tahoma’s teacher at the Santa Fe Indian School Studio sent students’ paintings abroad, but apparently did not keep records of whose paintings, and which ones were sold. We have read about other Tahoma paintings in various articles and other references but have not been able to find the originals.

For instance, our first inkling of an exhibition called Man Becomes an Artist was a note in a one-page bio of Quincy Tahoma in a file at the New Mexico Museum of Art Library on the Plaza in Santa Fe. It referred to a commission of paintings of prehistoric man from the Laboratory of Anthropology.

Clara Lee Tanner’s book on Southwest Indian Painting, reproduces the painting Cave Dwellers and notes “it is a most unusual subject.” Since it depicts a cave man painting on the wall of a cave, it seemed likely that it could be part of Man Becomes an Artist.

Jeanne Snodgrass’ American Indian Painters lists Posters: MNM “Man Becomes an Artist,” Laboratory of Anthropology Exhibition. Could the Laboratory of Anthropology still have these paintings?

In a newspaper clipping we saw a mention of this exhibit traveling to California.

We looked for other references, and kept our eyes open for any of his work that might resemble prehistoric man, but all we saw were scenes of Navajo life as he knew it when he was a child, or the historical/mythical life of earlier Navajos. He did, however, take commissions. We knew that when he was still in school he had painted animals to illustrate a magazine article and illustrations for a children’s book. (We will talk about these at a future date.)

Finally, we went to the archives of the Laboratory of Anthropology, now part of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture on Museum Hill in Santa Fe. In their ancient-looking pueblo-style building, archaeologists for decades have studied American Indian life and art.  The archives, when we visited, were being cleaned up and moved, so it was complicated to get a look at anything.

However, as is the case with most archives and libraries, one knowledgeable person, in this case, Diana Bird, held most of the knowledge in her head and she knew where to find the files.  She found the information on Man Becomes an Artist, but also gave us the bad news that the panels themselves had disappeared.

When you understand the history of the Laboratory of Anthropology, you can understand how that happened.  Tomorrow I will explain that history, and tell you about a delightful discovery that we made just recently, that confirms the exhibit was real, and Tahoma did indeed paint some of the pictures used. We can even show you one of them.

To read more, and see a “found” painting, read this post. And if you enjoy learning the inside story of writing a biography, subscribe by RSS Feed or fill in the blank below:

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Cliffor Brito and his custom painting

It was certainly an unusual friendship, the jailer and the prisoner.  Or was it?!!

Quincy Tahoma seemed to make friends everywhere he went, and the Santa Fe jail was no exception.  As a 1950s frequent guest due to public intoxication, the young Navajo endeared himself to the guard, Clifford Brito, who let the artist out of his cell to perform janitorial duties and to paint.

Tahoma showed his gratitude by painting a beautiful scene of a brave rounding up horses.  The art work was custom designed to fit over the doorway of the jailer’s mobile home and  Brito treasured that painting until his death in 2008.

You can view Clifford Brito and his painting in the slide show on the home page of  the Tahoma web site. I took this picture when I interviewed him in 2004 during a research trip to New Mexico.

Do you know of other instances of jailers and prisoners becoming friends? Have you heard any other jail-time stories about Quincy Tahoma?  We were told, for instance, that he was briefly incarcerated in Indiana or Illinois while on a road trip with a friend, but the details of that adventure are scant.

Photograph by Charnell Havens. All rights reserved.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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.

Anne Cavanaugh did some research and came up with Pueblo Drive-In. Well, plenty of people wrote and e-mailed the New Mexican to set us straight. The theater actually was located at Tesuque Pueblo. It was the Pueblo Drive In, but we had the wrong location. Unfortunately, this, the largest “canvas” ever painted by Tahoma eventually was torn down along with the drive-in. Later, a successor, also called Pueblo, was built on Cerillos Road. Our thanks to the many people, like Mona and Elivra Vigel Ogard and John Rodriquez and others who delved into their childhood memories to straighten us out on this bit of history. History indeed is documented with personal recollections.

Do you know someone with personal recollections of Tahoma?  We would love to share that information here. And if you like reading about Quincy Tahoma and the making of his biography, please share by clicking on the social networking buttons below.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.