Spirits of the Southwest

SPIRITS OF THE SOUTHWESTAn exhibit featuring artwork that explores the mysticism of the American Southwest

EAGLE POEM Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon To one whole voice that is you. And know there is more That you can’t see, can’t hear; Can’t know except in moments Steadily growing, and in languages That aren’t always sound but other Circles of motion. Like eagle that Sunday morning Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky In wind, swept our hearts clean With sacred wings. We see you, see ourselves and know That we must take the utmost care And kindness in all things. Breathe in, knowing we are made of All this, and breathe, knowing We are truly blessed because we Were born, and die soon within a True circle of motion, Like eagle rounding out the morning Inside us. We pray that it will be done In beauty. In beauty.

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CAROL HAGAN Big Red Griz

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SPIRITS OF THE SOUTHWEST

Emily Harris

Joy Harjo

Arthur J. Burdick

Carol Hagan

Rocky Hawkins

Oleg Stavrowsky

This catalogue has been published to accom-

pany the exhibition Spirits of the Southwest

organized by Emily Harris, senior curator,

Texas State University–San Marcos,

March 1, 2013–May 5, 2013.

Spirits of the Southwest has been supported

by the following:

Museum of the Southwest,

Settlers West Galleries,

Southwest Arts Center

Performance Theater and Gallery,

and Southwest Gallery in Dallas

Copyright © 2013 by Wily E. Coyote

All rights reserved. This book or any portion

thereof may not be reproduced or used in any

manner whatsoever without the express writ-

ten permission of the publisher except for the

use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2013

ISBN 0-9000000-0-0

Texas State University

1104 Thorpe Ln

San Marcos, TX 78666

Eagle Poem © Joy Harjo 1990.

Foreword © Emily Harris 2013.

The Mystic Mid-Region:

The Deserts of the Southwest,

© Arthur J. Burdick 1904

CONTENTS

1 Eagle Poem JOY HARJO

7 Foreword EMILY HARRIS

9 The Mystic Mid-Region: The Deserts of the Southwest ARTHUR J. BURDICK

13 Plates

35 Exhibition Checklist

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FOREWORD Emily Harris

Remaining true to my Cherokee ancestry, I was strongly attracted to the artwork of Rocky Hawkins and wanted to develop an exhibi-tion revolving around Hawkins’ portrayals of Native Americans. However, as I researched other artists, I discovered paintings with different Southwestern subjects, such as cowhands, herdsmen and ranchers; wild wolves, horses, and foxes; and expansive landscapes and never-ending skies. These paintings helped me realize that the overarching-all-encompassing spirit of the American Southwest goes beyond the Native American people. It takes every element combined to tell a true story of the Southwest.

Spirits of the Southwest allows the viewer to take a journey into the unknown. The exhibition opens a doorway into the culture of the American Southwest and goes beyond the stereotypical per-ceptions of Native Americans, American cowboys, and wildlife. Through the bold, abstract expressionistic artwork of Rocky Haw-kins, Oleg Stavrowsky, and Carol Hagan, the viewer has the chance to explore the mysticism of life in the Southwest.

Rocky Hawkins, an award-winning Seattle, Washington born artist whose work has been featured in numerous collections, says that his paintings are about “expressing a visual experience that challenges and communicates with a sense of mystery in hopes to awaken the senses.” He believes, “Mystery is a part of life where not everything is easily explainable.” Hawkins experiments with colors and shapes, decides which details to include in a painting, and—perhaps most importantly—embraces mistakes. Through this process, he produces images that engage the viewer’s senses and begin to create another world in the viewer’s mind.

Harlem, New York native Oleg Stavrowsky discards his Rus-sian roots and prides himself on being an American, a pride that is evident in his work featuring American cowboys. He believes that it is important to let the viewer make up their own story behind a painting. In a Bak Magazine interview, Stavrowsky stated, “A good painting never leaves you alone. You return to it because it keeps beckoning to you to tell you all about itself. Over and over...” Stavrowsky creates images that do just that: they take hold of the

viewer’s imagination and do not let go, instead lingering as the view er pieces together the story of the Southwest.

Carol Hagan from Montana is a self-taught artist who fully em-braced art after the birth of her son and has since developed her own vibrant style. Hagan’s work depicts a “raw beauty” which she feels is an exuding characteristic of the Southwest. “Spending much of my life in Montana,” Hagan said, “has allowed me to nurture a deep love of the West, it’s fascinating history, stunning landscapes, and the people and animals who inhabit it... All subjects that find their way into much of my current work.” There is a wildness, a liveliness in her artwork that is the very essence of the Southwest.

The combination of these artists and the elements of Southwest-ern life represented in their work has allowed the Spirits of the Southwest exhibition to evolve into a once-in-a-lifetime chance for “Cowboys and Indians” enthusiasts like me to gain new perspective on the Southwestern lifestyle and open doors of opportunity for oth-ers discovering this captivating culture for the first time.

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ROCKY HAWKINS Archers Rising

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THE MYSTIC MID-REGION The Deserts of the Southwest Arthur J. Burdick

Between the lofty ranges of mountains which mark the western boundary of the great Mississippi Valley and the chain of peaks known as the Coast Range, whose western sunny slopes look out over the waters of the placid Pacific, lies a vast stretch of country once known as the “Great American Desert.”

A few years ago, before the railroad had pierced the fastness of the great West, explorers told of a vast waste of country devoid of water and useful vegetation, the depository of fields of alkali, beds of niter, mountains of borax, and plains of poison-impregnated sands. The bitter sage, the thorny cacti, and the gnarled mesquite were the tantalizing species of herbs said to abound in the region, and the centipede, the rattlesnake, tarantula, and Gila monster represented the life of this desolate territory.

More recently, as the railroads have spanned the continent at different points, we have knowledge of several deserts. There are the “Nevada Desert,” the “Black Rock Desert,” the “Smoke Creek Desert,” the “Painted Desert,” the “Mojave Desert,” the “Colorado Desert,” etc.; the “Great American Desert” being the name now applied to that alkali waste west of Salt Lake in Utah. As a matter of fact, however, these are but local names for a great section of arid country in the United States from two hundred to five hundred miles wide, and seven hundred to eight hundred miles long, and ex-tending far down into Mexico, unbroken save for an occasional oasis furnished by nature, or small areas made habitable by irrigation.

Where the old Union Pacific drew its sinuous line across the northern section of the desert, a trail of green spots was left to mark the various watering-stations for the engines. The Southern Pacific railroad left a similar line of oases down through the Colorado Des-ert, and the Santa Fé, in like manner, dotted with green spots the Great Mojave Desert. The water at these stations is obtained in some instances by drilling wells, and where it can not be obtained in this manner it is hauled in tank cars from other points.

A portion of the desert lies below the level of the sea. Death Val-ley, in the Great Mojave Desert, has a depression of one hundred and ten feet below sea-level, while portions of the Colorado Desert

lie from a few feet to four hundred feet below ocean-level. In the latter desert there are several villages in this desert which would be many feet submerged were the mountain wall between sea and desert rent asunder.

There is a mystery about the desert which is both fascinating and repellent. Its heat, its dearth of water and lack of vegetation, its seemingly endless waste of shifting sands, the air of desolation and death which hovers over it—all these tend to warn one away, while the very mystery of the region, the uncertainty of what lies beyond the border of fertility, tempts one to risk its terrors for the sake of exploring its weird mysteries.

Strange tales come out of the desert. Everyone who has ventured into its vastness, and who has lived to return, has brought reports of experiences and observations fraught with the deepest interest, which tend to awaken the spirit of adventure in the listener. The most famous of the American deserts are the Great Mojave and the Colorado, the latter lying partly in the United States and partly in Mexico. As trackless as the Sahara, as hot and sandy as the Great Arabian, they contain mysteries which those deserts cannot boast. Within their borders are the great salt fields of Salton and of Death Valley, which have no counterpart in the world; the “Volcanoes,” a region abounding in cone-shaped mounds which vomit forth poison-ous gases, hot mud, and volcanic matter, and over which region ever hang dense clouds of steam; the great niter fields and borax plains of the Mojave, and other equally strange exhibitions of nature.

There are other mysteries in the desert. Amid its sands are gold and gems for the fortunate finder, and many are they who have lost their lives in search of these treasures. Hovering over the desert, too, is that phantom, that desert apparition, the mirage, a never- ceasing wonder to the fortunate traveler who wants not for water and who is in no doubt as to his way across the dreary waste, and a never-ceasing torment and menace to the thirst-tortured way-farer lost in the dread solitude. Imagine the mockery to the thirsty traveler of a rippling sheet of water, its blue waves rolling ever in view but receding as he advances, leaving only the burning sands to

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the perishing one! Is it any wonder that men go mad in the desert? And yet, locked in the breast of this waste is more fertility than is necessary to supply the continent with sustenance.

The Colorado Desert is thus called because the great river of that name carved it out of the sea. It is also destined to lose the name of desert because of that same river.

At one time the Gulf of California extended nearly up to Banning, where rise those two sentinels of the plain, Mt. San Jacinto and Mt. Grayback, each towering nearly two miles above the surround-ing country. This was before the Colorado River had cut its way through the mountains to the sea, forming that magnificent chasm known as the Grand Canyon. For endless centuries the great river has been eating out the heart of the continent, pulverizing the rock and earth, and bearing it in its turbid tide down from the mountains and tablelands to the lower plains and to the sea.

A part of its burden of silt was laid down over the northern portion of the gulf, and a part of it was carried by the force of the current far down into the great body of water and was piled up ninety miles below the present boundary line between Mexico and the United States. This bank was about sixty miles long, extending in an easterly and westerly direction. Along the right side of the current was formed a lateral embankment, which eventually shut off the river from its former inlet into the gulf and directed it to its present mouth, some two hundred miles lower. This, joining with the sixty-mile embankment, severed one portion of the gulf from the main body and left an inland sea where now is the desert. Then the thirsty sun drank up the waters of this sea and left the land of des -olation. How long ago all this happened is a matter of conjecture.

There are many places on the boundaries of the desert where the ancient beach-line may be traced long distances. Here are found numerous shells and corals. Many of the shells are unbroken, and one might almost believe, to look upon them, that they were tossed there by the restless waves no longer ago than yesterday. The vari-eties of shells and of sea relics correspond very closely with those now abounding in the sea.

There are evidences that the desert has been dry land many centuries. Upon its breast are found Indian pottery and implements of a style and pattern antedating those in use at the time the white man reached this country. Then, too, as far back as the sixteenth century, when the earliest exploration of that region was made, the desert-dwelling tribes seem to have been thoroughly established in the territory once occupied by the gulf. It doubtless required

centuries, after the waters were cut off from the region, to dry up the inland sea and make it possible for man to enter and occupy the territory.

One who has never experienced it can gain no idea of the torture of thirst upon the desert. The scorching sun from a cloudless sky, with never so much as a hint of haze to temper its rays, seems fairly to drink the blood of the traveler exposed to its fierceness. From the sands rises a cloud of fine alkali dust which penetrates the nostrils and enters the mouth, stinging and inflaming the glands, and add- ing to the torture of thirst. A few hours of this suffering without water to alleviate the pain is sufficient to drive most men mad.

It is this desert madness which travelers most fear. If one can keep a clear head he may possibly live and suffer and toil on to a place of safety, even though bereft of water many hours, but once the desert madness seizes him all hope is lost, for he no longer pursues his way methodically, but rushes off in pursuit of the allur-ing mirages, or chases some dream of his disordered brain which pictures to him green fields and running brooks, ever just at hand.

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ROCKY HAWKINS Crazy Blanket

PLATES

(Top) OLEG STAVROWSKY Montana Cowboy (Left) OLEG STAVROWSKY Not Tonight Sweetie (Right) ROCKY HAWKINS Shoots the Sun

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ROCKY HAWKINS Color Me Crow

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(Facing Page) CAROL HAGAN Red Sun Lodge CAROL HAGAN Baby Raven

(Left) ROCKY HAWKINS Sunset Prayer (Right) ROCKY HAWKINS Cliff Lodge (Bottom) CAROL HAGAN Paint Kiss

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ROCKY HAWKINS Yellow Elk Archer

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(Facing Page) ROCKY HAWKINS Plum Candy Horse ROCKY HAWKINS Red Face Stranger

(Top) OLEG STAVROWSKY Mancos Riders (Left) ROCKY HAWKINS Blue Moon Pawnee (Right) ROCKY HAWKINS Sounds From the Ground

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OLEG STAVROWSKY Shooter on a Paint

(Facing Page) CAROL HAGAN The Rookie Caught Diddly Squat (Top) ROCKY HAWKINS Color Changers ROCKY HAWKINS Hungry Fox

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(Facing Page) ROCKY HAWKINS Passengers ROCKY HAWKINS Red Eye

(Facing Page) OLEG STAVROWSKY Hold ‘Em (Top) ROCKY HAWKINS Guardian Archers ROCKY HAWKINS Fog Feathers

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(Facing Page) OLEG STAVROWSKY Mary Elizabeth’s Mustang (Top) ROCKY HAWKINS Indian Summer ROCKY HAWKINS Big Shell

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(Facing Page) CAROL HAGAN Leap of Faith ROCKY HAWKINS Dream Wide Awake

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST

CAROL HAGAN Baby Raven

Giclée Print on Archival Canvas with

hand painted highlights

8 x 8 inches

Big Red Griz



35 x 42 inches

Leap of Faith



14 x 14 inches

Paint Kiss



20 x 30 inches

Red Sun Lodge



36 x 36 inches

The Rookie Caught Diddly Squat

Framed Oil and Wax on Panel

22 x 28 inches

ROCKY HAWKINS Archers Rising

Oil on board

12 x 12 inches

Big Shell



9 x 12 inches

Blue Moon Pawnee, 2011



4.5 x 8 inches

Cliff Lodge



8 x 11 inches

Color Changers



11 x 16 inches

Color Me Crow

Oil on canvas

8 x 10 inches

Crazy Blanket

Oil on board

12 x 12 inches

Dream Wide Awake

Mixed media on canvas

40 x 40 inches

Fog Feathers



11 x 11 inches

Guardian Archers



8 x 16 inches

Hungry Fox

Acrylic on canvas

48 x 36 inches

Indian Summer



5 x 12 inches

Passengers

Mixed media on canvas

30 x 40 inches

Plum Candy Horse

Oil/acrylic on board

12 x 12 inches

Red Eye, 2011

Acrylic on Canvas

36 x 48 inches

Red Face Stranger

Acrylic on Panel

14 x 11 inches

Shoots the Sun



9 x 12 inches

Sounds From the Ground



14 x 18.5 inches

Sunset Prayer



5 x 7 inches

Yellow Elk Archer

Oil on board

8 x 10 inches

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OLEG STAVROWSKY Hold ‘Em



22 x 23 inches

Mancos Riders



22 x 23 inches

Mary Elizabeth’s Mustang



22 x 23 inches

Montana Cowboy



22 x 23 inches

Not Tonight Sweetie



26 x 22 inchess

Shooter on a Paint



22 x 23 inches

Foreword, Emily Harris, 2013 Eagle Poem, Joy Harjo from In Mad Love and War, 1990 The Mystic Mid-Region:

The Deserts of the Southwest, Arthur J. Burdick, 1904 Museum of the Southwest1705 W Missouri Ave Midland, TX 79701 Settlers West Galleries 6420 N Campbell Ave Tucson, AZ 85718 Southwest Art Center Performance Theater and Gallery 915 New Hope Road Atlanta, GA 30331 Southwest Art Gallery 4500 Sigma Rd Dallas, TX 75244

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Spirits of the Southwest

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