Month: February 2020

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R. C. Gorman: Artistic Shoes Left Behind

Walking Women (from Homage to Navajo Women Suite) by R.C. Gorman

A while ago I’d learned that one of my former employers, Northland Press in Flagstaff, AZ, closed its doors after shifting focus from books on the art and culture of the American West to children’s books.

I’d worked at Northland in the 1970s, first as assistant editor under Rick Stetter, who went on to a great future in regional publishing. When Rick left, I took his place as editor under the direction of Northland’s founder, Paul Weaver.

Cover of Scholder/Indians, Northland Press, 1971.



The artists covered in Northland’s books included a long roster of Native American painters, sculptors, potters and jewelry designers: Fritz Scholder, R.C. Gorman, Charles Loloma, Allan Houser, Helen Cordero, Grace Medicine Flower . . . Weaver and company presented the depth and scope of these artists vibrantly, on pages of fine-coated paper stitched together between clothbound, embossed covers.

Cover of R.C. Gorman: The Lithographs, Northland Press, 1978

The last book I worked on at Northland before heading out the door was R.C. Gorman: The Lithographs by Doris Monthan, published in 1978.

I have mixed feelings about R.C. Gorman, a prolific Navajo artist who seemed to churn out images of women in his sleep. He died in 2005 at age 74.

When I lived in New Mexico, Gorman ran his art enterprise from his Taos spread and threw lavish parties there. (I’d missed the boat on another Northland-Gorman outing: Nudes and Foods: Gorman Goes Gourmet, published in 1981. ) Gorman’s legacy is tainted by an ultimately dropped FBI investigation into his possible involvement in a pedophile ring, but that’s for someone else to discuss.

My own reservations about Gorman aside, my late mother adored his work, which is why I gave her my copy of the Gorman lithograph book, a parting gift from Northland that’s now back on my shelf.

My parents had purchased and framed a poster of one of Gorman’s ubiquitous Navajo women to decorate a wall of their old condo outside of Fort Lauderdale, FL. And when I saw it hanging there so many years ago, I wondered how many other Florida condos featured a blissful Gorman female, soft-hued, serene, drawn in simple lines (but barely any on the face), hands and feet large but neither calloused nor veiny.

Gorman’s Young Navajo Woman: No shoes — a feature of his Homage to Navajo Women suite.



My problem with Gorman’s work is that there’s no grit, no irony, not a lot that’s honest when it comes to his portrayals of Navajo women, of the toughness it takes to run a sheep and horse ranch off the power grid, in a land of harsh sun and wind, with no running water. Like, none of Gorman’s women cover their feet. What’s with bare feet in the desert?

A younger Navajo contemporary of Gorman, artist Ed Singer nails the character of the Navajo matriarch, and Navajo life generally, in many of his works. (You can query about Ed’s work at artjuicestudio@gmail.com. Disclosure: Singer is a friend of mine).

Woman in Chair by Ed Singer. Note the woman has her feet covered and clearly dominates her space though seated in a folding chair.

I don’t know if anyone asked Gorman back in his heyday, but after being raised on the rez, did Gorman believe his depictions of Navajo women truly paid them homage or was it that they proved so ideal for his bank account that he couldn’t stop them coming?

Even today, many Florida, Scottsdale, and suburban homes have a poster of the “native woman ideal by Gorman” on the wall, or on coasters under a served round of drinks. I wonder, if he were alive today, would Gorman be like Peter Max, compulsively striving to keep the coffers filled by churning out his pretty women to be auctioned off on cruise ships?

Last week, I pulled R.C. Gorman: The Lithographs off my bookshelf and browsed its pages. I’d forgotten that it included not only the lithographs with women as subject matter, but also a few rug designs, a few male nudes and other assorted “native life” images. But the eyeopener for me was this quote from R.C. Gorman in the biography section:

Said Gorman: “I have been using the design motifs of Indian rugs and pottery for my paintings because one day these things are going to be no more. They are going to be lost, and it is going to happen soon. It’ll be a white America by A.D. 2000. The Indian art that people are enjoying—the rugs and pottery—are no longer going to be there. . .  I am amused that I sell my rug paintings for more than the rug sells for; perhaps the paintings are worth more in the long run. Moths hate polymers.”

Hubris R.C. Gorman had aplenty, prescience not so much.

The above-mentioned quote prompted me to do a web search. There’s a gorgeous 36” by 23” rug by contemporary Navajo weaver Ruby Watchman for sale on navajorug.com for $3765.

Navajo weaver Ruby Watchman displays her “Mini-Serape” on sale for $3765 at navajorug.com

There’s a 27.5” x 30.25” Gorman lithograph of naked woman sprawled out on a Navajo rug for $1200 on herndonfineart.com.

Navajo Rug by R.C. Gorman, hand-signed and numbered lithograph for sale on herndonfineart.com

A.D. 2000: a “white America “. . . “Indian art that people are enjoying . . .  no longer going to be there. ” . . . Well, R.C., too bad you weren’t able to stick around for Ruby Watchman, Cleo Johnson, Donald Yazzie, Sadie Charlie . . . and so many more contemporary Navajo weavers in full and glorious view on Pinterest.

Apsáalooke Feminist #3, Apsáalooke Feminist Series, 2016, by Wendy Red Star. Photo Courtesy of Vogue.com



And too bad you didn’t live to see the heights where native women like Wendy Red Star (see wendyredstar.com) and Teri Greeves (see terigreevesbeadwork.com) are taking things in terms of craft and native female presence.

It’s 2020 now. R.C. Gorman, wherever you are, you may want to start covering women’s feet with these:

Beaded basketball shoes by Kiowa artist Teri Greeves. Image Courtesy of terigreevesbeadwork.com
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Night Chant at the Opera: Healing Harmonies

Winter Dawn Ceremony Inside the Tepee by Virgil Nez. (Photo of the work on itmonline.org)

I am looking out at my snow covered yard in suburban upstate New York, remembering an event from over forty years ago that winks from the shadows, coaxing me out of the winter blues. Here it is:

Car Trouble En Route to a Night Chant

I was driving alone in pitch darkness of winter on the Navajo rez when suddenly the undercarriage of my Toyota sedan got hung up on the sand.

I’d been trying to make my way to a Navajo Night Chant ceremony taking place somewhere I now cannot name. I’d been following the sporadically placed signs that pointed the way to the ceremony with growing confidence, until that moment when my car succumbed to the relentless grip of soft earth. (For an eye-opening report on Navajo roadways, see Amy Linn’s piece The Navajo Nation’s horrendous roads keep killing people and holding students hostage, but nothing changes on centerforhealthjounalism.org).

A young woman alone in the desert that night, with a car that wouldn’t budge . . . What could I do? I sat on the cold desert ground certainly feeling vulnerable (though the reservation crime stats then were not as dire as they are now). But at the same time I was hopeful that someone would come along, and that the someone would reinforce my faith in humanity as so many Navajo people had done during my time on the rez.

I awaited rescue on a Navajo desert road in winter. Photo by Conner Baker on unsplash.com

It wasn’t long before I saw headlights in the distance . . . an approaching pickup likely headed to the same ceremony I still yearned to witness. I stood up and waved my arms. The headlights blinked, signaling me to step out of the way. Then the truck slowed to a crawl and pulled right up to touch the rear of my car. The driver motioned with his hands for me to get back behind the wheel. When I turned on the engine and shifted into neutral, the pickup gently pushed me out of the sand trap, freeing me up to continue on my way. I waved a thank you as the pickup passed me, and I followed my rescuer all the way to where the Night Chant was taking place.

I’d hoped to more strongly express my gratitude when we reached what I thought was our mutual destination, but the pickup sped forward and away into the night when we hit the parking area, its passengers having folks to meet, I supposed.

My rescuer and I never exchanged a word.

Grace, Fires and Chanting Warm the Night

With this rescuer who’d emerged from darkness only to suddenly disappear from view, I was beholden to spiritual forces even before I entered the Night Chant circle with a hogan at its zenith, the doings inside of it shrouded in mystery. I stepped into the realm of pinon scented air, warm fires, strong coffee, bubbling stew, and a gracious vibe that emanated from the folks who’d gathered to participate in the winter ceremony.

When the Yei Bi Cheii (Grandfather Gods) dancers emerged into the firelight and began to chant, I was sitting beside a family that had made room for me, again through wordless gesture. Like my gracious hosts, I was bundled up in blankets and, though struggling to stay warm, I was feeling perhaps as peaceful as I’d ever felt in my twenty odd years. At one point, I was lulled to sleep by the smoke and the cold. My hosts awakened me in time to join them in wishing the Grandfather Gods farewell at dawn.

Yei Bi Cheii chants recorded by ethnomusicologist Laura Boulton (b.1899, d. 1980)

A New Kind of Chanting

Flash forward to my senior self in winter, now yearning for bygone days while living in the land of my snowbelt roots. Like my late mother, I’m an opera fan. When I was a girl, my mom and I used to listen to opera broadcasts when we found ourselves at home together on a winter weekend afternoon. These days, I hit the Met from time to time if a New York City visit coincides with something I want to see, or I’ll sometimes go to a movie theatre to watch a Met broadcast “live in HD”.

So, as a semi opera buff with fondest memories of Navajoland, I was intrigued when I learned that, about ten years ago, a work called Enemy Slayer, billed as a Navajo oratorio, premiered in Phoenix as part of the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra’s 60th anniversary celebration.

The oratorio features a libretto by poet Laura Tohe, who was recently named poet laureate of the Navajo Nation (for more information about Ms. Tohe, see https://www.lauratohe.com/).

NAXOS CD Recording of Enemy Slayer: A Navajo Oratorio

The story of Enemy Slayer concerns a soldier haunted by events of war who is guided into healing by the chanting of ancient Navajo prayer. (Note: The actual Navajo ceremony for returning warriors, the Enemy Way, is a warmer weather event that involves feasting and dancing and other community activity to bring a spiritually wounded warrior back into balance.)

I ordered the oratorio Enemy Slayer once I learned it was obtainable on CD, and I anticipated that in listening, I might be drawn back into that memory of getting unstuck by grace and chanting on a desert night in the middle of winter so long ago.

I was in for a bit of disappointment. I had expected to hear an oratorio in the Navajo language, but Laura Tohe composed the libretto in English, with only a smattering of Navajo sprinkled here and there. The text, filled with Navajo prayer refrains (e.g., “Child of dawn/Child of daylight/Child of evening twilight/Child of darkness”), portrays the trauma and confusion of the universal soldier: “I’m in a world of pain/I’m hard core/I seek and destroy the enemy/This is my war horse/I charge the enemy/I am the hometown hero!/I am a child of war/I am lost . . . “

Navajo warriors from another time: Photo courtesy of the Navajo Times

Tohe’s text was translated into Navajo by Jennifer Wheele, but you have to go online to see the translation ( see https://www.naxos.com/sharedfiles/PDF/8.559604_sungtext.pdf# for full libretto in English and Navajo).

Will the oratorio one day be performed in Navajo? I wish it could be so, but who knows? When Enemy Slayer was performed in Phoenix, photographs of Navajoland by Deborah O’Grady were projected for the audience to provide the sense of place as the chorus sang in the concert hall.

Tohe told me that a Navajo woman in the audience remarked that “the performance was like a ceremony, with the conductor as the medicine man, the baritone singer as the patient and the chorus as the extended family singing for the patient.” Tohe had also asked that the women chorus members be seated on one side and the men on the other side of the stage “per seating in the hogan during a ceremony.”

Laura Tohe, named Navajo Nation Poet Laureate in 2015. Photo courtesy Arizona Highways (arizonahighways.com)

Laura Tohe’s latest project is Nahasdzaan (Mother Earth) in the Glittering World, a cutting edge dance oratorio with music composed by Thierry Pécou, choreography by Luc Petton. The premiere performance (sung in English with French subtitles) last year at Normandy’s Opera de Rouen received overwhelming praise from the international press. The work will be performed in Grenoble, France on April 17 this year (4/17/20 UPDATE: due to COVID-19, the premiere is delayed until 2021. Here’s a glimpse on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI8pkLWO7o4).

In an interview on Pécou’s website (Ensemble Variances) Tohe summed up her hope for the work, which presents the Navajo creation story via music and dance, and with live animals performing onstage: “Like any artist,” said Tohe, “my hope is that the audience will appreciate the work as a hybrid that takes a Navajo story and classical music as a way to create a statement about healing.”

Ceremonial fare: Mutton Stew and Fry Bread to be accompanied by cups of strong coffee

I began this piece by conveying a memory of being physically and spiritually transported on the rez when no words were spoken at all. And I’ve landed here, with this wish regarding  the performance of a new Laura Tohe opera: that coffee and stew be served during intermission.

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Can Facebook Teach the World to Sing?

Coke comes to Monument Valley. Photo by Worldmark Films via Twitter

In 1971, Coca Cola aired its famous ad that featured a gathering of young folks from all corners of the earth, each with a Coke in hand, all singing blissfully on a hilltop outside of Rome. “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony,” sang the bright-eyed young citizens of the world. “I’d like to give the world a Coke to keep it company.” The award-winning spot was a moment of nirvana in the advertising age and became the iconic ending of the TV series Mad Men. (4/1/20 Author’s Note: The ad was actually the brainchild of Harvey Gabor, then art director at McCann-Erickson. Mr. Gabor is nothing at all like the Matthew Weiner’s bad boys of Sterling Cooper. Big thank you to Miriam Danar and the illustrious and genteel Mr. Gabor their comments on this piece!)

In 2018, at the age of 64, I had a moment of nirvana while meandering on horseback in Monument Valley at sunset. And I did what so many do these days when overcome with awe. I whipped my iPhone out of my jacket pocket and, steadying the phone with one hand while gripping the reins with the other, I tried to capture the moment to store in the cloud for posterity.

Now, in 2020, I am retired from my day job and back at work on the blog that I started after that 2018 trip to the Southwest. Part reminiscence, part current observations, the blog is really my reconnection to the act of writing for pleasure instead of for a paycheck in the corporate world. Monument Valley is just about as far from cubicle life as anyone could imagine, which is why it serves so well as a muse.

A shot I took from atop a horse in Monument Valley, 2018

Because writing for myself just doesn’t get my juices going, in resurrecting the blog after retirement, I took the step of launching it into the social media reality show universe. I tossed a few bucks over to Facebook’s ad managers to spread the news via a Facebook page. That was a week ago.

The response (i.e., the accumulating likes and shares and comments) has been uplifting, eye opening and mystifying.

A tenuous handshake reached on topic of cultural appropriation. Photo courtesy of JenKVieira.com

Facebook keeps congratulating me about how many “likes” I have, and my blog itself, which sat dormant for so long, is making the rounds from Queens to Hong Kong and other places I couldn’t have fathomed. The blog has pleased some, amused some, confused some, and enraged some. Comments on one post hurled the cultural appropriation debate forcefully into my lap, initiating an offline exchange that ended with a handshake. It was a tenuous handshake between a boomer and a millennial, but a handshake nonetheless.

There have been a couple of ugly comments (one guy labeled me an “entitled little rich girl”), but, hey, if a grey-haired retiree can’t stand the social media heat, then there’s a button called “delete.” I draw the line at racism, but otherwise, I was raised by a father who’d say “everyone’s entitled to their own opinion.” Negative comments are part of the territory like rattlesnakes in the desert. And Facebook is taking its own heat these days for spreading fake news.

But it’s the gathering of likes on my page that floors me.

Motorcycle at Monument Valley. Photo by Steve Ohlsen

The likes represent all races, many religions, and all sides of the political divide. They represent environmentalists, resistors, 2nd Amendment crusaders, anti-Trumpers, pro-Trumpers, Navajos, African Americans, Mexicans, New Mexicans, Texans, Bostonians, New Yorkers, Alabamans, Californians, Georgians, Muslims, Hindus, Baptists, Catholics, Jews, artists, bikers, preachers, professors, knitters, rodeo riders, doormen . . . .

Though featuring reminiscences of the Southwest, and especially Navajoland, my page and my blog have been “liked” by a couple folks whose Facebook pages are all in Arabic. I have a like from someone whose page is in Armenian.

What is it? What are the Facebook algorithms that spread the word to such a diverse community? What is the impulse to hit “like” of the unknown and untried? I hope some of my “likers” will tell me, because the answer may be an ingredient in a secret sauce yet to be conjured to smooth our divisions.

Pictures on the rocks: Ancient social media in Canyon de Chelly

The likes may just be summoned by my original blog site cover image of Monument Valley, harkening back to the days when rocks told stories, when petroglyphs were the social media of the ancient ones.

Or maybe it’s because one of my blogs is about basketball, published after Kobe Bryant went down in the helicopter. Maybe the theme of cultural appropriation struck a chord amidst the cacophony surrounding the bestselling novel American Dirt. Or maybe it’s a shot of Bandelier National Monument I published that speaks of ancient days when life was all about survival and not much else.

Or maybe it’s simply what I thought when I looked out at Monument Valley from the saddle . . . that this is all a dream.

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Cultural Appropriation Police Report, 1975

A white New Mexico State Trooper teaching Indian Painting inspired the New Yorker in me

In 1975, when I taught on the Navajo rez outside of Gallup, the state of New Mexico didn’t fund kindergarten, let alone art education. If I wanted my kids to paint, weave, sculpt, then it was up to me to add art to the list of subjects I was hired to teach in my classroom. It is worth noting without too much emphasis that I landed my teaching job on the rez after graduating from Vassar, where I never took a fine art class and would have been an idiot to think I belonged in the college’s creative arts talent pool.

Though I wasn’t an anthropology major (and Native Studies didn’t exist back then) I knew that art and craft loomed large in Navajo culture. So not wanting to be a total fraud, I signed up for a night class called “Indian Painting” at the University of New Mexico Gallup Branch.

It turned out I was one of the few female students in the class as well as one of the youngest. I was not the only white person, however. There was one other, that being our instructor, whose name I remember to this day. I will refer to him by his initials, LS, so as not to disturb his ghost.

1975 UNM Gallup Art Instructor Seal of Approval

LS was a New Mexico state trooper. He looked like he could be an extra in a Hollywood film about Texas Rangers. But LS was an ARTIST. You could tell because he dressed all in black—black jeans, black shirt, black cowboy boots. And he had a shiny Navajo silver buckle on his black belt, which I guess advertised his cred for teaching art to a class of mostly Navajos and Zunis. His stride and swagger, though, spoke of his true profession.

LS had a formula he wanted all of his students to copy. His formula was simple: Paint four images of Pueblo pots, one in each corner of your canvas. And in the middle of the space, paint an “Indian” sun symbol (e.g., the emblem of the State of New Mexico). Toss in some corn and lightning symbols in the rest of the space, and voila: surefire Indian painting success! LS showed us his many Indian paintings and boasted that he made up to $75 a piece. If he could do it, we could too!!

LS Indian Painting Element #1: Pueblo Pot
LS Indian Painting Element #2: Sun Symbol
LS Indian Painting Element #3: Corn or other symbols

I was seated at a worktable (no easels needed apply) with three males, one of whom was my age. The other two seemed to be in their late thirties or early forties.

As I said, I was a young graduate of Vassar College, and though I was the lone female and lone white at the table, I said to my tablemates: “Are you going to put up with this??” Everyone laughed, and we made a communal decision: No, we weren’t. We decided to start a new art movement, a Navajo take on Dada (my age mate at the table, who would eventually become a renowned non-traditional silversmith, knew all about Dada). We called it DOODA (pronounced doh’dah’), which is Navajo for NO. An older tablemate had a buddy at the table in front of us and roped him into our DOODA movement.

DOODA used in modern Navajo resistance: This graphic says “No Uranium”

We churned out paintings that made LS speechless, shaking his head in disappointment. When he strutted around giving tours of the assembly line he called “Indian painting,” LS brusquely guided his guests past our tables without a pause.

My tablemates and I painted masterpieces of anything we wanted. Images of Navajo Yei figures as electrical towers, of horses that flew into the heavens, of sheep lying shot and dead in the desert said DOODA to our State Trooper art instructor. While we painted, we discussed topics of the day, circa 1975: Lynette Squeaky Fromme, Sarah Jane Moore (female would-be assassins of Gerald Ford). We told jokes, named favorite comedians (one tablemate said he prayed that George Burns would live to at least his 100th birthday).

My final art project as a 22 year old Jewish transplant from the East Coast? Well, this was 1975, and New York City was on the brink of default, which is one reason why I came to the rez in the first place. New York City laid off 2000 teachers when I graduated from college, and I had decided that if I couldn’t teach in New York, I didn’t want to teach in any city at all.

New York City Mayor Abe Beame

So as an adios to LS, I painted “Grandfather Gods Take Manhattan,” a New York cityscape lit by a Navajo moon and shrouded in clouds of doom, with Navajo Grandfather Gods (Yeibicheii) flying overhead with their healing bundles to the rescue (see above). I’d also cut out and attached a photo of New York Mayor Abe Beame, but the mayor somehow disappeared from the work during my many moves years hence.

LS gave my rudimentary work a B+, with no comments.