» Red thread and white buffalo of hope
An eye-opening look at artist Toby Putnam and his gallery LUN + OJO
TOBY PUTNAM read about it in an article the other night — “The red thread.” The Asian myth of how an invisible cord links us to those we’re destined to meet and learn something from, whether friend, foe or lover. Interconnectedness is something Putnam has always believed in. Growing up in Montana, thick with wild, and often running from the ultra-conservative hand of his father and into the rivers and woods, he saw how nature was to be communed with, respected. The red thread in the blood of all beings.
Reading the article took him back to last September at the edge of Flathead River. His dog, Lucy, the German wirehaired, was dying and could barely walk, and Putnam wanted to take her to heaven on earth — Glacier National Park — to enjoy her last days. There, Putnam met two strangers who became fast friends and romped in the river with his old girl, supporting him through his loss. One night, the crew beheld Mars rising as the dog sank into death. They observed how the planet almost pulled the moon through the trees. The lunar reflection off the flowing water was bright. Piercing, really. Protective. Like a moon eye watching over.
Putnam is big on eyes. Has 27 of them tattooed on his 43-year-old, ink-lined body. Includes them in his paintings, which are themselves reminiscent of the neo-traditional tattoo style — flowers ever-present and dark dots often constellating beside bold, black lines, which form into cougars or bears with third eyes wide on their foreheads. Sighted saguaros. Peeping suns beaming from sky. Eyes are everywhere in Putnam’s gallery on Paseo del Pueblo Norte, aptly named “LUN + OJO” (moon eye), which opened at the start of the year. The store features Putnam’s work, along with a collection of mostly-local artists and their sculptures, ceramics, jewelry, leatherwork, photos and prints. “I want an artist space that’s communal-based,” says Putnam, who lets the artists set their own prices and doesn’t take commission from them.
The shop is a beautiful testament to the southwest. On a tall drafting table — donated by the U.S. Forest Service and that took a good six hours for Putnam to scrub clean of mice crap — sits a Jerome McLaughlin plaster sculpture that looks part-bone, part-cliff dwelling, part-contemporary bird house. In the table’s pulled-out drawers, a stoic jack rabbit painting by Tiffany Huff, and circling snakes by Santa Fe-based printmaker, Chloe Brennan. Robin Whiteman’s clay sculptures that she made specifically for LUN + OJO grace the shelves (made from old rail car flooring from the Santa Fe Rail) like Egyptian totems, a bear’s head on a woman’s body. Alexis Kristofferson’s jewelry work incorporates lots of eyeball and UFO shapes, snake bands and white buffalo stone. Other touches of Taos: a rusted up gas tank from the mesa holds a huge aloe plant; a wooden stage in the east corner is built from a friend’s old goat corral, where Putnam hopes to host local singer-songwriters soon.
Was a long road getting here. When his big brother passed six years ago, Putnam quit the “suffocating” bar-and-restaurant-design business he’d built, loaded up his Sprinter van and drove directionless out of Salt Lake City, grief in his gas tank. Memories, too. The two boys throwing boulders into the Clark Fork River like a rolling black snake, all the sap-stained trees they climbed, and other “redneck shit,” like shooting potato guns and climbing 200-foot-tall phone towers. Boys trying to cope with the torture at home. Eventually, to cope meant dope for Putnam’s brother, the consequence of which was death like an inevitable talon. A frayed red thread.
Putnam thought to come to Taos back then, but went California-ward instead, kept north. In Portland, Oregon, he met tattoo artist Cheyenne Sawyer, who got Putnam painting again, and who taught him to layer color after color of acrylics and tattoo inks on his birch canvas then use a sander to lighten and blend them. “It’s a similar method they used on old circus signs to weather them. It gives an old, beat-up look,” says Putnam, whose sources of inspiration are eclectic: surrealist M.C. Escher, Japanese anime and Spirited Away, film-kook Wes Anderson, totem poles in British Columbia, musicians Townes Van Zandt and Luke Temple, and even that lady who came into the gallery talking about UFOs and touring with Jerry Garcia. Bend, Oregon, brought a stillness and loneliness, a three-part series on failing relationships (Putnam long divorced) called “Love Monsters,” and a rowdy pup named Buck. Leavenworth, Washington — “a little bubble amongst Trump and guns and God and apple orchards,” Putnam says — brought more graphic design work and a pandemic.
One of the first paintings Putnam made when he arrived in Taos in late 2020 was a white buffalo. He started with the eye and worked outward, adding a peony on the forehead, a prickly pear in the corner. He filled in the darker lines with “peachy pink,” a color that reminds Putnam of the Taos sunset. While he was back in his hometown, Missoula — one of his last stopovers before New Mexico — and working on a series addressing animal conservation and the Endangered Species Act for the United Nations 75th anniversary show (cancelled because of COVID), a white buffalo calf was born at Bitterroot Bison. “That’s like one in 10 million. Really rare,” says Putnam. “In any Native culture, this is a sign of hope. I took it as a good omen.” Craving rootedness and finding the gallery space at 111 — “that’s my number,” he says — felt like the right light at the end of long travels bookended by death. A white buffalo of hope. A red thread connecting. A home where other landloving misfits roam. Where Putnam tries to walk with a light foot and a watchful eye, observing.