Rebuild burned DeGrazia chapel? I’m not sure
Artist might have other ideas about Tucson landmark
Iknow why the fire that damaged Ted DeGrazia’s chapel in Tucson is a cactus spine in the heart of many southern Arizonans. He was our signature artist, known for images that celebrated the Southwest. There was a time when it wasn’t Christmas without some DeGrazia angels dancing around a candle.
Real Tucson residents sent DeGrazia cards.
He was like us: quirky and proudly unconventional.
Unlike most of us, he was also hugely successful.
Lots of folks have heartwarming stories about being married in that adobe chapel, which he and some of his Pascua Yaqui friends began the year before I was born.
I remember him for a different reason.
Let me tell you about the time I met the great man at his Gallery in Sun in Tucson.
It was quick and inconsequential for both of us. But I remember it. He probably didn’t. It happened in the early 1970s. I was a 20-year-old misfit in cutoff jeans and a halter top, and I was trying to make sense of life after the suicide of a man I loved.
I needed a job.
A friend of mine worked at DeGrazia’s gallery, painting resin buttons that had raised images of some of DeGrazia’s more popular works — I remember angels, mostly. Once painted, the buttons became bolo ties for tourists.
My friend gave me some buttons, then he sat down in a folding chair next to me at a long banquet table in a room with lots of light. He took a handful of buttons from a box and began his own work.
“You have to remember the subtlety,” he said. “His work has a lot of subtlety.” I started painting. In walks DeGrazia. He had an unmistakable air of accomplishment. That arrogance of someone who knew exactly who he was, made few compromises and had managed to be wildly successful without selling out too much.
Mind you, having kids paint copies of his designs on bolo ties for tourists might be seen as a sellout. The thought crossed my mind. But never mind. The man had gravitas and a self-image that was well honed. My friend introduced me. Had I been a Frida Kahlo-type and met him with my own cocksure arrogance, this story might have a more consequential end. I just said, “hi.” He looked at the button I was painting, grunted and walked out. My friend scrutinized my painting. “When do I add the subtlety?” I asked. “It’s too late,” he said. That job didn’t last. But the chapel did. And DeGrazia’s amazing aesthetic.
He had the courage to embrace the desert when most non-indigenous people just wanted to change it. He taught a lot of people to love the place and its culture.
He pulled art from things people threw away.
He also became famous for destroying about 100 of his paintings in 1976. He burned them to protest inheritance taxes. That was after I met him.
There is “hope” that the burned chapel can be recreated just as it was, according to the Arizona Daily Star. It wouldn’t be hard to redo his murals based on the many photos.
For the sake of the gallery — a remarkable place that people from all over come to see — that might make sense.
For the sake of the people who got married there or celebrated some other momentous event in the chapel, that might be satisfying. But I’m not sure. I have a feeling he would have spat a few choice words into the ashes and built something else. I have no way of knowing that based on a two-minute meeting.
I do know that whatever they rebuild will lack subtlety.