WAY BACK THEN IN CHICAGO......

Chicago - Life was very different for women fifty years ago.  My mother never learned how to drive, she had no money of her own and when my father died, she had no idea how to write a check.  My life at twenty was not much different - I only knew what I observed and the norm was that many women had very few choices, even independent thought was whispered and not spoken aloud.  I didn't like the way my father treated my mother - in our house, speaking one's mind was heresy; standing up for oneself was treason!

 My entire view of life was skewed by my family history.  I was completely unformed.   I  had worked in Chicago for Holiday Magazine in the Advertising Department.  At the same time Hugh Hefner was starting Playboy and fundamentally changed the culture with his magazine and Chicago Playboy Club. In spite of the skinny waists, big boobs and bunny tails becoming the new sexualized ideal of womanhood, all I wanted was to be an artist.    I went to night school at the Chicago Art Institute.   Most of my lunch hours and weekends were spent at the museum studying paintings until I almost knew the brushstrokes by heart!  Several stand out - a painting of a rainy Paris street by Caillebotte, another called "A Donor and Five Saints" by Mantegna....Monets, Manets, Goya, Degas, Eakins; very few women of note - Artemesia Gentileschi, Mary Cassatt, Cecelia Beaux.

Sometime in 1959 I applied for entrance to the School of the Chicago Art Institute and made a great effort to prepare my portfolio.  Out of hundreds of applicants samples of my work were accepted and I was offered a place as a first year student.  Scholarships were only available to second year students.  I had been living with my parents, often helping them out with my salary from my job at Curtis.  When the acceptance letter arrived, I showed it to my father and asked if I could forego my monthly rent payment to him for one year.  I promised to work for a scholarship the following year.  He stood over me and said "No daughter of mine will be an artist!"  I pleaded, cajoled, but he stood firm. My brother had gone off to college - girls were expected to stay home and care for their parents - it was cultural. 

Six months later I went on a blind date with a tall, handsome Notre Dame student - his first impression was that I looked like Kim Novak!  Quite a shallow response to our meeting I thought! He was interesting and funny and a major in early English Literature.  I listened intently to his stories of academia, football games  - he read me poetry and told me the story of Beowulf - I was enchanted.  That was 58 years ago.  The war in Viet Nam was raging and many beautiful young men would never come home from those jungles.  The draft board was just waiting for him to graduate from college.  My hopes of finding my way in the art world had been dashed - I was nineteen in the August of 1960 when we married - twenty the following month.

We were married in the little chapel on the campus of Notre Dame - the founder of the college was buried under the floor of the little church. I am certain he still lies buried there along with some of my hopes and dreams! 

LONESOME DAVE'S FUNDRAISER

Santa Fe 1967 - Dave Cargo was inaugurated as New Mexico's twenty-second Governor in January 1967.  One afternoon early in September our friend, Ernie, walked across the street to our house and said we were invited to the Governor's Mansion for a big party!  Wow! Exciting! A chance to take the ever present diapers off my shoulder and play Dress-Up!  Don't remember what I wore, but am certain it was my best dress and high heels...and make up!  The three of us drove up Governor Mansion Drive to a large one story adobe house.  We were met by "greeters" and pointed to an informal bar for cocktails.  The living room was large and long - a typical "sala" design  reminiscent of colonial New Mexico architecture. Along one end of the room were French doors  which opened to a large patio facing West.  We were introduced to what I now realize were all the important donors to the N.M. Republican Party.  Honestly, it was a blur.  The flow of the group was toward the patio to have a drink and watch the sun set over the Jemez Mountains. A low wall surrounded the patio and separated it from the open land below. I was overwhelmed by the space - the evening light was surreal.  I was having an out of body experience - my first encounter with my New Mexico Dreamtime - love at first sight! 

In 1967 the population of Santa Fe was around 35,000 and New Mexico was still a new state - the real Wild West where some land deals were made with a handshake and feuds sometimes ended up with guns drawn.  Up until a few weeks before this event I had never been West of the Mississippi - never seen adobe houses, pinon trees or a mountain and now I was surrounded by all this newness!  When I looked toward those beautiful mountains in the distance, it felt as though I had been transported to an alien planet - at the very least, a foreign country!  New Mexico was now my home....this land and I were in the process of being introduced - our first real meeting.  I can remember wondering if I could ever belong here - there was so much I had to learn!  Being introduced to "Lonesome Dave Cargo" at the Governor's Mansion seemed to be a rather auspicious beginning!

Footnote:  Dave Cargo was a liberal Republican.  As governor he started the N.M. Film Commission which has since brought in millions of dollars in revenue to our state.  Regarding the state prison system he believed that prisoner reform went hand in hand in fighting poverty.   President Johnson's War on Poverty included funding for prison reform; it was called Project Newgate.  After Nixon was elected, monies for the War on Poverty were diverted to the war in Viet Nam. Project Newgate was phased out. For the next five years prison policy was run by a group of politicians without any accountability. It is entirely possible that the poor conditions at the Penitentiary in 1980 contributed to the bloodiest prison riot in U.S. history.  Thirty-three prisoners and guards were killed and countless others wounded and maimed....vivid memories for anyone living here during those tragic days and nights!

THE WAYSHOWER

After what I felt was my disastrous debut into the Santa Fe social circle, I went home and decided that everything would be just fine if I worked hard enough.  There were baby bottles to wash and many, many diapers to change.  It was my job to try to create some normalcy out of what were some very intense times.  Routine has always been my saving grace - and my babies were growing fat and happy. We played silly baby games, their favorite meal was spaghetti because they could eat it from the trays in their high chairs.  When they napped, I painted.

A few days after the bridge game, Jane Petchesky knocked on my front door.  Jane and her husband owned a Morgan horse ranch south of town.  They also were partners with the Abe Silver family and owned the Guarantee, Santa Fe's only department store on the corner of the Plaza.  She was a real "cowgirl" - feisty and independent - I took a lesson from her that day.

We were well into the month of October, but the days were still sunny and warm.  That afternoon we had a cup of coffee while she surveyed the chaos sympathetically.  I knew she knew why we had to move to Santa Fe. She invited me to go to the village of Cundiyo to paint with her!  I said yes! Yes! YES!!!  Don't remember how I made arrangements for the babies....but in a few days I had gathered my brushes and paints (am sure I carried them in my old artist's wooden box).  Packed up a lunch and off we went!  My first foray into the Great Unknown.

The day was sparkly; the sky was a blue I had never experienced. Coming from the haziness of Chicago the brilliance of the light and the colors took my breath away.  Open fields, little villages, cozy adobe houses - I was enchanted!! I took my first deep breath since we arrived in this strange and wonderful place!  Jane said that the village of Cundiyo is also called "Los Vigiles" because almost everyone there was named Vigil.  At the end of a sharp turn to the left of the road is a large red cliff.  Beneath were several pick-up trucks parked beside a small river and men with their poles headed out to do some fishing.  Across the road was a little dirt path that led to the other side of the river. Jane parked and we got out our paints and lunches and settled into work.  

This was my first ever attempt at painting outdoors (plein air).  It was confusing - there are so many decisions to make in order to get  good composition on canvas...I was overwhelmed.  The day was bright and beautiful.  It brings tears to my eyes now to remember Jane's kindness.  Somehow I sensed I was being shown a new way to live - there was hope!  Don't remember if the painting was good or bad - it was my very first New Mexico landscape and I was happy!

For many, many years I couldn't remember the name of the village or its location. Only when I moved to Truchas and decided to take another route home instead of turning left at Chimayo, I went straight.  There it was! That little spot by the river - unchanged, peaceful - a little bit of sanity in a crazy world!  I have passed that spot many times and thought of Jane. The above image, "Spring Thaw at Cundiyo" is my way of thanking her for lighting the spark!

A FOURTH FOR BRIDGE

Before we moved from Homewood, I was being taught to play bridge from my landlady who was training to earn her Master Points. She was one tough teacher! I never gained any confidence that I could be any good at the game. In fact, I came away from her house certain that I was not only mentally deficient - I was hopeless! Fast forward to my first and last bridge party in Santa Fe that beautiful fall of 1967!

The wives of the teachers at the high school and their friends held a monthly bridge party.  One of the ladies drove me to a house on Alamo Drive.  There were four tables set up in the den. I heard chatter and loud laughter even before we reached the door.  We walked in -  the noise stopped - an ominous silence. The ladies looked sharply at the new "woman" in town!  Immediately it was obvious that rumors of our hasty departure from Chicago preceded me.  Santa Fe was a small town and any attempt at privacy was futile.  It was rumored that my husband had gotten one of his students pregnant and she just happened to be our babysitter!  Her father, a tough Italian bartender in East Chicago, ran him out of town with the promise to shoot him if he ever returned!  My secret was a secret no more!  There...it was out in the open and I had to learn to live with it - no more pretense...reality was painful.

The hostess introduced me around the room.  It felt important to forewarn all who would listen that I lacked any bridge playing skills. I wanted to prepare my partner to lose badly!   Before we sat down at our tables, I met a lovely woman named Jane Petchesky and thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.  She must have sensed my discomfort and stayed close the rest of the afternoon.  Jane heard I liked to paint. She enjoyed painting and wondered if I would like to go with her to paint outdoors at one of her favorite spots - a little village named Cundiyo.  Immediately I sensed that I had met a kindred spirit and something very special had just happened!

To make a long story short -  all my apologies for being a bad player went for naught when I won the door prize - just another Chicago card shark!  Strangely I was never asked to play bridge with the ladies again!   Something was lost but something life changing had happened that day.  There are no accidents!

DANCING IN THE STREET

The summer of 1967 was also a time of some monumental change in northern New Mexico.  Four weeks into the season on 27 July Santa Fe Opera house caught fire - plans to rebuild started immediately and today's outdoor theater is built on those foundations from 1967. In a battle to reclaim the land granted under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Reies Lopez Tijerina stormed the Tierra Amarilla Courthouse  to free some of his compadres who were held in the jail.  This generated national attention and resulted in the largest manhunt in New Mexico history!  Their motto was "Tierra o Muerte" - land or death.  This dominated every evening news broadcast.  

My little Polish grandmother back in Chicago voiced her concerns.  We were going so far away and I wouldn't even know the language!   I had one semester of Spanish in high school!  In the beginning I made some embarrassing cultural gaffes which can still make me uncomfortable; then I slowly realized that almost everyone in Santa Fe was related to everyone else.  It was the fear of the other that would keep me separate from my neighbors.

My husband was interviewed and was hired by the Superintendent of Schools, Calvin Capshaw.  The teachers were a tightly knit group.  Two fellows popped out of nowhere.  Richard "Tippy" Mares a realtor and Eddie Ortiz a teacher at the high school.  Tippy went on to become one of Santa Fe's largest realty company and Eddie later become Superintendent of Schools.  We were all in our late twenties and early thirties.  About three weeks after we arrived they invited us to our first Fiesta on the Plaza!

Yes, oh, yes! Music, dancing, a chance to put on a dress and patent leather high heels!  Lipstick, makeup - a new experience - I was so ready!  In the car on the way to the Plaza the two men started to tell us some of their stories of being young students  at St. Mike's High School.  They were punished for speaking Spanish and it was difficult for them....the first time I encountered stories of the cultural differences in my new town.  I learned to listen.  For a brief moment everything got really serious....but then the sounds of the mariachi music from the Plaza became louder and happier!

A veteran of Polish weddings, the Mexican music was another form of Polka.  It was the first time I felt connection to this new place! The musicians were playing in the little park area across from the Palace of the Governors.  The street was paved with asphalt.  The four of us laughed and danced all evening!  My patent leather shoes were never the same and my nylons were in shreds, but I felt joy for the first time in months!  That was my first enchanted evening in my new home!     

ALEGRE STREET 1967

How did I get here? It felt as though I had been transported to an alien planet!    It all started with a phone call from the mother of one of my husband's students which gave us no choice but to move far, far away from our little house in Homewood. He taught at a small Catholic college in East Chicago.  It was his understanding that he faced dire consequences if he decided to stay.    Frantic phone calls to our best friend, Ernie, a sculptor and high school teacher living in Santa Fe.  He presented a solution to our dilemma by offering to help us find a house and my husband a teaching job, possibly at the school where he worked. 

I had two weeks to pack up the house and all the baby things.  Still exhausted from having the twins and only rare moments of sleep, I must have been running on fumes.   So relieved to be out of the chaos in Chicago, it was about a week after we arrived in Santa Fe I really assessed my situation.  My husband had made a big mess and it was obvious I could no longer trust him.  I had three babies in diapers who needed their mother healthy and whole - I had to "buck up".  It helped that our friend found us the place on Alegre Street - right across from his little house/studio-garage. It was a great comfort to know he could be relied upon when needed. 

The house was a very old adobe - bad plumbing, floor furnaces and no washing machine.  First things first, find a diaper service! Expecting a warm climate, I was surprised that at this time of year there was a "monsoon season" with a rainstorm every afternoon like clockwork.  The rain cleared in an hour or two, but the air became very chilly, almost cold toward evening.  We ordered a cord of wood for the small fireplace in the living room. The kitchen was the size of a small closet - still managed somehow.  In spite of its age, the house felt warm and  cozy.  The babies and I were beginning to adjust. They took their naps every afternoon and soon it felt right to set up a small painting table under the window in the living room. I began to make my first New Mexico paintings - an empty-handed leap into the Unknown!  

MY OLD ARTIST

Staying with my theme of "meetings"....

Shortly before my eighth birthday I sat on the cement stoop of my step-grandmother's house on Fletcher Street in Chicago.   She was very pious and loved the saints. To please her I was drawing a picture of the Blessed Virgin with colored pencils.   When I looked up from my drawing, I saw an old man walking toward me.  He was wearing a baseball cap, carrying a green lunch bucket with a newspaper tucked under his arm.  He stopped and asked what I was doing and I showed him my drawing.  He said it was very good and asked me to stay right where I was - there was something special he wanted to give me.

Warned never to talk to strangers, I ran into the house and asked my dad if I could accept a gift from the stranger.  He knew the man and told me that he was once had been a well-known artist and his paintings were widely exhibited. Sadly he became an alcoholic and now painted lampshades at the factory around the block from my grandmother's house.

The old man returned with a battered wooden box and with some ceremony laid it down in front of me.  Opening the latch I breathed the wonderful scent of linseed oil and turpentine...the box contained all his brushes, his wooden palette and all his paints!  I sensed how precious this box was to him, but had no idea this little old man had just opened the door to my future!  A short time later my father told me that the old man had died.   It took me eight years to finally open the box and lay the still fresh colors on that palette to do my first oil painting! 

Today I am older than my benefactor was on the day he gave me his treasured wooden box. Since that time I have painted hundreds, perhaps a couple thousand canvases - an immense journey!  In less than an hour on a warm Chicago afternoon, that beautiful little man led me to my life's work.   We never met again.....