Friendly Connections
North Carolina collectors have forged friendships and long-lasting relationships with artists they admire.
Lambert Wilson and Jenny Holland added 3,000 square feet to their 3,000-square-foot home to expand their collection of Native American art, “and it’s already full” Wilson admits. They also had an architect friend convert the garage into a gallery. “Now I only buy what I really love,” he adds.
Wilson was a student at Western Carolina University when he discovered a book by the husband of his industrial arts professor. Rodney L. Leftwich’s Arts and Crafts of the Cherokee “started my interest,” he explains. That interest has expanded from Eastern Band Cherokee work to that of the Southwest, where he first went to Santa Fe Indian Market in 2012, and where the couple now have a second home.
He received degrees in education and administration and served as principal of a school just off the Cherokee reservation. Children could choose to attend either the Cherokee school or a state school. A Johnsono’malley grant from the federal government provided to state schools with Native students enabled the school to bring in Emma Squirrel Taylor (1920-2002) who “taught basketry, pottery and a little beadwork,” Wilson says.
He began buying Cherokee rivercane baskets and an extraordinary collection was on its way.
Since his retirement from his career in education, he owns and operates two hotels in Cherokee, North Carolina, literally in the thick of things. The Drama Inn is located within walking distance to the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, the Cherokee Ceremonial Grounds, the Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual and the Medicine Man Craft Shop.
One of the guiding aims of his collecting is to know the artists whose work he collects. I asked him what draws him to a particular piece. “It depends on my relationship with the artists,” he replied. “It’s important for me not just to have a piece by an artist,
but to know the artist. It’s important to develop a relationship with the artist. Just having a piece doesn’t mean a whole lot.”
When he first visited Santa Fe Indian Market “I didn’t know much about Southwest Native American art,” he says. “Kathleen Wall had a booth there on the Plaza and I was amazed by her big Koshares. I didn’t know what they were or what they cost. I was just excited about how they look. They make you feel good.” Wall (Jemez) was the 2016 Eric and Barbara Dobkin Fellow at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe. “We got to know her,” Wilson says, “and she’s been here to visit. She brought her kids and her husband who is part Cherokee, so it was like having him come back to his homeland.
“We first bought a Koshare and a dog, but since we’ve expanded our dog family, we’ve purchased another of her dogs.”
The exhibition, Renewal of the Ancient: Cherokee
Millennial Artists, opened at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee in September. Wilson is a member of the board. It features work by members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians who are under 40 and was curated by wood carver Joshua Adams. Adams says, “As a Cherokee artist, I am humbled by the forms and techniques of our ancient culture. Art has always been the vessel used by our people to solidify our unique vision of the world.” Wilson met Adams when he was wood carving at Cherokee High School.
“It worries me,” Wilson says, “that Cherokee arts could die out. It’s said that if you lose your language you lose your culture. I think if you lose your art you lose your culture. There is an immersion program for the Cherokee language but not so much for art. The exhibition will help with that. I buy young artists’ work to encourage them and I give them advice.”
He was introduced to the Cajero family of Jemez Pueblo at Santa Fe Indian Market. “I bought Joe Cajero’s
bronze Indian Dancer at the market,” he says. “When we were looking for a house in Santa Fe, I called Joe to ask who I should have as a realtor. He recommended his sister, Joetta, who is a real estate agent…and we found our house.”
One of the couple’s friends was multimedia artist Shan Goshorn (1957-2018, Eastern Band Cherokee). An exhibition of her work centering on the Carlisle Boarding School in Pennsylvania is being shown at Dickinson College’s Trout Gallery in Carlisle through February 2. Resisting the Mission: Filling the Silence commemorates the 100th anniversary of the closing of the school. Goshorn researched period photographs of Indian children when they arrived at the school and after a period of indoctrination. She cut copies of the photos into strips and wove them into baskets. One features the infamous statement by Carlisle’s founder, Richard Pratt, “Kill the Indian in him, save the man.”
Explaining her work, Goshorn wrote, “This school and assimilation campaign was a heinous attempt to destroy an entire culture through governmentsanctioned whitewashing techniques. Historical trauma still haunts Native people as a result of this deliberate theft of language, family and culture. I hope this piece will give audiences—especially Native
people—an opportunity to overcome the silence that has been suffered for too long.”
“Shan was a good friend,” Wilson explains. “I knew her mom and dad for a long time and met her when she came here to visit. Interestingly, we had a boarding school here in Cherokee. One of my best friends, who was 87, told me the school saved his life. A different experience.”
He says, “I spend a lot of time at the hotel. Our home in the middle of five acres with deer and bear and turkeys, is my refuge. It’s nice to pick up an Eva Wolfe basket and touch it. There’s a connection. I can identify with my friends who are the artists through their art. Jenny wasn’t a collector but she has developed a love for it, too, and a love for the artists. We have a lot of pots by Jane Osti. Jenny says whenever she feels sluggish she gets energy from them that makes her feel better.”