Gerdy and Ramos Sanchez welcome Charnell and Vera to San Ildefonso Pueblo

Retirement years sometimes signal the end of one’s professional career, but for Ramos Sanchez of the San Ildefonso Pueblo, they mean a full-steam-ahead return to painting.  Artistic talent runs deep in the veins of the Sanchez family with father Abel Sanchez (Oqwa Pi) a noted American Indian artist and nephew Russell Sanchez a sculptor superstar.

Ramos and his beloved wife Gerdy live quietly with their dogs Blue and Hercules at San Ildefonso not far from San Juan Pueblo, where Gerdy lived when Ramos came a-courtin’.  As a young man, Quincy Tahoma would come to visit Gerdy’s mother so they could speak in Navajo tongue and feast on traditional meals.

Ramos Sanchez in his home studio

In their current home, light streams into a cozy studio where Ramos creates scenes of traditional Indian ceremonies. He showed us several completed paintings, plus we got a sneak peak of a few awaiting only his unique finishing touch.  What a special treat!

Ramos Sanchez by his booth at the 2011 Indian Market, wearing an eagle-claw necklace.

The next day, Ramos was in place at Indian Market bright and early — about 7:00 AM by my calculations — greeting all who stopped by to appreciate (and hopefully to buy) his art.  While Vera and I produced the book Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist during our retirement years, our efforts pale in comparison to this vibrant octogenarian’s.

(Vera chiming in) I wrote about my first meeting with Ramos here. We were happy to bring a Ramos Sanchez (who paints as Oqwa Owin) fan together with her idol, and told their story here. I wrote about getting lost on the way to the Sanchez house in this post. And guess what, I managed to get lost taking Charnell for her first visit to Ramos! But I felt better when Ramos and Gerdy’s daughter-in-law, potter  Linda Tafoya Sanchez, who lives down the road, said she frequently gets lost trying to decide what dirt road to turn on.

So, what are you going to do when you “retire”?!!

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

We are grateful that a few people preserved photographs so that we can see a young Tahoma painting a mural at Santa Fe Indian School.

Dorothy Dunn, who had studied ancient pueblo art, based her ideas of what American Indian art should be on what she had seen in archaeological digs uncovering old Kivas walls. She and the archaeologists that had begun to work around New Mexico in the early 1900′s believed that “real” Indian art would look like the paintings of flat figures they had discovered on the mud-covered walls. Thus murals painted by American Indians became very popular.

This popularity of murals coincided with Tahoma’s beginning work with Dorothy Dunn.  In 1932, when Tahoma was in 5th grade, a non-Indian artist, Olive Rush, supervised several local adult Pueblo painters and some students as they created murals in the dining room of the Santa Fe Indian School. From Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist:

“Things were looking up for the young Tahoma, who passed fourth grade on his second try and now had a teacher who praised his drawing.  Surely it was a thrill to see these grown-up artists and older students painting larger-than-life dancers on panels between the windows in the school’s dining room.  While most pictures featured Pueblo dancers, at least one was a familiar Navajo Yei surrounded by the curved rainbow figure that resembled a sand painting. The very presence of these paintings taught him that painting was a serious pursuit.“

The legendary early artists who painted the murals included Abel Sanchez, the father of Ramos, whose home Tahoma would visit often with his friend. Another of the artists was Julian Martinez, the husband of the famous potter Maria.

In March, 1934, Tahoma painted a cactus design on his sixth-grade classroom wall. But in December, 1934, when he was in seventh grade, he joined with boys in higher grades to paint a map of the United States on the wall of the social studies classroom.

Then came the charming mural that circled an entire room. On page 11 of  Modern by Tradition:American Indian Painting in the Studio Style, by Bruce Bernstein and W. Jackson Rushing,  you can see the entire classroom in a photograph. This is an excellent book for anyone who wants to learn more about Tahoma’s training as an artist.

We described the scene pictured in their book in Quincy Tahoma’s biography.

“Tahoma donned a white coat over his school clothes and climbed up on makeshift scaffolding above bookshelves.  Miss Cruz had assigned him a space about six feet wide in one corner of the room. After several days of planning, making sketches, grinding colored earth, and making paints, he joined with other boys like Belardo Nieto, Ignacio Palmer, Ben Quintana, and Theodore Suina to create a classroom mural.”

“The other students painted scenes from their memories of home life in Pueblos or around hogans and Quincy painted an idealized Navajo family tending sheep.  Unlike his earlier experience with murals, when he painted a small portion of a picture planned by someone else, he had total responsibility for portraying Navajo life in his portion of the mural.”

‘How wonderful that these permanent art works were left behind at Santa Fe Indian School for people today to enjoy and study,’ you may be thinking. Unfortunately, the school’s murals have been destroyed. Despite the fact that the buildings were granted historic landmark status, the board of governors (All Indian Pueblo Council) deemed the buildings too dangerous to remain standing. Not only were some destroyed and other murals painted over, but those in charge used none of the usual historic preservation steps of recording the art and architecture. That is why I said we were fortunate that a few photographs remained to remind us of what an outstanding center of art the school once was.

Other famous murals by Indian artists include those at the Indian Arts store in Albuquerque and the Gerald Naylor murals that line the walls of the Navajo legislative building in Window Rock. If you ever have a chance, go to the top floor of the Interior Department building on the mall in Washington D.C. to see a very fine collection of murals. Have you seen these or other American Indian murals?

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

What other artists say about Quincy Tahoma:

“He stands out. He’s like a Picasso or Renoir or a Gauguin.”

Irving Toddy, Navajo artist and son of Jimmy Toddy (Beatien Yazz)

“I loved his horses, and the color he used…the motion and the movement..I think he was one of the greatest Indian artists in his time.”

Rance Hood, Comanche artist.

What people say about this book:

“Quincy Tahoma was a Navajo artist whose artistic abilities and understanding of his native culture and his native land have earned him a great reputation for his paintings. The authors of his biography have done an excellent job of following all the leads suggested to them. I highly recommend this book.”

Ramos Sanchez (Oqwa Owen), artist and friend of Tahoma, San Ildefonse Pueblo.

“Many of the quandaries faced by those in the story are with us still and wanting our attention. This is, in short, a good book worth reading.”

David M. Brugge, anthropologist and author of many books and journal articles on Navajo culture.

“We benefit from the tireless efforts of biographers Havens and Baderstscher who painstakingly sifted through multiples sources and art collections to give us an opportunity to know something about the life and artistic talent of one heretofore invisible gifted Navajo artist.”

Jennie R. Joe, Navajo, PhD, MPH, University of Arizona.

When you select a book, do you like to read what other people have been saying about it? Do these quotations persuade you to order Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist? See the Contact Us section on the right and send us the information so that you will be one of the first to get a copy. (If you are reading this in your e-mail, RSS, or Facebook, you will have to go to blog to sign up. Just click on the title of this post at the top of the page.)

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Oh the wonderful connections just waiting out there in Internet land!  Here’s a nice little story.

A few posts ago we told you about Quincy Tahoma’s friend, Ramos Sanchez.  Ramos and his beautiful wife Gerdy live at San Ildefonso Pueblo. Ramos’ father was a famous painter, and as a child, Ramos tells me, he used to make drawings and paintings and go out and sell them to the bus loads of tourists that came to see his father.

He got away from painting for many years but started up again in his seventies, and after he was eighty was invited for the first time to show his paintings at the Santa Fe Indian Market. But his current paintings are not the only ones that are collected.

One person searched on the Internet for information about Ramos Sanchez and found our blog. Since she would be going to Santa Fe soon, she contacted us and asked if she could get in touch with Quincy Tahoma’s friend Ramos. You see, for many years, she has owned a sweet little painting of horses done by the eleven-year-old Ramos Sanchez, and she wanted very much to meet him and tell him how much this painting meant to her.

Painting by Ramos Sanchez at Age 11

I (Vera) called Ramos and he was pleased that some one was that interested in his childhood art, and he called the owner of the painting. End of the story–they will be meeting in Santa Fe.  For the REAL end of the story, we hope that she will come back to our comment section and tell us about the reunion of the 11-year-old’s painting with the mature artist. (And she has done that–look around and you’ll see her comments.)

How can we help you connect? Or get more information about Quincy Tahoma or the other painters who attended Dorothy Dunn’s Studio at Santa Fe Indian School?

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

The good news.

Quincy Tahoma’s biography will be published by Schiffer Books. The book is due to appear in their Spring 2011 catalog.

A little history.

When Charnell Havens inherited some Tahoma paintings from a relative, she started looking for information about Tahoma’s life and art.  After a few years, she asked Vera Marie Badertscher if she would like to join the effort to uncover Tahoma’s biography and perhaps write a jointly authored book about the painter.

That was in the year 2000. Since then, the two of us have covered a lot of territory and talked to a lot of people, both separately and together.  Among the more than fifty people we interviewed, we have written about three of them here, Ramos and Gerdy Sanchez and Jean McSwain.

Next, we will share the road to publication so far. And we intend to take you along on this journey, so please come back often, and please tell us what you would like to know.

In order to be sure you do not miss anything, we encourage you to sign up for a subscription (see the box on the right) so that we can e-mail you each new post as it is written.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

I love the country north of Santa Fe. The land here is punctuated by unexpected mesas and vistas of green-clad mountains in the background. In between wide sweeps of flat dusty land provide scarce vegetation for wandering cows and horses.

It is easy to see why the pueblo people have settled there for hundreds, if not a thousand years.  When the Spanish conquistadors came through the Puebloans were here, and they are still here. Most of their legends say they came down from the area of Mesa Verde in Colorado and split into the many villages that exist today, most along the Rio Grand River that runs south from the mountains in northern New Mexico, past Santa Fe and Albuquerque on its way to Texas.

The directions that Gerdy gave me went something like this. Take the highway north from Santa Fe and follow the branch toward Alamos. Go across the river and when you see the black mesa, look for a trailer house and then we are the next road.  It sounded pretty clear until I got there. But then, I wasn’t very clear on a lot of things. I thought Gerdy’s name was Gertie (like my husband’s aunt Gertrude) until I had visited with Gerdy a couple of times, and saw her name in print.

I missed the turn-off to Alamos which is pretty simple to see when you are familiar with it–and pulled into an orchard where a guy loading crates of fruit explained to me how to get to San Ildefonse.

I saw an entrance to San Ildefonse, but I had not yet crossed a river. Soon I saw another sign for San Ildefonse, and I got worried because I assumed I need to go into the village.  I pulled off the road, and called Gerdy on my cell phone. No, she explained, I did NOT need to go into San Ildefonse.  I went on a ways and the road dipped and curved over a bridge across the Rio Grande River. (Duh, I said to myself–”the river” is the Rio Grande.)

Ahead was a large black mesa on the right hand side of the road. Of course there were mesas of varying degrees of darkness all over the place, but this one seemed more dramatic than the rest, and likely to be the landmark.  Good. The bad news, however, lay ahead–a ribbon of road bordered by barbed wire fence, and here and there a cluster of houses or trailers off to the right beneath trees.

Thoroughly confused, I called Gerdy once again. By now I’m sure she had me pegged as an idiot and was wondering why she and Ramos were wasting their time on me.  “Do you see a man painting by the road?” She asked. YES! There he was, easel set up for painting the Black Mesa.  That was a landmark that got me in to their house. Heaven knows how I would have found it if he had packed up his paints before I got there.

This expedition was just another example of communications between the native dwellers of the Southwest who know every natural landmark and notice every change made by man–and the urbanized (even from small towns) non-Indians who rely on roads, named geological features, numbers on houses and signs to get around.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Last weekend I had a phone call from Ramos Sanchez from San Ildefonso pueblo.  Ramos had read the manuscript of Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist and wanted to make two small corrections.  “Is that all?” I asked. “Yep. You two sure did a lot of research,” Ramos said.

Yes we did, and Ramos was a very large part of the research Charnell and I did. Way back at the beginning of Charnell’s quest, before I was involved, her first questions were put to Indian art dealers. I’ll let her tell you the details, but one of the Santa Fe Indian traders she talked to in 2001 suggested several names for us to contact.  One of those names was Rex Arrowsmith, who used to have a store in Santa Fe. Turned out that he now lives in Tucson, so it would be very easy for me to see him.  Well, of course, because he lived so close, I kept thinking I’d get around to it one of these days.

Finally in 2004 I reached him on the telephone just as he was getting ready to go to Santa Fe for the Indian Market. We agreed to talk when he got back to Tucson.  As it turned out, Rex had never met Tahoma personally, but as we talked in his home, he showed me the wonderful art collection he had assembled during his years in the business.  He has several Tahoma paintings, and also showed me some by Ramos Sanchez, who paints as Oqwa Owin, and told me that Sanchez’ father was the famous Pueblo painter, Owi Pi (Abel Sanchez.)

Rex said that Abel definitely knew him and it was possible that Ramos might remember him, too. It was probably a long shot. Well, in fact, when I called Ramos, I learned that he had known Quincy in school, and that Quincy spent a lot of time with his family when they were young. But even better, when I sat down in January 2005 to talk to Ramos and Gerdy, I learned that Tahoma had spent a lot of time with Gerdy Montoya Sanchez’ family before she married Ramos. Quincy and her brother Sonny were best friends, she said. It got better. Gerdy’s mother was a Navajo, and Quincy liked to visit because he liked having someone to speak Navajo with.

Then after Gerdy and Ramos married, Quincy continued to visit the families at San Ildefonso. Except for the time that Ramos Sanchez was in the Navy during World War II and until Ramos and Gerdy moved out of state in the 1950′s, they had spent a lot of time together.

The January 2005 conversation was the first of several long conversations I had with Ramos and Gerdy in the following years, as we talked about Quincy Tahoma. They knew details about his life that nobody else had a record of. Eventually, we would be contacted by their neice who had a collection of snapshots of Quincy, with her father Kee Yazzie, another school boy friend of Tahoma’s.

                                                                                                                          

I am pleased to say that I count Ramos and Gerdy as  friends, and I have twice visited San Ildefonso Pueblo in January on their most important feast day.  We truly could not have put together this book without the help of people like Ramos and Gerdy Sanchez who shared their memories, and helped us understand Native American culture, and people like Rex Arrowsmith, who scoured their memory for someone who might be able to help.

Of course we never stop looking for more information, so if you know someone who knows someone who might have a snapshot or a memory, please let us know.

Please tell us your story about how strangers may have helped you complete a task some time in your life. We would like to know.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.