American Indian Artist: Allen Houser

Was captured and exiled to Florida, Houser's family went with him as prisoners of war. Later they were returned to the West and given their choice of farming in Oklahoma or becoming reservation Indians in New Mexico. Houser's family decided to farm. Allan Haozous was born in Apache, Oklahoma, on June 30, 1914. Anglos had difficulty with the Apache name, and eventually the young man became known as Allan Houser. Education was a luxury for Houser, and his schooling was often interrupted when he had to help his family with the farm. When he graduated from Chilocco Indian High School and went on to Santa Fe Indian School, his parents expected him to become a cattleman. Dorothy Dunn, the art instructor at Santa Fe, changed his destiny. In 1936 he received the school's Arts and Crafts Award, and announced to his parents that he had decided to become an artist. They were disappointed and skeptical, but allowed him to pursue his dream. In 1937 he was the only Indian to be represented at the National Exhibition of American Art in New York City, and had his first one-man show at the Museum of New Mexico. Dorothy Dunn was so impressed by young Houser that she insisted that, after his graduation, he be allowed to stay at the school for a year as a special art student.

Murals he executed for the school were brought to the attention of government officials and, in 1938, he received a commission to execute murals for the Department of Interior Building in Washington, D.C. His work was well received and other commissions followed, including the 1939 Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco and the New York World's Fair. Everyone, except Houser, was pleased with his technique. He decided to return to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and study mural techniques under Olle Nordmark at the Indian Art Center. The result of this additional study enabled him to do four dioramas for the Southern Plains Indian Museum in Anadarko, Oklahoma, which are considered masterpieces.

His teaching career began in 1942 when he became an instructor at the Indian School in Dulce, New Mexico. He felt it was his responsibility to pass his knowledge on to other Indian students. He would stress drawing and design, design and drawing, until the students' minds were saturated with perfection.

World War II marked the turning point in his career. He moved to California to take a job in a defense plant, and spent his spare time visiting museums and galleries. He spent hours studying the old masters and investigating new art movements. Color and design encompassed his entire thinking, and he became frustrated trying to gain more depth in his work. He felt imprisoned in a two-dimensional world. He found his escape in the three-dimensional medium of sculpture. Until that time there had been no American Indian sculptors. He carved grained woods, chiseled fine marbles, modeled terra cotta, and cast in a variety of metals. He had found his medium. Houser recalls, "My inspiration came from the stories that were told to me by my father when I was growing up in Oklahoma. In the evenings we used to sit around a big wood stove, and he would pick up the Apache drum and sing some of the old songs that the Apaches used to sing during the time that they were on the warpath and after they had been returned from Florida to Fort Sill and things were peaceful."

Allan Houser creates symphonies in sculpture. The harmony of his designs, the dramatic bearing of his subjects, and the stark simplicity of his work, have earned him the reputation of being one of the deans of Southwestern artists. The French government, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of Indian art in sculpture, painting, and teaching, honored him by awarding him the Palmes d'Académique. Houser says that it is his heritage that has inspired him to greatness. He is the great-grandson of the martyred Apache Chief, Mangus Colorado, who, in the mid-1800s, believed that "all men, white and red, were brothers!" His father, Sam Haozous, fought side by side with Geronimo. When Geronimo Shortly after the war, Houser was asked to sculpt a statue for Haskell Institute at Lawrence, Kansas, one of the oldest and largest Indian boarding schools in the United States. The statue would serve as a memorial for Haskell students who had died during World War II. Houser remembers that "I was scared to death when I first saw that huge stone. It was over seven feet tall and Carraran marble. It was also a magnificent challenge." He titled the piece Comrade in Mourning. It was a single figure, an Indian wrapped in a blanket; the starkness and bearing of the statue said everything that needed to be said.

In 1948 Houser was awarded two John Simon Guggenheim Fellowships; one for art and the other for sculpture. His paintings continued to take major awards, but sculpture gave him his real moments of satisfaction. In 1960 he began to devote his full time to sculpture and in 1962, at the Scottsdale National Indian Arts Exhibition, he received First Award.

In 1951 he began teaching at the Inter-mountain Indian School in Brigham City, Utah. When the Institute of American Indian Arts opened in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1962, he became the instructor in sculpture and traditional Indian painting. From 1971 until he retired in the spring of 1975, he was in charge of the sculpture division of the school.

His numerous awards include the Grand Award, Philbrook Annual Indian Artists Exhibition; Gold Medal, Sculpture I Show, Heard Museum; and the Waite Phillips Trophy, Philbrook Art Center.

His work may be seen in the permanent collections of the Heard Museum, Museum of New Mexico, Denver Art Museum, University of Oklahoma, Arizona State Capitol Building, U.S. Department of Interior, and the Philbrook Art Center.

His advice to aspiring young artists: "Design is of the utmost importance. It is impossible to over-practice drawing. Anatomy is basic, but to me it is not as important as design. Patience is important in sculpture. Each piece must be finished properly. If it isn't finished, it isn't a fine sculpture. The most important thing about being an artist today, is that there is no limit on freedom. Original expression is encouraged. It is a very exciting time for creative minds!"

SCULPTURES BY ALLAN HOUSER

Do you see the stones as they fall upon themselves? They are echoing like a drum.

Do you see the stones touching as they fall through spots of sun? They are echoing like a drum.

Do you see the stones dancing as they fall to the earth below? They are echoing like a drum.

Their drum beat is the drum beat of a person who sculpts with echoes. There is a drum behind the vision that contains the silence that stones contain.

In the stone silence there lives a buffalo or a hunter or a dancer or a peaceful woman or a hawk There is a drum in the right hand and a rock in the left hand at all times that beats and beats and beats the rhythm of a hawk or a peaceful woman or a dancer or a hunter or a buffalo the vision finds itself over and over again as a rock and a drum and it is an echo.

There is a stone time and a mountain time and a sky time and a hawk and a buffalo time that is Apache time.

It is like walking in childhood moccasins in a flow of continuity. It is a tracking in growing-up moccasins in a flow of music and drum beats.

When the buffalo emerges from the stone with my chisel I am following him from being the first buffalo to the last buffalo.

Detail from THE HUNTER - Marble

I am like them as I am like my Apache mother the birds sculpt the air with their songs like my mother The buffalo sculpt the earth with their hooves like a mother cooks and sculpts time. I do many things without knowing how. I do them like my family like the birds and the buffalo it is because I am what I do.

My work is me as a drum and a rock and I shall echo beyond the gallery walls and I shall spring off the rocks in the mountain and I shall echo off the trees in the earth.

I flow in and through many materials like the deer and the turkey among stones, logs, thunderstorms, lightning, columbine and the eyes of the man who hunts.

When I call the horse from the paint with my brush I am holding him by the mane, climbing onto his back, loosening the reins and freeing him to run across the earth like all men.

When I converse with woman who is peace full or beauty full in the stone, I am crying in my mother's arms, touching the woman in my drum, sitting with my wife at Mescalero and imagining the coming of age in all that is female.

When I walk into the mountain I walk into myself - and the turkey part of me lets me keep a step away from the mountain too.

And there is a hawk part of me that allows me to watch myself and the buffalo and the peacefull woman And the beautifull woman the dancer the hunter and the buffalo begin to breath through my fingers and the hawk flies between the hand and the sky. And there is love and there is pain I listen to the love and the pain awakening in the woods from the earth that has been seen by deer and birds and touched by the sky and it echoes and echoes and echoes and the buffalo begin to breathe I listen to the love awakening in the stone I listen to the pain awakening in the stone and it echoes and echoes and echoes.

The mountains and the stones and the birds and the animals are my family too - and the dancer and the hunter.

When I step up to the stone I step up to my own self - and I touch a new skin, feel a new pulse, hear a new movement of the earth And my drum begins to beat.. It is my pulse. And my mallet begins to beat. It is my pulse. I listen to the beats and to the echoes they sing to me like my mother. It is my pulse.

THE CHANT - Bronze

I shall echo where the sun beats. I shall echo where the sun beats. I shall echo where the sun beats.

my research materials. I am asked again and again and again, where do my ideas come from. I think they come from being aware of anything and everything: a candy wrapper, an old lady's wrinkles, a funeral, a decayed rug, a sound, a smell, a broken pot. It is from these things I receive an inspiration." Scores of distinguished private collectors have received inspiration from owning works of R. C. Gorman. He is shown in the permanent collections of the Museum of Indian Arts, San Francisco; Heard Museum, Phoenix; Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff; Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa; U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C.; Museum of the American Indian, New York City; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

His numerous major awards include Grand Prize at the First Annual Exhibition of American Indian Artists, Kaiser Center, Oakland; First Awards at the Scottsdale National Indian Arts Exhibition, Scottsdale; the Philbrook Art Center's Annual American Indian Artists Exhibition, Tulsa; All-American Indian Days Art Exhibition in Sheridan, Wyoming; and the Heard's Annual Indian Arts and Crafts Exhibition.

In 1974 he was asked to serve as co-illustrator for The Man to Send Rain Clouds, and a childhood ambition to write was fulfilled when one of his short stories was included in the book.

Sections of his large adobe home in Taos are over two hundred years old. In addition to his spacious living quarters, he has his studio and the Navajo Gallery. "I'm the only Navajo artist in the United States to have my own gallery." Perhaps the memory of his own humble beginning is responsible for him exhibiting the works of more than seventy artists, both Indian and non-Indian, and helping to launch the career of a number of young artists. The friendly and informal atmosphere of his home and gallery have made it a favorite gathering place for artists and art lovers from all over the world.

"Navajo mythology and history are woven together like strands of a rope. Our everyday activities and our religious life are woven together. Our woman weave together strands of wool into rugs of beautiful design on their upright looms. Our thoughts weave all things together into the fabric of life, making it a path of harmony and beauty, an upward spiraling path of continuous life."

As a Navaho I entered the Southwest on my striped blanket of rainbow in the 11th or 12th Century: may be earlier, may be later.

As a Navaho Our rainbow stretched from the icy Northwest beyond the tallest trees to the desert Southwest among the tallest pinnacles of Monument Valley. Our lands continually reach toward the sun even when we sleep.

We Navahos are of all land and no land finding the canyons of our earth equalling the canyons of our travels. The canyon depths are as if carved by our moccasin feet walking and walking back and forth always forward - across the earth again and again, sometimes herding sometimes schooling sometimes going to a Squaw Dance sometimes crossing the mountain over there.

We Navahos carried with us our Yei who teach us from one end of the rainbow who teach us all things. Who take us through all life in streams of beauty flowing deeply in our rains flowing shallowly in our dry times.

The Yei gives eyes and fingers and hearts to learn from Spider Woman, or learn from our grandfathers or learn from the many yous of the world.

We Navahos are always learning, it is our way, it is our eternal Transformation like a see we are seeds, and we plant ourselves.

NAVAJO MOTHER AND CHILD-R. C. Gorman Original Lithograph From HOMAGE TO NAVAJO WOMEN Art Consultants Ltd., Phoenix, Az.

The women in my life are my charcoal. They are soft and strong like my great grandmother who gave me life I use my charcoal to give life to the women I draw and paint.

The women in my life are my paint. They are related to me in closeness like my aunts and sisters and cousins who support my Navaho way.

I use my model to help continue what is Navaho in me as I paint the remote memories of my growing up and my being.

The women in my life are a real part of my art. They give me a bridge into yesterday and tomorrow.

They are like my paintings of blankets with stripes and diamonds. They are reminders of the weave of my life which is moving from old ways to new ways.

The women are the movements in my life. in the Navaho myths where I must have a home of my own and a rite of passage.

The women in my life are my charcoal and paint. They are born in the fire of the Squaw-Dance and I stand at the sides watching them dance and they tell me my myths as they unravel my stripes and diamonds.

THREE SISTERS-R. C. Gorman Original Lithograph From HOMAGE TO NAVAJO WOMEN Art Consultants Ltd., Phoenix, Az. OPPOSITE PAGE: SPECTATORS R. C. Gorman Original Lithograph Art Consultants Ltd., Phoenix, Az.

I can not find enough rainbow ways to travel upon I am Navaho: a person traveling the rainbow, I am durable as desert seeds. I am clear as children's laughter. I am paradoxical as coyote. I am as easy to unravel as sage and cochincal blankets. I am as moving as the swirling log clouds.

MAN - In late 1971 Gorman began his first work at Tamarind Institute, resulting in the 1972 suite of lithographs, "Homage to Navajo Women." In 1972 he completed a suite of six male and female nudes, "Bodies by Gorman," and four individual studies, of which this was one. Done in black, sepia, and red, it is one of his richest in concept and execution. The background, with its mellow marbled texture, is one he has not used in his lithographs or drawings before, but here it works beautifully with the subtly shaded figure and red splash of robe. Art Consultants Ltd., Phoenix, Az.

ART AND INDIAN INDIVIDUALISTS

by Guy and Doris Monthan Introducing a totally new concept, this handsome book is a long-needed addition to the body of literature on Indian art. Here at last is a first-hand account, both visual and verbal, of the artists themselves their lives and their work. These are the artists of today the individualists expressing themselves in a deeply personal way, yet retaining all the richness of their cultural heritage.

Included are seventeen Southwestern artists who excel in four major media painting, sculpture, ceramics, and silver-smithing. Beautifully conceived and executed, the book contains biographies and photographic portraits of each artist, a personal statement from each, and a representative grouping in full color of each artist's work.

To assemble this landmark documentary, the authors have made scores of trips throughout Arizona and New Mexico to the Hopi and Navajo Reservations, the pueblos along the Rio Grande. They have interviewed each artist personally, usually in his own home. They have photographed works in the artists' studios, at exhibits, and in outstanding private and public collections.

Never before has a book revealed Indian artists and their work with such depth and intimacy. It is a must for every serious collector and student of Indian art and culture for museums, college art libraries, artists anyone interested in one of America's most exciting and unique art movements.

Lloyd Kiva New states in his foreword "This book not only opens the door for a frank look at Indian art today, but also presents a provocative view of what the future of Indian art may be."

At most bookstores $35.00 or direct from Northland Press, P.O. Box N, Flagstaff, AZ 86001.