Before
I wrote my first post in August 2010, Karen Young, the owners of the Mabel
Dodge Luhan House and I agreed that in addition to Remarkable Women celebrity
we would like to feature women from everyday life—women that we wouldn’t know
about who played an important role within the fabric of the Taos community.
What better way, I thought, than through the eyes of children. Months later an
amazing collaboration began which resulted 43 portraits by 5th graders
from Enos Garcia Elementary School. The portrait of Mabel Dodge below is one of
them.
For various reasons, I chose 5th grade, 7th
grade and high school students as my target groups. I soon learned that Tanya Ocañas Vigil and her husband Michael had
curated art shows created by pupils from municipal and private elementary
schools and home-school children for the past fifteen years. I knew Tanya as
the capitana or leader of Izcalli In Nanantzin Danza Azteca, her group
of dancers based in Taos. I would discover that she also curated art shows for
professional artists with her husband at their Gallery Elena.
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| Photo by Rick Romancito* |
What I didn’t know was that Tanya had created the
Visiting Artists Program for elementary grades in the Taos Municipal Schools. She
hired local professionals to teach their area of expertise. This not only
allowed school children to have contact with working artists and experience
various artistic media (including jewelry, puppet making, Spanish Colonial colcha embroidery, Taos Pueblo micaceous
clay pottery, fused glass, flamenco dancing and writing in addition to the more
traditional drawing and painting), the program also created a kind of
apprenticeship. The quality of work inspired the Millicent Rogers Museum to
showcase the creative talents of elementary school-age children starting in
2006.
When we met last spring to explore the possibilities of
having 5th graders portray the remarkable women in their lives,
Tanya invited one of her visiting artists, artist Amy Cordova, to brainstorm
with us. Amy had dreamed of becoming a book illustrator, a career that opened
up after two decades of exhibiting her highly regarded paintings in galleries
and museums. She now has over fifteen children’s books in print. Besides
creating two of her own, she has illustrated stories for other writers
including Rudolfo Anaya and Enrique Madrid, two of New Mexico’s most celebrated
authors and folklorists.
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| Photo by Patti Traynor** |
Assigned to two 5th grade classes, Amy
prepared them to paint portraits of and write about remarkable women in their
lives. To introduce the Remarkable Women of Taos project, Amy quoted me: “Women
have long been known as the backbone of the community. The REMARKABLE WOMEN OF
TAOS PROJECT is meant to celebrate and recognize outstanding women – past and
present- in our community who are worthy of notice.” Amy then gave the children
the overall goal of their artistic endeavor:
Taos has a history of many creative, remarkable women
from all cultural backgrounds, who have stood out in the history of our
community. Today, there are many wonderful women who continue to make Taos a
special place. Do you know a special woman who helps make Taos a special place?
She could be a member of your own family, a neighbor, a friend, teacher, or
someone you may have heard about who lives in or near Taos. Is there a famous
woman of Taos from our past who seems “remarkable” to you?
Additionally Amy defined remarkable and provided the 5thgraders with examples of some of the community’s well-known women including
Mabel Dodge Luhan, Millicent Rogers,Pop Chalee, Eva Mirabal, Josefa JaramilloCarson, and Corina Santistevan. From there each of the two classes set to work on their
remarkable women.
Amy’s own painting and skill as a portraitist helped
guide the children. She emailed me when they started work in January. A month
later she showed me four portraits that the youngsters had created. Not only
had they painted vibrant, adept likenesses of women important to them, the
students had penned several lines, incorporating another notion Amy introduced:
the idea of simile and metaphor. The resulting
work became a kind of painting-poem. I’ve included six examples for you to
enjoy.
Amy arranged the portraits by class and affixed them to a
long, black banner. They became part of the Visiting Artists Program’s “Anything
is Possible” exhibition at the Millicent Rogers which opened this past April.
On Saturday May 12th, photo reproductions of
Priscilla Romo’s and Darlene Archuleta’s 5th grade classes were
featured at the Stables Gallery as part of ¡CELEBRANDO! which celebrated the
arts of Taos elementary and secondary schools and women in Arts Education.
Among the Remarkable Women honored last Saturday were Visiting
Artist Amy Cordova and the two 5th grade teachers she worked with:
Darlene Archuleta and Priscilla Romo.
The Stables Gallery show ended on Monday, May 14th,
just in time to for the teachers to give their 5th graders their
Remarkable Women portraits to take home for the summer. Now only memories and a
few photographs remain.
And a few thank you notes. One of them I’ll share with
you: my gratitude to Tanya Vigil and Amy Cordova for making my “Remarkable Women
Through Our Children’s Eyes” dream come true. They and the women art educators
we honored are working hard to build future generations of artists. Through
them the Taos art colony that Mabel wrote about in her book, Taos and Its
Artists (1947), will continue to thrive.
Adios
for now,
Liz
*Photo of Tanya Vigil by Rick Romancito from
an article that appeared in the Taos News in October 2011. © 2011 The Taos News and Rick
Romancito
*Photo of Amy Cordova by
Pattie Traynor
