Lily Hope and the Chilkat Protector

As we are getting older, we are doing less collecting and instead donating to various institutions. Occasionally, however, we come across a work of art that we cannot pass up, assuming it is affordable.

There is a magazine devoted to Native American Art called, “First American Art” and the cover of a recent issue showed a fellow wearing a stunning face mask. Not so surprising these days when one sees masks of different types all over.

This mask, however, was really special, beautifully woven in the Chilcat tradition. I looked up the artist, Lily Hope, online and liked what I saw. Concentrating on the art from the southwest pueblos we had never collected Indian art from the Northwest Coast so I asked my wife if we should acquire a mask like this and she was equally enthusiastic. It so beautifully marks a moment in time.

I got in touch with the artist last April and told her I wanted a mask like the one on the magazine cover. She replied that she would only have a chance to make it in July. I agreed. She wanted me to sign a contract, something I had never done before for a commissioned piece. But, of course, Lily had never met us, so I read her contract and signed. In section one she describes the work:

Artwork: Chilkat Protector Mask, 2021 (“Artwork”)
Materials/Techniques: Chilkat weaving techniques using thigh-spun warp of merino wool and cedar bark, Merino weft yarns (in the original Chilkat blue), Ermine tails, Tin cones
Dimensions: approx. 7.75 in x 4. in. woven, plus 3-4 inches fringe

It arrived at the end of last month as described.

From Wikipedia: “Chilkat weaving is a traditional form of weaving practiced by Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and other Northwest Coast peoples of Alaska and British Columbia. Chilkat blankets are worn by high-ranking tribal members at civic or ceremonial occasions, including dances.” Here is Lily Hope wearing one of the traditional blankets she created so you can see how she adapted the motifs for her masks.

Lily Hope (1980-) is a Tlingit Indian of the Raven clan, born and raised in Juneau, Alaska. She learned the traditional Chilkat and Ravenstail weaving techniques from her mother and grandmother. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications and Theatre as well as a Business and Entrepreneurship Certificate from Institute of American Indian Arts. Further she wrote to me “I am two classes away from finishing a master’s in teaching, Elementary Education, but I will never finish that degree, as my life work is obviously to teach and continue weaving Chilkat and Ravenstail textiles.” She might not have a certificate, but she has so much more. Lily has the experience of many generations to pass on through the non-profit, “Spirit Uprising” she co-founded to maintain Tlingit traditions and their weaving arts.

Her work can be found in private collections and a number of museums. including, The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian and Western Art in Indianapolis, Indiana, The Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, The Museum of Nature & Man, Freiburg, Germany, The Anchorage Museum and The Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe. I had already commissioned a mask from Lily, when I saw the one she created for the exhibition “#mask: Creative Responses to the Global Pandemic” at the Museum of International Folk Art here in Santa Fe.

It was only the encouragement of several people that that lead Lily to create her first mask. In an interview with First American Art Magazine, she recounted:

“I wasn’t making it with the intention of selling it. Which is funny to think I didn’t have a buyer in mind, and since then I have woven ten of those masks. I really wasn’t looking for something else to do but it came up and there was enough interest that I was like, ‘Oh, I should probably keep doing this’”

The video link here shows more than Lily Hope’s weaving technique. As she put it, “My video artist statement kind of sums up my work philosophy.” It may seem a bit mystical to some, but it expresses the true emotions of many Native American artists I have met.

Eye to I: Self Portraits from the National Portrait Gallery

We recently went down to the Albuquerque Museum to see a show called “Eye to I: Self Portraits from the National Portrait Gallery.” The exhibition belongs to a category of “travelling show” meaning it will go to different museums on a tour which can be on the road for many years. This show’s original title was, “Eye to I: Self-Portraits from 1900 to Today” and several of the 60 works on paper from the Gallery’s permanent collection have been rotated since it began travelling around the country in 2018.

I haven’t been to that Washington D.C. museum since I was a young man. When I go to D.C. there are a whole bunch of museums I would visit before the Portrait Gallery. I had always thought of this branch of the Smithsonian as a place where you find very dark paintings of Presidents and other famous people from history, a kind of two-dimensional Madame Tussauds without the sense of humor.

We were in for a great surprise. The works in this exhibition are all self-portraits by noted artists The Smithsonian’s press release for the show suggests the explosion of selfies posted on social media is an extension of the tradition of artists’ exploration of identity through self-portraiture. When I decided to write about it, I thought it would be interesting to find photographs of the artists to compare them with the images they created of themselves.

The contemporary symbolist, Francesco Clemente’s self-portrait from 1981 is an etching called “Self-Portrait #4 ....

As you see the snake is biting its own tail, the ancient symbol of infinity, death and rebirth. Andy Warhol took a polaroid print of the artist in the same year, and you can see the same penetrating gaze.

Claes Oldenburg is clearly messing with us in his lithograph 1971 clownish self-portrait which does have references to several of his works but sure does not look like him. A photo taken in his studio by William Crutchfield shows the artist, seriously at work.

David Alfaro Siqueiros‘ selfie from 1969 is also a color lithograph. Siqueiros was part of the Mexican mural movement of the 1920’s to 40’s together with Diego Rivera. I referred to him in a previous Missive entitled “Musings on an Exhibition” in a show about Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. When you look at the photograph, you notice, though it is black and white, it is still very much the same person.

Edward J. Steichen is famous as a photographer, but he was also a painter, and this is how he shows himself in his photographic self-portrait of 1901 where he holds a brush and palette. I looked for a photo of Steichen taken by another photographer but could not find one, probably because he took so many selfies before it was fashionable. In this first of his self-portraits he even added brushstrokes and an atmospheric effect unlike later ones which became his trademarks.

My favorite self-portrait, perhaps because I am such a fan, is the one of Jacob Lawrence. He created this an ink drawing in 1993 when he was 76 years old. The image conveys the brooding character hinted at in an unattributed photo of Lawrence that I found on the web. In the drawing he used elements of abstraction to create the same kind of power as in his vibrant “Migration” Series.

The exhibition is a fascinating exploration of the different ways artists see themselves and suggests a personal lesson of how we see ourselves.

Exploiting Old Masters

I am going where angels fear to tread. I was intrigued by the headline, “Louvre Sues PornHub” as well as a similar headline about the Uffizi in Florence. The stories are about the “Classic Nudes” project on the PornHub website which features 30 works of art with verbal commentary and, in some cases, recreations of the scenes with members of a porn troupe.

You will forgive me that I have not gone on the website, but I do not wish to receive emails from them for the next 3 years. In any case, I believe our imaginations will be much more graphic than the real thing. I further fear that images of old master paintings will be deleted and that would be another level of censorship since some of those images are in the most important museums in the world. Instead, I will give the links so that with a click you can look them up online without fear. Don’t worry these are by major masters and some are considered icons of art history. Here is one of the offending images, “The Brunette Odalisque” by Francois Boucher circa 1745.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brunette_Odalisque#/media/File:Odalisque_brune_Boucher.jpeg

From Hypeallergic, the free art news site, “But PornHub’s attempt to heat up art history has not been met with universal arousal by the institutions whose prized artworks were chosen for this noble mission: the Uffizi Gallery in Florence has taken legal action against the free porn provider, claiming that the company used its images and other content without permission.” Here is the image mentioned from the Uffizi. The well-known “Birth of Venus” by Sandro Botticelli, circa 1485. 

https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/birth-of-venus

Use without permission is obviously the legal reason to back up the museums’ objection but I bet there is a subtext here that the museums feel that the artworks are being defiled by being associated with porn.

Another institution mentioned in these articles that has announced that it does not plan to join the suing institutions is the Metropolitan Museum. It has a most explicit nude by a young art student whose name you may also recognize, the Impressionist Edgar Degas with his “Male Nude” of 1856.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438857

A video ad for PornHub says “Porn cannot be considered art, but some art can be considered porn”. I am not promoting porn and not saying a lawsuit claiming use without permission is not an issue, but my question is what is the harm? The painting is owned by a public institution not a private individual and it is not for sale. In fact, in the case of the Louvre it is not even allowed to deaccession its paintings.

No one goes to a site such as PornHub unless that is what they are looking for. However, is it not a good thing if we can encourage people who a former director at Public Television used to call, “the great unwashed” to visit our museums. In the process of seeking out the nudes that might be on view they might become acquainted with what is considered great art and perhaps learn something of the history behind it.

Pens With Customer Service

As we all know the world changes and the term “New and Improved” drives me crazy because as we get older, we often crave what we had in the past, e.g. I collect fountain pens.

I have written twice before about this passion of mine. In those postings in 2014 and 2016, which you can find by going to Missives from the Art World and putting Fountain Pens in the search box, I wrote about Santa Fe’s local pen shop, called as you would expect, Santa Fe Pens. I am happy to report it survived the Pandemic and is still functioning.

As I have learned different fountain pens write differently on different kinds of paper, and different nibs help you write differently, I started to collect more and more pens! As nice as Santa Fe Pens is they have a limited selection and I wanted to learn and see more.

A friend who also collects pens suggested that I focus on one area. I love wood so I particularly enjoy wood fountain pens and found online, Lanier pens. Jim Lanier is a wood worker who loves pens. From his home workshop in Washington state, he started a company in 2005 handmaking signature pens. He has a nice choice of different woods but in the end it is the same pen with a different shell. Aside from wood he answers any enquiries personally.

Still there are so many other types of pens that I cannot resist. Several pen stores have come to me through the post or email. One which had an incredible choice of pens was very unresponsive to me and gave me a hard time, so I forgot about it. Just like a bad meal at a restaurant you won’t go back to, although the chef may have changed three times in the interim.

Another email was from a pen store in Columbia, Maryland called appropriately enough “Pen Boutique”. It is both, small in size, and 20 miles from Baltimore … a far piece to go, just to look at pens, but through the internet I learned about the company owner, Leena Shrestha-Menon. In 2004, she had the idea to start a business in a field she was passionate about. … She just loved pens and found it was easy and enjoyable to speak to people about them. She was particularly fond of fountain pens which “glide on the paper”. According to Leena opening her shop, “was not as easy as I thought. Distributors were skeptical, mall management was not swayed by beautiful pens, and financiers thought I was out of my mind.” but she persevered

Leena says, and I believe her, that Pen Boutique’s most important asset is her belief in Customer Service. Once on the mailing list you will certainly get ads telling you about the newest hot pen or ink available, but you also will often see a personal story from Leena about her kids or an illness in the family. When she wrote that she was the victim of a hate crime, she got so many responses she could not handle them all and wrote a general thank you. I have asked her some personal questions a while back like, like where she was from, and learned that she is from Nepal. This is not just a hobby, and she is a businesswoman, so her emails often end, “Keep on Writing” with a selection of pens and ink etc. In this day and age, to feel so close to a business, particularly one online, is incredible. An email that came in recently:

https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/web-view?a=MUjjBQ&c=NHGgcq&k=640549845b84bb1f60a51810fae25fc3&m=TqAQXD&r=zUThQts 

To prove again my point about Customer Service, I forgot which pens I had bought from Pen Boutique, I wrote, not having much hope of receiving an answer. But sure enough, and to my pleasant surprise, by that afternoon one of Leena’s employees sent me the list. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could have such a personal relationship with more businesses that we interact with? I believe it would make for a much more copacetic world.

In Memoriam: Richard Brockway Stolley

Richard (Dick, as he was known) Stolley died on June 16. I considered him a close friend though I never even dined with him. I am honored to say he was a loyal fan of these Missives.

Richard Stolley at Time/Life Magazine, 1972
Photo: Neal Boenzi/The New York Times

I met Dick on the board of the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe. He was a most self-effacing person and I only learned from others that he was the founding editor of ‘People Magazine’ which became one of the most successful publications in the country. According to The New York Times, it “changed the course of American publishing with its personality driven approach to Journalism I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to point out Facebook, Linked In, & Twitter are its internet age spinoffs.

Dick Stolley was with Time, Inc. for six decades . As a major writer for Life Magazine, he covered the Civil Rights movements of over a half a century ago. His greatest coup was acquiring for his magazine the Zapruder film of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK). I remember the scramble of journalists to get ahold of those frames. How was I to know that over 50 years later I would be meeting that hero of the time.

Dick Stolley looking back

In an interview in the 1970’s he said “pretty sells better than ugly, young sells better than old, movies sells better than TV, TV sells better than sports and anything sells better than politics.” Unfortunately, I fear the last is no longer true.

In 2019 I wrote a Missive about an interview I had with Dick, with other anecdotes.

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2019/06/richard-brockway-stolley.html

I have been writing these Missives for about 12 years now and, of course, I love it when people write to say they enjoyed this or that Missive but when someone of Dick’s stature with his background tells me he likes my writing, for me, it validates my efforts.

Unfortunately, in his last few years he moved to a retirement home in the Midwest, so our conversations were left to email. He replied to most of my Missives on Monday morning with just simple statements. I wrote in one Missive that my wife, an art historian, did not agree with me on a matter. His reply was, “Art in America is more powerful because experts like you and your wife do NOT agree!!!”

I told Dick once that my wife edited my blog and then I sometimes reedited it. His reply “more to the editorial point, to the rewrite belongs the victor!”

I do hope many of my readers can identify with his greatest compliment to me, “This gave me something to do and enjoy for 20 minutes, thus relieving my boredom for a change, and I am jammed with gratitude! Merci bien, Dick.”

The Kids Have Arrived

For 4 days at the end of June we had 3 children and 3 grandchildren with us: An embarrassment of riches. Unfortunately, as much as New Mexico needs it we had rain showers and storms during that time interrupting many of our activities.

What is the substitute for actually doing something? You probably guessed it … eating. I am justifying this segway in my Missives under the rubric, the Art of Food.

The first night our son, Hunter hosted an outdoor barbecue, grilling delicious hamburgers and cheeseburgers and his wife, Mallory, prepared all kinds of sides, guacamole, chips, salsa and salad. The next night we went to El Farol, a tapas restaurant. During the pandemic they built a large patio behind the old restaurant and even had a fountain set in with a crane, which our 20-month-old granddaughter adored and kept running around it.

As you probably know in Spanish cuisine tapas are small dishes, so everyone shares and passes them around. In the end it turns out that you eat a lot more food than if you had just one main plate! The good news ... it was all delicious.

I won’t do any other restaurant reviews, but we ate out for a couple of other lunches and dinners. The last night that we were all together was a bit mysterious. I was told it had to do with my Father’s Day present and that was it. All I could think was what other restaurant could we be going to and why was that a gift for me.

Again, we had rain and spent much of the day inside and during the afternoon there was much discussion of a promised delivery. The later it got the more urgent everyone felt it was, by then I realized it was dinner that was coming. When I learned delivery had been guaranteed before 7pm, I went on about how a shipment I had been told “was on the truck for delivery” and had ostensibly sat on that truck for 3 days before it arrived. Adding to the urgency was the baby’s bedtime that had to be kept in mind. Everyone got nervous enough that my wife and daughter went to the corner store and brought back three roasted chickens and a large salad. My daughter set to work on cutting it up and making a lovely platter. But the chicken dinner that was not to be. 

As soon as they finished the doorbell rang and the delivery was made at 6:30pm.

It turned out to be a Sushi dinner … I LOVE sushi. The twist was that it was”DIY”, Do it yourself sushi! In other words, the rice, seaweed wrap, and fish all came separately with some instructions and an online video, which no one watched.

This was a gift from my older son and daughter, and it came from Blue Ribbon Sushi in New York via the website Goldbelly. That is the equivalent of long distance Grubhub or Doordash. The large box that came had ice inside guaranteed to last for 48 hours or more.

The kids got started. My older son, Dan, heated fried crispy rice in a pan. Then all got together to create a sushi platter Here is my granddaughter, Lucy, preparing a spicy tuna roll and “experienced” hands of my son Dan. 

I could take it easy since it was my present! In truth, I wouldn’t have had a clue how to do it and did not realize that my kids were so expert.

 

It was an incredible feast with tuna, spicy tuna, salmon, scallops, and shrimp and . soy sauce, wasabi and ginger also included. Here is the beautiful and tasty result. 

We finished every last bit of it. What a Father’s Day present!

Inspired to be Collectors

Starting where I left off in my last Missive: “Art could never be commercially explained. Why do people fall in love with a piece of art. Unfortunately, in recent times some think of it as investment or fill in the blanks like a stamp collection, but most people still buy for the thrill of discovery and love of the work.”

Since I closed my gallery in New York in 2014 I have called myself an art consultant. Not that I am averse to my former profession and, every once in a while, might sell something! Most of the time, however, I simply encourage people to love art and collecting. This Missive is a prime example.

https://www.stiebel.com/history

I guess I should be charging for these consults but since I do not depend on them to eat, I often do it without charge. I believe the one advantage to growing old is all the experience and knowledge we have gained along the way.

Here in Santa Fe, I have a very small office in a small office building. You can imagine my surprise, or possibly not, when a very beautiful woman, a model, came in and sat down opposite me. She was just coming through Santa Fe with a group focused on its art and especially the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and the artist’s home.

She had seen my name possibly from “Missives from the Art World” or the provenance in an auction catalog and mistakenly thought I had a gallery here. I had disabused her of that thought before she arrived, but she wanted to see me anyway. She had bought some paintings in a sale from a former clients of ours, Jayne and Charles Wrightsman. Charles died some time ago but Jayne lived on to 2019 as a powerful trustee of the Metropolitan Museum. She left most of the art in their homes to the Metropolitan but some of what remained, possibly pieces that were already duplicated in the Met, went to auction.

Jayne Wrightsman
(Cecil Beaton/Condé Nast, via Getty Images)

My visitor was a new collector who wanted to learn more about Mrs. Wrightsman and the art world. She asked a very intelligent question, which few ask “Can you recommend some books from which I could learn more.” I was thrilled, here was an individual who wanted to get involved in an area that she clearly had not been able to spend much time studying being very busy with her career.

Another great experience I have had in recent months was contact with a lawyer who is in my children’s age group, and lives in Valentine, Nebraska. Was there really a town by that name? Well, it seems it is very popular around the time of a holiday by the same name as people can send cards with the Valentine post office stamp on their envelopes. My new friend had found me on the web and was interested in the same collector as the model. He turned out to be seriously interested in French 18th century decorative arts, the field in which my gallery had been preeminent. I could not believe it. He was also intrigued by many other kinds of older art, and we began corresponding about the art world. He had particularly enjoyed my missives on the clients we have had over the years. So, to make what has become a very long story short, I have a pen pal and we correspond on a regular basis about art, auction sales and other related subjects.

I am going to end with a story I recently saw online about a couple who live in another small town, Minot, North Dakota. What sparked their interest in art in the first place I have no idea but a trip to a New York art fair sold them on collecting. In my opinion they did everything right learning from the most qualified dealers in vetted art fairs and going on from there. Read their story and let me know what you think.

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-inside-collection-rob-eric-thomas-suwall?utm_source=braze

Mentorship is the most rewarding endeavor whether you give it or take it. Not sure if you would think of it In that way, but after collecting Native American art for about 30 years there is so much that I do not fully comprehend about Native American life and culture, and I am so excited to have a few Native Americans in Santa Fe who are willing to teach me as we go along.