Meeting the Rising Sun

Tucson collectors bring together different interests for a compatible collection of Western and Native American art.

Our collectors met a little over a year ago. She came from a family who collected art and is a collector herself. He had collected a few pieces of Western art and some Native American pieces and lived in a large home in the Catalina Foothills of Tucson, Arizona, with “kind of bare walls,” she recalls. They are now engaged, have been collecting together, and soon her collection will be merged with his.

Her late father was chief geologist for a major oil company and eventually started a family gas and oil business. He began collecting early in his career and recalled purchasing a piece by Blackbear Bosin (Commanche/kiowa).

“Over the years, I admired Blackbear Bosin’s work, and after an exchange of letters, I drove to his home in Wichita, bought lunch for Mr. and Mrs. Bosin, reviewed what they had as inventory, and selected a painting to go over the fireplace of my new home. I don’t recall whether I paid $400 or $600; I do remember needing to pay with checks from two different accounts, as I hadn’t money enough in either account.” The painting now hangs in the couple’s home along with a painting by Robert Chee (Navajo) that her father purchased at an auction at the Philbrook Museum where he tried to buy a painting every year.

She has already brought one important piece into the collection. Before she met her fiancé she fell in love in a different way with a painting. “It was Lawrence Lee’s Black Hand Shaman. I had some stock that wasn’t doing well and thought I should sell it. I walked out of the gallery and called my financial adviser to ask him what he thought it would bring. I walked right back into the gallery and asked the price

of the Lee. It was within $100 of my advisor’s estimate for the stock sale.

“I got to know Lee and asked him about the painting. He told me he thought it would never sell, that it was unloveable and no one would like it. This shaman isn’t sinister. I thought he was someone who would take care of me. He now hangs facing east toward the rising sun and we think of him as our protector.”

Despite the “kind of bare walls” her fiancé had been visiting galleries and thinking seriously about the art that moved him, especially the artists at Mark and Kathleen Sublette’s Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson. He had picked up a few pieces over the years including an important Acoma pot by Eva Histia, “that I bought on one of my ski trips to Colorado.

“I always had the intention of putting together a collection,” he admits, “but I wasn’t going to pull the trigger until I was ready. One

day I saw some paintings there that I really loved. The individuals in the paintings spoke to me. I walked out with three paintings by John Moyers, Billy Schenck and Dennis Ziemienski. That got the process rolling.”

She recalls that she went away to spend a week with her sister in Texas. “I knew he was going to Mark and Kathleen’s gallery and thought he might buy two paintings.” He said to himself, “I’m just going to do this. It had taken awhile to convince myself to put down a significant amount of resources to acquire this art. I had been thinking about Western art. I like it as a genre. And there were many pieces at the gallery that I liked.”

Soon a van arrived at the house with 20 paintings and 15 sculptures, Mark Sublette and his installer. Kathleen Sublette recalled that when the collector came into the gallery he said “I want color!” The Sublettes had attended a party at the house when it was somewhat bare and had a good idea of what would work in the spaces as well as hold together as a cohesive collection.

The works range from 19th-century Native American ledger drawings to paintings by the most prominent contemporary painters of the American West. They needed to fill a difficult horizontal space in the living room and felt that two or three small paintings never looked right. They commissioned Billy Schenck to create one long painting. Although the couple move things around from time to time, the 98-inch-wide painting, Grand Bonita Canyon, stays where it is.

When the couple visit galleries if one of them likes a piece, inevitably the other likes it too. “We may have some give and take,” she says. “But if we don’t agree on a piece, we don’t buy it.”

“Although I went to the gallery to pick out the paintings, Mark brought over the weavings as samples,” he says. “I chose the pieces I liked and Mark put them on the wall. He did most of the installations.”

Although he selected a large portion of the collection at one time, the move came after a long period of looking and admiring and thinking. “I think for me it’s 100% emotional,” he says. “John Moyers’ On Edge used to hang in the kitchen above a counter and I couldn’t get close to it. Now it’s in the living room where I can really look at it. His emotion is displayed so distinctly. I often wonder how you can do that in oil on canvas. I have next to zero art talent in terms of creating it. I got C’s in art which is like an F in any other class. But I have a good eye for collecting.”

Her interest in collecting comes from her childhood always seeing art on the walls. “I found when I walked by a painting anywhere if it hit me in the heart I knew I had to pay attention. That’s how Black Hand Shaman first affected me.”

He adds, “I’m something of an opera buff. When I go to a performance, some of the music and the staging comes right into me. If a work of art doesn’t hit me dead center or I don’t connect, I forget about it.”

The large painting on the far wall is Billy Schenck’s Grand Bonita Canyon, oil on canvas. Beneath it is John Moyers’ On Edge, oil on panel. High on the right is a Monumental Apache basket, ca. 1880s. In the nicho below are, left to right, a Hopi redware cylinder with figurative designs, ca. 1920-30s; a Hopi polychrome jar, 1970-80s, by Joy Navasie (“Frog Woman,” 1919-2012); and a Hopi cylinder, ca. 1930s. The small bronze to the left on the hearth is Guffaw (Board Meeting Series) by Star Liana York. On the far left is Doug Hyde’s Doll Talk, bronze. On the hearth is an Acoma pot with pie crust rim, 1970, by Eva Histia (1914-2005).

In the foreground is Doug Hyde’s Doll Talk, bronze, sitting on a Navajo Double Saddle Blanket with Valero Stars, ca. 1900-10s. On the left are three gouaches, 2011, by Rotraut Moquay. Next to them is Mark Bowles’ Sentinels, oil on canvas. On the right is Dennis Ziemienski’s Daylight Brand, oil on canvas. Above left is Bowles’ Mysteries of the West, oil on canvas. Above right is a Navajo Double Saddle Blanket, ca. 1900s.

In the kitchen is Billy Schenck’s Going My Way, oil on canvas.

On the left is Spider Woman Emergence, acrylic on canvas, by Shonto Begay (Navajo). The sculpture is Fred Borcherdt’s 77, black walnut and oak. At the top of the stairs is Shonto Begay’s Still the Canyon of My Dreamscape, acrylic on canvas. The large painting on the far wall is Black Hand Shaman, ca. 2003 by Lawrence Lee. Next to it is a large olla, with curly maple, Australian lacewood, mahogany and padoucah, by Marilyn Endres and Eucled Moore. Above the stairs are drawings from the Sioux Amidon Ledger Book: Racing Horses, ca. 1880, on the left, and Warrior with a Sword on a Horse, ca. 1880.

On the left is Ojibway Medicine Dance by Blackbear Bosin (Commanche/kiowa, 1921-1980). On the right is Apache Fire Dance by Robert Chee (Navajo, 1938-1972).

At the bottom of the stairs is Francis Livingston’s Coral and Turquoise, oil on panel. On the landing is Howard Post’s Riding Spurs, oil on canvas. On the upper landing is a Navajo traditional blanket, ca. 1890s.

On the left in the master bedroom is Dennis Ziemienski’s Cowgirl Brand, oil on linen. Above the bed is Francis Livingston’s Forest of Dreams, oil on panel. On the floor is a Navajo double saddle blanket, ca. 1910s.

Far left: The painting is Billy Schenck’s Morning Gathering, oil on canvas. On the shelves are—left to right, bottom to top—star Liana York’s Jokester (Board Meeting Series) and Palaver (Board Meeting Series); a Zia dough bowl, ca. 1890s; a large Zia polychrome jar, ca. 1870-80s; York’s Chuckles (Board Meeting Series) and Skeptical (Board Meeting Series); an Apache pictorial olla, ca. 1900s; and Doug Hyde’s alabaster The Magic Flute. At the very top is a katsina by William “Bill” Rabbit (Cherokee).

Left: In the nicho are, left to right, a Hopi redware cylinder with figurative designs, ca. 1920-30s, a Hopi polychrome jar, 197080s, by Joy Navasie (“Frog Woman,” 1919-2012) and a Hopi cylinder, ca. 1930s)

On the left is Darren Vigil Gray’s V.A.L. #66, acrylic on canvas. On the shelves are, left to right, Star Liana York’s Jokester (Board Meeting Series) and Palaver (Board Meeting Series) and a Zia dough bowl, ca. 1890s.

Ancient Traditions, oil on canvas, by John Moyers.