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E l P a l a c i o P r e s e n t s 3

on the plaza in santa fe

N E W M E X I C O

M U S E U M O F A R T

505.476.5072

N E W M E X I C O

H I S T O R Y M U S E U M /

P AL A C E O F

T H E G O V E R N O R S

505.476.5100

on museum hill in santa fe

M U S E U M O F I N D I AN

A R T S & C U LT U R E

505.476.1250

M U S E U M O F

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

F O L K A R T

505.476.1200

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ContentsIntroduction

The Arts and Culture: A Chain of Life 6

by Kate Nelson

Features

Earth Now:The Autobiography of an Exhibition

8by Katherine Ware

My Ranch, Myself: Making a Home on the Land 10

by Pam Houston

Tony, Tony, Burning Bright 12

by Kate Nelson

The Arts of Survival: Folk Expression in the Face of Disaster 16

by Suzanne Seriff

El Palacio Presents is published with The Santa Fe New Mexican www.sfnewmexican.com

El Palacio magazine is published quarterly by the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs

To request copies of this publication, please call (505) 476-1126

Director of Marketing and Outreach:Shelley Thompson

Editor: Cynthia Baughman

Art Director: David Rohr

Design: Natalie Brown Baca, Autumn DeHosse, Susan Hyde Holmes, Monica Meehan

To Subscribe: El Palaciois available by subscription or as a benefit of membership in the

Museum of New Mexico Foundation. To become a member call 505-982-6366, ext. 100.

To subscribe call 505-476-1126, or visit elpalacio.org. $24.99/year, $39.99/two years.

ON THE COVER: Tony Da, The Antelope, 1977, casein painting, 9 11 in.

Collection of Joe and Cindy Tanner. Photograph by Charles King. On exhibit inCreative Spark! The Life and Art of Tony Da at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture.

presentsF a v o r it e s f r o m t h e m a g az i n e o f t h e M u s e u m o f N e w M e x i c o

PhotographscourtesyoftheMuseum

ofNewMexico.


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6 E l P a l a c i o P r e s e n t s

As most of the world

cheered on Egyptian

protesters in their

victorious revolution

this year, a smaller set

of headlines raised red

flags in the arts and culture community:

Looters had struck Egypts museums.

Antiquities from the heart of civilization

were at risk.

Museums and archaeological sites eventu-ally tallied 1,228 missing objects. The total

could have climbed higher had Egyptian

youths not formed human chains around

some of the museums to protect them.

Imagine such a siege on the Smithsonian

Institution or the Museum of Modern Art and

you might feel compelled to join a human chain

yourself. Fortunately, Americas cultural

treasures arent threatened by a larcenous

horde. Instead, ours face the specter of a

slow erosion by neglect.

THE

ARTS AND CULTURE

A Chain of LifeBY KATE NELSON

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Overthe last fewyears, the economy hasnt

been kindto those toilingin museums, monu-

ments,libraries, historic preservation, the arts

and archaeology. Congress and states across

the nation have slashed cultural budgets.Private-sector philanthropists, often the last-

gasp angels of symphonies, art galleries and

theater groups, have placed extra locks on

their wallets.

The American Association of Museums

recently released a report that said a third

of U.S. museums saw attendance drop from

2009 to 2010. More thanhalf hadlostat least

some of their public funding.

After years of debt and weakening ticket

sales, the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra

has likely played its last minuet. A similar

lament is being sungin Philadelphia,Detroit,

Phoenix, Syracuse and other cities.

You can blame price of gas, the state of

arts education, fluctuations in tourism, fewer

advertising dollars, the competition from

400-plus TV channels, the rise of Facebook,

Twitter, and e-books, or a nationally shared

case of the blues.

Whatever the sad side of the story tells

us, it leaves out what museums, arts and

culture still mean to so many people today.

Hundreds of schoolchildren regularly fill t he hallways of the state

museums in Santa Fe. More than 1,200 people crammed into the

New Mexico Museum ofArt for theopeningof theexhibition Earth

Now: American Photographers and the Environment. Every summer,

the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market packs Museum Hill

with lovers of art from around the world.

Why do they show up? Because no matter how much our

current culture accommodates an isolationist lifestyle, institu-

tions like museums, the symphony, live theater and community

events offer an experience that Homo sapiens learned to treasurealong with the first campfirea place to gather, to share stories,

to experience emotions, and to work out an interpretation of who

we are as a people.

One of the aims of this special publication of El Palacio Presents

is to inspire you to step into the states museums and monu-

ments. Another aim is far simpler: El Palacio

magazines articles rock, and we want you to

know that.

Between these covers, youll find out how

curatorKatherine Ware sussed out the photog-

raphers whose work is on display, right now,

in Earth Now. Youll hear the haunting story of

a tragedythat stopped visionary artist Tony Da

in his prime. Youll ride in a pickup truck as

award-winning author Pam Houston tells you

how she came to build a home in the West.All these articles f irst appeared in El

Palacio.

Since 1913, El Palacio has served as the

scholarly journal of the states museums and

monuments. Today, it stands as the nations

oldest museum magazine, which might well

make it a cultural antiquity itself in an era

when iPads r ule and newspapers fade away.

Sixteen years ago, Robert Putnam warned

in his book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and

Revival of American Community, that a growing social-capital deficit

threatens educational performance, safe neighborhoods, equitable

tax collection, democratic responsiveness, everyday honesty, and

even our health and happiness.

Since the books publication, that disconnect has only grown

greater, our ties to one another less firm. Can a trip to a museum,

attendance at a lecture, or a hike at a monument make a better

world? To a degree, yes.

So heres a proposition: Check out the articles in this publica-

tion. Then get yourself to one of the museums or monuments that(we know, we know) youve been meaning to visit for months

(or for years). Were willing to bet the experience will transform

something within you and help you connect to the people around

you a homegrown version of a human chain, protecting what

we hold dear.

Left: Elementary schoolchildren enjoy the sun-

filled lobby of the New Mexico History Museum

prior to their tour.

Above: Visitors examine works by famous, iconic,

and emerging artists at the opening of Earth Now:

American Photographers and the Environment,

New Mexico Museum of Art. Photograph by

Sabra LaVaun.

Below: A youngvisitor eyes a collectionof South

American toys atthe Folk Art of the Andesopening,

Museum of International Folk Art. Photograph

by Cheron Bayna.

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When people ask me how I came to be a photography curator,

I dont have a very good explanation. But ask me how I

came to work with collections, and thats an easy answer.

I used to play museum. Its not an obsolete board game from

the sixties, it was just one of the ways I used to amuse myself

on long summer days. At our house, we had an assortment of

nature specimensseashells, fossils, minerals, model dinosaur

skeletonsthat I would haul over to the carport of the neighbors

who lived diagonally behind us. Under the shaded roof, my

friend Kim and I carefully arranged and labeled everything and

then made a sign to advertise our museum. I remember feeling

tremendous satisfaction as I plopped down on the cool concrete

floor to await the first visitors (there were none). At the end of

the day, we carefully disassembled the exhibits so that Kims dad

could park his car when he got home from work.

Just a few years later, in April of 1970, President Richard

Milhous Nixon declared the first Earth Day. I was nine years old,

and my family had moved to another part of town. We bought a

house in an unincorporated area north of Dayton, Ohio, a one-

year-old split-level with the obligatory maple sapling in the center

of the front yard and a sparse covering of new sod out back.

Beyond that were cornfields and woods, the wilderness of my

childhood. My brother and I attended a brand-new school that

year (though by the following year it was already so overcrowded

that I and my fellow sixth-graders were exiled), and I do believe

we gathered for the solemn planting of stick-like trees in the

schoolyard to celebrate that first Earth Day.

Itshardto say what suchan occasion meant tome backthen, at

a time when I scarcely felt a separation from the planet of which I

was a part. I was well acquainted with the patch of earth I inhab-

ited based on hours of climbing trees, sitting in the grass, walking

through the woods, listening to the birds, watching for turtles,and blowing dandelion puffs or milkweed seeds to the wind.

I belonged to it, and it belonged to me, mutually. I wandered

arounda lot, carrying a backpack withmy dads oldarmy canteen

and his Modern Library edition of the writings of Thoreau. My

family collected all sorts of treasures during our hikes and travels

togetherthe raw material of our first museumand eventually

my dad built some shelves in the basement so that our collection

would have a permanent home.

In school we learned new words such as pollution and

ecology and new habits such as recycling (mostly newspaper,

which arrived in both morning and evening editions). In middle

school, I did a science project on recycling that I seem to recall

involved obscene numbers of leaflets I hadpastedto poster board.

The following year I was invited to join a pilot environmentalscience class that met in an unused school greenhouse next to a

soybeanfield. Oneof my early-lifetriumphs was being selected to

paint a mural on the inside of the greenhouse door. I wanted to

paint a mysterious thicket inspired by the French painter Henri

Rousseau, and was quite dissatisfied with my result, but thus was

solidified a long association between me and art and nature.

One summer, as part of that class, we searched for the begin-

ning of the Little Miami River and followed it by canoe to the

place where it joined the Ohio River. The next summer we aban-

doned the canoes and followed the water down the Ohio River

by bus to its junction with the Mississippi, ending up in New

Orleans. Part of our curriculum for the second trip was learning

about photography. My first roll of negatives (poorly developed

and water spotted but magical nonetheless) showed the citys

elaborate mausoleums, trees draped with Spanish Moss, and old

sheds. In art class, which was also an important part of my life,

I was sketching animals I found in the membership magazine of

the San Diego Zoo, sent to us by my aunt. Art and nature were

hardly strangers.

My first job after college was at the Smithsonian InstitutionTraveling Exhibition Service (SITES) in Washington, DC. It was a

blast to work on the Mall, just below the capitol, and to have the

run of so many museums (for free!). Thats where I started getting

more seriously interested in photographynot in making photo-

graphs, but in looking at them and writing about them. Espe-

cially influential were a big show on Alfred Stieglitz that Sarah

Greenough organized for the National Gallery of Ar t and a show

of stunning platinum prints of the western landscape by Laura

Gilpin at the National Museum of Natural History (little did I

know that I would eventually care for an important collection of

her photographs here in Santa Fe). I went off to graduate school

at the University of California at Berkeley to get a masters degree

in art history and wrote my thesis on the photographer Paul

Strands work in Mexico, to launch my career as a photo-histo-rian. While I was in school, I worked at the Oakland Museum

in northern California (rich in the work of Dorothea Lange and

California photographers), then spent nine years at the J. Paul

Getty Museum, where I worked with photographs by Stieglitz,

Man Ray, Moholy-Nagy, and with Bauhaus photography, and

nine years at the Philadelphia Museumof Art, with more contem-

porary photography. I arrived as curator of photography at the

New Mexico Museum of Art in October 2008.

Above: The future curator and her brother w

museum in the basement of their home in

Top: The author in Mrs. Aulls Garden (la

Garden Metropark) in Englewood, Ohio, n

grew up. Photographs courtesy of Katherine

Earth Now: The Autobiography of an ExhibitionBY KATHERINE WARE

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Given my upbringing, my childhood inclinations, a passion

for the natural world that was fostered by my parents, and the

good fortune to work with photography collections in several

museums, perhaps it is no surprise that I came to organize an

exhibition titled Earth Now: American Photographers and the Envi-

ronment (on view at the New Mexico Museum of Art from April 8

through October 9, 2011). The first Earth Day and my suburban

childhoodwere very much onmy mind as I worked onthis show,

its accompanying book, and the related website, earthnow.nmart-

museum.org. How was it possible, I wondered, for a crisis that

was declared in 1970, when I was just mastering cursive writing,

to be raging more strongly still in 2010, when I turned fifty?

Surely those decades of paper drives and aluminum can recycling

by Cub Scouts and Camp Fire Girls had not been in vain. With

evidence of global climate change mounting and my increasing

frustration over the culture of consumption that I inhabit, I was

convinced we were quickly heading for human extinction.

All I could think of to do was to erect a nice tombstone for

my species, so I first proposed an exhibition of photographs

titled From Earth Day to Doomsday. Box office figures tell us that

people love a disaster movie, so why not a disaster exhibition?

The show would start with masters of photography Ansel Adams

and Eliot Porter, two art ists who were deeply enthusiastic about

the American wilderness and the importance of preserving it.

Beginning with their active conservation efforts of the 1970s, the

show would proceed to survey efforts by photographers over the

decades to open our eyes to issues of land and resource uses that

may have a negative impact on the long-term well-being of our

species, right up to the present day and the end of time in 2012

that some folks have posited based on the Mayan calendar. Voil,

a beautiful and eloquent swan song from our artists to a culture

that couldnt be bothered to listen!

Focusing the show on contemporary photographers gave mean opportunity to do something distinctive and to work with

artists whose photographs I admired but had never had a chance

to show. I meet a lot of photographers from across the country

and around the world at portfolio review sessions. Sometimes we

call these meetings speed dating with photography. The idea is

for an artist and a reviewer to sit at a table together looking at

the artists photographs and discussing them for about twenty

minutes. Several of the artists in Earth Now are people I met this

way, at FotoFest in Houston, Photolucida in Portland, or Review

Santa Fe here in town. Beth Lillys pictures of trees growing

around power lines really captivated me one year, but at that

point I wasnt doing anything in which I could include that work.

I carried around copies of her images for a few years, hoping an

opportunity to work with her would arise. Another artist I met

at portfolio reviews is Brad Temkin, who works and teaches in

Chicago. He didnt choose me as a reviewer at FotoFest in the

spring of 2010, since we were already acquainted, but he casually

mentioned a new series he had just started about the green roofs

atop Chicagos civic buildings. I nearlyripped the prints out of his

hand I was so excited!

Doing studio visits in New Mexico I met other photographers

in the show such as Chris Enos, Sharon Stewart, and Carlan

Tapp. And a few good matches eluded me, when I found out too

late that artists I knewespecially those nearbywere working

onprojectsthat would have fitnicely into the show. But one of the

things I gleaned from having so much to choose from is that the

subject of our relationship to the environment continues to be a

pressing one for artists. Why, I wondered,

did they keep trying to get our attention?

Why didnt they have the common sense,

like me, to just give up? Theirinsistence on

maintaining the role of beauty and hope in

our lives seemed very sweet and poignant.

I wanted to find out why they bothered

trying to get our attention when clearly the

species was doomed. And they ended up

changing the way I think.

The show I put together doesnt come to

a brilliant conclusion about how we can be

better citizens of the earth. But I found ananswer tomy questionof whatart cando in the faceof someof the

major challenges ahead ofus. Artcan punch usin the gut orsneak

up behind us and tap us on the shoulder; it can disarm us with

beauty and humor. Whatever its guises and strategies, it usually

finds a way in. By coming at issues obliquely, creatively, unex-

pectedly, it gets past our guardedness, our preconceived notions,

and our fear of change, to reach a place where we can gain a fresh

perspective. Ultimately, EarthNow isnt about what I think or what

the artists think; its about what you think. A museum is often a

place where people can step outside their routines and put aside,

for an hour or two, the everyday to-do lists that narrate our lives.

It provides a space and a place in which to think about some of

the larger issues that connect us with others, that connect us with

the whole big life of the planet where we live. It encourages us allto climb out of the foxholes of our entrenched positions and come

together in the middle, so we can move forward. After all, human

beings are one of this planets amazing natural resources.

Katherine Ware is curator of photography at the New Mexico Museum of Art and author

of the book Earth Now: American Landscape Photographers and the Environment, published

by the Museum of New Mexico Press. She contributes to a blog at the Earth Nowonline

exhibition, earthnow.nmartmuseum.org .

How was it possible, I wondered, for a crisis

that was declared in 1970, when I was just

mastering cursive writing, to be raging more

strongly still in 2010, when I turned fifty?

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The Blair Ranch sat in the southeastern third of Antelope Park, an oval- shap

natural alpine meadow, 9,000 feet above sea level, roughly ten miles across in a

direction, with the Upper Rio Grande cutting serpentine turns through the centerit, ringed all around by granite peaks, their lower flanks covered primarily in aspen

It was the twenty-first of September, and the aspens were peaking. The sky was la

summer break-your-heart blue, the air crystalline, the mountains carpeted in the mo

exquisite tapestry of red, green, and gold imaginable.

Thehousewasasimpletwo-bedroomlogstructurethat,ratherthanbeingostentatious

seemed to apologize for itself in the middle of all that beauty, hunkering down behi

a little hill, at the top of which, the real estate cowboy told me, the homesteaders we

buried in shallow graves. The price tag was just under four hundred thousand dolla

I told him the same thing I had told every real estate agent from Mendocino to Casp

He said, Give me your twenty-one thousand and a copy ofCowboys Are My Weakne

I have a feeling that Dona Blair is going to like the idea of you.

Dona Blair sold me her ranch because she liked the idea ofme. I boughtit for its unspe

able beauty and the adrenaline rush buying it brought on. I nearly killed myself the first fe

yearstrying to make thosepayments. I wroteanything foranyonewhod payme. (I even wran insert for an ant farm, and had fun with it, a little communist manifesto that I imagin

theenlightened butboredparent discovering when he helpedlittle Johnnyopen thebox.)

theprocess, I learned how to hustle,and I mean that about myself in only thekindest wa

When Dona Blair came back to Creede every summer she would say around tow

YouknowPam makes those payments, and ontime!I dont have the ranch paid off y

but Im getting pretty close. Every penny that has gone toward it I have earned with m

writing, and that fact matters so much to me that when my father died five years ago an

left me a small inheritance, I spent it on a used Prius and a trip to Istanbul. Now mo

than twenty years have gone by, and somewhere along the way the ranch changed fro

the thing I always had to figure out how to pay for, to the place I have spent my life. T

summer I will have been here so long, I will have to put on my second new roof.

In my time here, I have learned a few things: to turn the outside water spigots off

mid September, to have five cords of wood on the porch and a hundred and fifty ba

of hay in the barn no later than October first. Ive learned not to do more than one lo

of laundry per day in a drought year, and that if I set the thermostat at sixty and brin

the place up to sixty-eight using the woodstove in the living room, the heater does

do that horrible banging thing that sounds one tick shy of an explosion. Ive learn

that barn swallows carry bed bugs and the only way to kill them is to wait until it

thirty below and drag the mattress out onto the snow and leave it there for forty-eig

hours. I have learned to hire a cowboy every spring to come out and walk my fen

line, because much as I would like to believe I could learn to be handy with a fenci

tool, I have proven to myself I cannot. I know that eventually the power always com

W

hen I look out my kitchen window, I seea horseshoe of snow-covered

peaks, all of them higher than 12,000 feet above sea level. I see my

old barnold enough to have started to lean a littleand the home-

steaders cabin, which has so much space between the logs now that

themice dont even have to duck to crawlthrough. I see thebig standof aspenready to leaf out at thebackof theproperty, ringing thesmall

but reliable wetland, and the pasture, greening in earnest, and the bluebirds, just returned,

flitting from post to post.I see twoelderly horses glad for thewarm spring day, glad to have

made it through another winter of thirty below zero and whiteout blizzards and sixty-mile-

per-hour winds, of short days and long frozen nights and coyotes made fearless by hunger.

Deseois twenty-two andRoany must be closerto thirty, and one ofthe thingsthat means

is I have been here a very long time.

Its hard for anybody to put their finger on the moment when life changes from being

something that is nearly all in front of you to something that happened while your at-

tention was elsewhere. I bought this ranch in 1992. I was thirty years old and it seems to

me now that I knew practically nothing about anything. My first book, Cowboys Are My

Weakness, had just come out, and for the first time ever I had a little bit of money. When

I say a little bit, I mean it, and yet it was more money than I had ever imagined having,

twenty-one thousand dollars. My agent said, Dont spend it all on hiking boots, and Itook her advice as seriously as any I have ever received.

I spent that summer driving the West, looking for a place to call home. I started in

California, drove north to Oregon and Washington, across Idaho and Montana, down

through Wyoming and into Colorado. The one thing I knew about ownership? It was

good if all of your belongings fit into the back of your vehicle, which in my case they

did. A lemon yellow Toyota Corolla. Everything including the dog.

The one thing I knew about real estate was that you were supposed to put twenty

percent down, which set my spending ceiling at a hundred thousand dollars. I had

no idea that people often lied to real estate agents about their circumstances, and that

sometimes the agents lied back. I had twenty-one thousand dollars,a book that had been

unexpectedly successful, no job, andnot three pages of a newbook to rub together. I came

absolutely clean with everybody.

The real estate lady in Creede, Colorado, showed me an empty lot of five acres and

a couple of houses in town that had been built by silver miners using paper and string.

She said, I really ought to take you out to see the Blair Ranch, and I said, Sure, and

she said, But, it wouldnt be right, a single woman living out there all by herself, and

I said, How far? and she said Twelve miles, and I said, Maybe I should see it, and

she said, Im afraid its out of your price range.

A few hours later, sittingin my car onMainStreet, studyingthe Rand McNallyand try-

ing to decide whetherto head forGunnison or Durango, a seriouscowboytype knocked

on my window. I hear you want to see the Blair Ranch, he said, his voice a ringer for

Johnny Cashs, and I nodded, and he gestured at me to get into his car.

Making a home on the landMy Ranch, Myself

BY PAM HOUSTON

PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUGLAS MERRIAM

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have written elsewhere, at possibly too much length, about how unsafe, unwanted,

and unsettled I felt in the houses where I grew up. One thing I was looking for when

I bought the ranch was a place where Id be comfortable sitting still.

I also wanted something that no one could take away from me, but my upbringing

left me addicted to danger, so I put seven percent down on a property that cost four

times more than I could afford, and one that required so much maintenance that I had

to divide the tasks into two categories: things I didnt know how to do, and things I

didnt even know I didnt know how to do yet.

That I survived, and that the ranch did, suggests something good about my Karma.

That I didnt blow the roof off the house and myself to smithereens when I decided

it would be a great idea to defrost the freezer with a crme brle torch. That when I

forgot to drip the faucet and the pipes burst, it was only the mudroom floor that got

flooded. That someone always came along in the nick of time to say, When was the

last time you had your chimney swept? or How often do you coat your logs with that

UV protector? and then Id know what I was supposed to have been doing all along.

And when the chores are all done, the ranch is a meditation in stillness. It says, here,

sit in this chair. Lets watch the way the light lays itself across

the mountain for the rest of the afternoon. Lets be real quiet

and see if the 300 head of elk who live up the mountain

decide to come through the pasture on their way to the river

to drink.

Sometimes, when I am driving back outMiddle Creek

Road aftera week in Mallorca, Spain, or Ames, Iowa,andI round the corner where Antelope Park stretches out

huge and empty and magnificent in front of me, I am

open mouthed with astonishment that this is the place

I have lived the largest part of my life. Its a full-time job

lining up ranchsitters for the significant chunks of time I

need to be away, and even if it is someone more compe-

tent with a fencingtoolthanI am,it makesme nervousto

leave sooften. Somedays I think I would liketo livenear

theocean, ora sushi bar, ora movietheater, ormy friends,

who by and large live vibrant lives in sophisticated cities

But a low-level panic that feels downright primal always

stops this kind of thinking in its tracks. A quiet certainty

that if I gave up the ranch there would be no more safe

home, no place of refuge, no olly olly oxen free.I am only a little better at giving in than I used to

be, at slowing down, at sitting still. But progress is

progress, and any amount of it I have made, I owe

entirely to this 120 acres of tall grass and blue sage,

with a simple log house, a sagging barn, and a couple

of equine senior citizens.

How do we become who we are in the world? We ask

the world to teach us. But we have to ask with an open

heart, with no idea what the answer will be. I bought this

ranch on a dare. I dared myself into ownership, into mas-

sive debt, into responsibility. It might have been fate, or

some kind of calling. It could have been random, but it

doesnt feel random. Sometimes a fewpiecesof the puzzle

click into place and the world seems to spin a little morefreely. In other words, maybe I didnt choose this ranch at

all. Maybe this ranch chose me.

Pam Houstons books include Cowboys Are My Weakness (winner of the

Western States Book Award), Walzing the Cat, A Little More About Me, and

Sight Hound. She is the director of Creative Writing at the University of Cali-

fornia, Davis, and teaches at the Taos Summer Writers Conference. Houston

will read from her work on Friday August 5, at 6 PM at the New Mexico

History Museum. This is a free event, but space is limited.

back on, that guaranteed overnight is a euphemism, that for a person who flies a hun-

dred thousand miles most years, choosing a place five hours from the Denver airport

was something I might have given a little more thought.

And yet, right from the beginning Ive felt responsible to these hundred and twenty

acres, and for years Ive painted myself both savior and protector of this tiny parcel of the

American West. And this much is true: as long as I am in charge of it, this land will not

turn into condos, it will not be mined or forested, it will not have its water stolen or its

trees chopped down. No one will be able to put a cell phone tower up in the middle of

my pasture and pay me three thousand dollars a year rent for the space.

One of the gifts of age, though, is the way it gently dispels all our heroic notions. Now

I understand that all that time I was keeping busy saving the land, the land was keeping

busy saving me.

All my life I have been happiest in motion, on a plane, in a boat, on a dogsled, in

a car, on the back of a horse, in a bus, on a pair of skis, in a cabbage wagon, hoofing

it down a trail in my well-worn hiking boots. Motion improves any day for me; the

farther, the faster, the better. Stillness, on the other hand, makes me very nervous. I

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Fire purifies. It turns the soil we walk upon into vesselsutility and beauty. It cleaves the life of the potter to centuri

of tradition.

Fire destroys. It explodes the errant pocket of air, undoi

the patience thatgathered the clay, massaged it intoa pliable for

coiled it into a shape. It burns past the visionarys eye, leaving

candlessubdued flicker where ambition once blazed.

The fifteen-year career of artist Tony Da (pronounced d

catapulted Pueblo pottery into the highest echelon of contemp

rary art. His creative fervor piled innovations onto the embe

stoked by his celebrated father and grandparentsPopovi D

and Julian and Maria Martinez. An artist who worked in spurts

rigid focus, he was also a 1970s playboy who appreciated wom

and used his pool-hall know-how to fatten his wallet. The mat

he lit ended with a long, slow smolder after a motorcycle accid

left him living out his years in a seclusion so complete that h

admirers thought he had died, and the potter himself failed

remember how he once made clay dance.

A new exhibition at the New Mexico Museum of Indian A

& Culture, Creative Spark! The Life and Art of Tony Da (throu

December 2011), boasts the largest group of Das paintings an

pottery ever gathered in one place. The exhibition reveals

unbreakable bond between nature and nurture, a seamless thre

from grandparents to parent to son.

He was the gold standard of Pueblo pottery, said Char

S. King, a Scottsdale gallery owner and coauthor of a new bo

about Da, The Life and Art of Tony Da. Everyone who colle

pottery wants to own a piece of his. Its the history, the myste

of what happened to him, and in the end, its just that the piec

are beautiful. Theyre so well-polished. Theyre so well-designe

Even today, they hold that test of time. Each one seems like

brand-new piece.

The genetic thread began with Das grandparents at S

Ildefonso Pueblo, north of Santa Fe. After World War I, Edg

Lee Hewett, then director of the Museum of New Mexico, ask

a local potter named Maria Martinez to use sherds he had exc

vated in 1908 and 1909 as patterns for full-scale exampl

of polychrome pottery. Soon after, Maria and her husban

Julian, began experimenting with firing techniques and almo

accidentally discovered a way to create a black-on-black ma

finish. With Maria shaping the pieces and Julian painting them

tradition of folk art shouldered its way into the world of fine a

In the 1940s and 1950s, their son, Popovi Da, brought a n

surge of energy into the enterprise. With a blistering pace th

foreshadowed his sons, he invented innovations that includ

adding bits of heishi and turquoise to the pots, perfecting

gun-metal finish, reviving polychrome pottery, and scratchi

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Left top: Tony Da in the 1970s

holding a clay bear fetish which is on

view in Creative Spark! Da knew that

showmanship was part of his job as an

artist and crafted his own appearance in

accordance. The more outrageous you

are, he once said, the more people

notice you. Photograph by Jerry Jacka.

Jerry Jacka Photography.

Left bottom: Tony Da signing his

limited-edition serigraph in 1995. After his

accident, Da completed few paintings. He

made about ten for a 1985 show, but they

were difficult for him to finish. He finished

only one in 1995, and then his artistic

career was over. Courtesy Stephen Hill.

Opposite: Red Plate, undated, 13 in.

diameter 2 in. tall. Tony Da created

two distinctive styles of buffalo for his

plates. One included turquoise in the rim

and the body, while the other remained

plain. Collection of Roz and Gene Meieran.

Photograph by Charles King.

own age, fighting over scraps. It twis

my mind from this person who was l

were gonna be the best to someone w

wanted to be taken care of.

Tonys wife fi led for divorce, and

widowed mother, Anita Da, took hinto her home. He continued to pai

but his expert colorations had reverted

primary colors. The man who once t

an interviewer, A crooked line both

me. I cant make a crooked line, now could. In 1986, durin

showing of his post-accident paintings in Scottsdale, King sa

Da would pull a picture of one of his pieces from his poc

and say, People tell me I made this pot. Can you believe i

Eventually Da moved into a series of nursing homes, includ

one in Truth or Consequences, where he died in 2008.

I think he had an inkling his life was short, King said.

said it at one time to Jarrod, that hed be dead by forty. In a w

he was right. The artist was dead at forty-two; the man lived

sixty-seven. But the legacy lives today.In talking with potters, I always ask, Do you think the

anything youve gained from him? King said. One very int

esting comment is thathe openedthe door for malepotters. Befo

men could design, but they werent known for making potte

It was sort of ma le liberation for pottery. Anyone else would h

gotten fingers wagged at them. You shouldnt put stones in

You shouldnt this, you shouldnt that. With that position

being Marias grandson, how could you say no?

The torch that burned for Maria, then Popovi, thTony has been passed again: Jarrod Da is a pastel arwho exhibits at the Santa Fe Indian Market and teaches art on

Muckleshoot Reservation near Seattle. On the wall of his inf

sons bedroom hangs one of his fathers early casein paintinThe Rodeo of Santa Fe shows a Tewa man holding the hand o

little boy wearing cowboy boots and a gun on his hip. Its rea

inspiring to me, Jarrod said. Theres a place for traditional a

It tells a story of who we are and where weve been, but he to

that and moved it to another level. Thats how you know t

real greats. Theyre able to step outside of the norm. To the

everything is an option.

In the years before his accident, Da had begun dabbl

with bronze castings of his work. Where he might have tak

his art next is part of his enduring mystery. When you look

these artists today, Tisdale said, theyre still breaking th

boundaries. Theyre putting silver, ev

diamonds, into pottery. Tony was stru

down when he was at a critical pointhis career. Where would he have gon

he hadnt been in that accident? Wh

would he be today?

Kate Nelson is the marketing manager for the

Mexico History Museum. She previously worked a

award-winning editor, reporter, and columnist for

Albuquerque Tribuneand host of KNME-TVs In Foc

A lot of the stuff was kept back

because it wasnt good enough, said

Jarrod Da, and that speaks a lot about

him. What wasnt good enough for him

was pretty damn good to me. If it had a

slight imperfection, then he started over.That the exhibition Creative Spark!

has managed to collect twenty-two paint-

ings and forty-three pots speaks to the

limitations of perfection in a short career.

I have one or two pieces a year come into my gallery, King said.

For the book, one gallery sent me pictures of ten things and said,

Thats all weve ever had. To have this many of his pieces in one

room, thats amazing.

Shelby Tisdale, director of the museum and the exhibitions

curator, said its especially significant to include Das paint-

ings an overlooked part of his artistic legacy.

Hes in the cohort with Helen Hardin. Hes learning from

T.C.Cannon and Fritz Scholder, and incorporating a lot of these

different ideas, she said. In some, you can see where hes reallyexperimenting with the layers. Its a technique that he and Helen

started working with. You get a sense of that whole generation.

In between Das fits of creation came the high life. Jarrod was

his fathers little partner, and spent a year with him traveling to

art shows and galleries, eating at the best restaurants, pointing

to artworks he liked, and watching his father buy them on the

spot. Scottsdale. San Juan Capistrano. Kansas City. It was a great

adventure, Jarrod said. They put out the red carpet for him. It

was always top of the line, first class. He really had a quality of

enjoying the moment.

Around him, artists took note and adopted his techniques.

Everyone picked up on what he was doing, said Richard Spivey,

Kings coauthor. He was always doing something different. He

was the first one to really break from tradition. It was a lot forpeople to accept at first, but very quickly it became sensational.

In 1982 Tony Da and a friend in Vallecito hoppedon their motorcycles for a ride. At home, seven-year-old

Jarrod was watching Cagney and Lacey on television when he

was overcome by a premonition. I remember saying, Oh, some-

things happened to Dad, and being very distraught. Da, who

wasnt wearing a helmet, had lost control of his bike, incurring

serious andpermanent brain injuries.He spentmonths in various

hospitals. At times his family didnt know if he would live. One

day his wife broke the news to their children. She said he was

fine, but hes not the same, Jarrod said.

His memory had reverted to his teenage

years, blotting out his marriage, his threechildren, and his knowledge of having

been a potter. He rejoined his family, but

the stress was overwhelming.

It was a rough time, Jarrod said.

A lot of times I felt like I was competing

with another sibling. He wasnt thatdomi-

nating person anymore. The arguments

wed have were like with someone your

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To people who love Native American pottery,the appeal is multifold. Gallery owner CharlesKing, coauthor of The Life and Art of Tony Da,a new book about artist Tony Da, explained

his love of the pieces.

You can hold it in your hands, he said. Andits the fragilitytheres the toughness thatits been fired, but its also fragile. Thats theway it is with human nature, too. Pottery has

utility at heart, yet its transcended that forminto something more aesthetically beautiful.The pieces change every hourhow thelight hits it, the angle youre looking at. Thosethings keep it alive.

Kings coauthor, Richard Spivey, purchased

his first piece of Das pottery before mostcollectors had heard of the artist. He paid$65 for a relatively large plate. It was recentlyappraised for $45,000.

Whether youre interested in satisfying apersonal appreciation or want to build some

future equity, Shelby Tisdale, director ofthe New Mexico Museum of Indian Arts &Culture, has a few tips to keep in mind whenseeking quality pieces.

First, feel inside it. If it s perfectly smooth,I would question it. There should be lit tlebumps, and a fingerprint here and there.

If the potter used a gourd to smooth it,you might also feel tracings.

Ding it with a fingernail. If it rings, thatsgood. If its a dull sound, it might meantheres a crack or chip.

Look at the surface. Pueblo pottery doesntuse a glaze, but is covered with a slip made

of clay, and the polish comes from buffingit with a stone. You should be able tosee some of the stroke marks. If its buffpottery, like Acoma, then its a slip that waspainted over, and you should be able to see

brush strokes.

Black pots are produced by smotheringthe oxygen during firing. Sienna andwhite pottery come from a very hot fire.If its fired in a pit, oftentimes it will havesmudge marks. Some people see that as

an imperfection, but its a hint to how itwas fired.

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The Arts of SurvivalFolk Expression in the Face of DisasterBY SUZANNE SERIFF

Reduce the world around us to its essential components,

said the Ancients, and you have Earth, Wind, Water, and

Fire. Upon these, all else is built. But how do we rebuild

our lives and communities when these elements have reduced

our homes to rubble, cast tall buildings to the ground, laden our

fields with salt, and scorched thousands of homes? The Arts of

Survival: Folk Expression in the Face of Disaster is a new exhibition

at the Museum of International Folk Art that explores the paths

folk artists create to help their communities to recover from

twenty-first century disasters caused by the four elements in

extremis: the Haitian earthquake, Hurricane Katrina on the US

Gulf Coast, Pakistani floods, and the recent volcanic eruption

of Mount Merapi in Indonesia.

Three of these disasters took place in 2010the deadliest

year for such natural events in more than a generation. More

than a quarter of a million deaths were reported from a record

number of major natural disasters that affected almost every

corner of the world. Of course, humanitys ability to respond

with creativity to natural disaster will continue to be tested;

2011 has brought yet more disasters, including the recent

earthquake and ensuing tsunami in Japan.

The January 2010 earthquake in Haiti is thought to have

killed more than 220,000 people, and millions more have lost

loved ones, homes, food, and livelihood. Hurricane Katrina,

in 2005, was one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history

of the United States and is proving to be the costliest natural

disaster on record. Those who survive such disasters find them-

selves facedwith tasks that require themostbasichumanity and

the most humble creativityto comfort, to rebuild, to petition,

to record, and to create.

Raheema Buledi

is one of many flood-

affected women in

theNew SabziMandi

(New Vegetable Market) relief

camp in Hyderabad, Pakistan,

who escaped with nothing but the clothes on her back a

colorful patchwork ralli or two (a traditional bedsheet or q

for comfort and warmth. She and her family have been t

for months, since the flooding Indus River washed awa

home and fields in the Sindh area of southeastern Pakistan

other women around her stuck in a temporary shelter wi

adequate food or medical suppliesshe has puther needle

skills to work making new rallis to sell in neighboring mar

Another Hindu woman staying at the camp, Meeran, belon

to the Dalit community formerly called untouchables, man

to save the six dowry rallis she made for her daughters whe

flood ravaged her village, but hasnow decided tosell them

to get enough money to return home.

Thirty-five hundred miles away in Java, Indones

another disaster relief camp, refugees gain hope and ins

tion, not from a vi sit by an international star, but from

shadow puppet performance of their very own heartth

Ki Enthus Susmono. Like all masters of the shadow pu

arts of Java, Ki Enthus is trained to use the well-l

puppet figures to entertain and educate the populace, in

porating news of the latest events into his performa

including the devastating volcanic eruption of Mount Me

which left this audience without homes or work. The

of the devastation is incised on a new Tree of Life sha

puppet he designed with images of red lava explo

from a cauldron and raining ash and rubble all aro

At his performance for those who were displaced afte

eruption, Ki Enthus chose one of the better-known pu

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characters from the traditional Hindu epic Ramayana to deliver

the message to the Mount Merapi victims: get up, rise up, and

re-develop their lives!

Earlier this same terrible year of 2010, vodou f lag maker

Evelyne Alcide, from the Bel Air neighborhood of Port-au-

Prince, Haiti, had just closed up her bead shop and was walking

to the bus stop with her husband when the strongest earthquake

in more than three centuries hit. Everything started to shake.

The earth is rolling under your feet like a wave in the sea. You

try to go forward and it pushes you back. You try to go back and

it pushes you forward. Then the buildi ngs started to fall. When

someone suggested that she incorporate her experience into

her art of making sequined and beaded flags, she responded

immediately that the point was to pay thanks to the spirits for

her life. I said to myself that everyone has their spirit (their

vodou Iwa) that helps you and saves you, so I put them into my

flag. What resulted is a series of beaded portraits depicting

the dismembered bodies in the National Cemetery, crushed

by concrete blocks and collapsed power lines; the destroyed

houses and businesses throughout the city; and the teams of

mermaids, goddesses, and spirits above, bringing comfort to

the fallen victims.

In another section of the city, a group of Haitian children,living downtown in the wake of the devastation, have begun

working with a radical arts collective called Atis Rezistans

(The Peoples Resistance). For ten years members of the collec-

tive have recycled into works of art the junk that clutters the

winding alleys of their industrial neighborhood off Port-au-

Princes Grand Rue. After the quake, the street itself and the

crumpled buildings around it became material for the art.

Twisted metal, computer parts, doll faces, bike tires, car springs,

pistons, discarded lumbereven human skullsfind their

way into three-dimensional paintings, collages, and sculptures

expressing emotions appropriate to the times, and a healthy

dose of ironic humor as well. For the children, who have begun

to call themselves Ti Moun Rezistans (Kids Resistance), the

sales and international attention from their art are their onlyhope for funds to return to school or put a corrugated tin or

cardboard roof over their heads.

And in our own back yard, African American yard artist

and street corner preacher Joe Minter of Birmingham, Alabama,

pays tribute to the strength and perseverance of his African

American brothers and sisters in New Orleans who lost their

homes and their lives in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. His

memorial to Katrina, which he calls Rebuild and Restore New

Orleans, is among t he hundreds of other scrap-made memorials

in his three-acre African Village in America, which combines

found objects, discarded furniture pieces, and a hand-built,

life-sized m ap made from scrapped and painted two by fours

wired together in the shape of Louisiana to tell the story of

those who suffered most after the levees broke and their homeswere destroyed. Minter, whose art connects Christianity, social

commentary, and history to provide a personal view of the

African American experience, says there are lessons in Katrina

for everyone.

My reason for making this is to bring together the human

family, so we can get together and rebuild New Orleans,

so we can rebuild ourselves and our soul. Cuz, let me

tell you something, down the road we got more disasters

and the way you treat the first one is the way you treat

the second one and the second one should be more

organized cuz you were caught off guard the fi rst time.

So, my prayers is going up so t hat all of our officials now

have a way in securing the safety and the well being of

our neighborsa plan to be able to carry out in a better

way this time when a di saster comes upon us.

These and other artists, many of whom have won a coveted spot

at the 2011 Santa Fe International Folk Art Market, are in this

new exhibition in the Gallery of Conscience at the Museum

of International Folk Art. The Arts of Survival is the second

exhibition in this space dedicated to exploring contemporary

issues regarding folk art production and consumption in the

twenty-first century. Opening in conjunction with Santa Fes

International Folk Art Market each July, the annual exhibitions

designed for this gallery highlight some of the moving stories

and inspiration behind the folk arts and artists featured at the

annual market.

The inaugural exhibit in the Gallery of Conscience,

Empowering Women: Artisan Cooperatives that Transform

Communities, which ran from July 2010 to May of 2011 and w ill

now travel around the country, examined the revolutionary

movement of women artisans throughout the world who are

sustaining their arts and enriching their lives by collectively

producing, managing, and marketing traditional crafts. This

second annual exhibition opens with a reception and round-

table discussion with some of the featured artists about the

meaning of their work in the face of the natural disaster that

has devastated their homes. The exhibition opening, on July 3,

also launches the second annual International Folk Arts Week

in Santa Fe, with folk art demonstrations, curator breakfasts,

performances, lectures, and other programs running through

July 8, when the market opens for business.

In addition to the monumental artifacts on display in

The Arts of Survival, the exhibition includes examples of prize-winning photography, poetry, music, proverbs, and lyrics,

inspired by the perseverance and creative responses of those

who survived these tragic events, and video recordings of artist

interviews and demonstrations. As the lasting impression of

these terrible natural forces becomes part of carnival masks,

scrolls, paintings, and vodou flags, the events are memorial-

ized, and the pain they brought is rendered manageable. When

the force of the Earth breaks the world into pieces, the pieces

can be collected and sold to bring an artist a step closer to

economic recovery. The Arts of Survival provides a w indow

onto the many ways in which contemporary folk artists use

what they know best to respond to natural disaster with vision,

perseverance, dignity, and imagination even in the midst of

political infighting, infrastructural log jams, and environmentalaftereffects. Through their work they demonstrate that the

most fundamental power is not the four Elements, but the

indomitable spirit of humankind.

Suzanne Seriff, PhD, the guest curator of The Arts of Survival, is a folklorist,

independent museum curator, and senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of

Texas at Austin. She also heads the artisan selection committee for the Santa Fe

International Folk Art Market.

Left to right: Tri Suwarno in Bantul,

Yogyakarta, Indonesia, drawing the design

for his Merapi Wayang(Mt. Merapi Tree

of Life shadow puppet), 2011. Photograph

by Diah Nur Martin.

Ti Mouns Rezistans (Kids Resistance),

a group of young artists in Port-au-Prince,

Haiti, after the earthquake, 2010.

Photograph by Maggie Steber.

A refugee from the Pakistani floods

works on a ralli(quilt) in the New Sabzi

Mandi relief camp in Hyderabad, 2011.

Photograph by Surendar Valasai.

Joe Minter stands in his three-acre

African Village in America, surrounded

by his artwork, 2010. Photograph by

Lance Shores.

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