Ernie’s First Selfie
by Ernie Bulow
the images was 1936, but some are earlier. The little paintings were not signed, but someone had penciled first names on the back of some of them. Sam Poblano was the only one I was fairly sure of. I had interviewed Sam several times when I was writing about him for the 2012 Ceremonial Magazine so I took the album to him. It was a happy surprise for him to see the drawings again after so many years. He credited them to the encouragement of Clara Gonzales. “She kept them secret from the medicine chiefs,” he told me. He spent time in her room after school doing chores. Clara Gonzales came from the Bayou country of Louisiana. She started teaching at the Zuni Day School in 1923 and by 1930 she was principal. When Zuni schools broke from the BIA in 1955, she was made Area Superintendent. When the Secretary of Interior gave her an important award in 1961, he said DIXON SHEBALA PAINTING she was the first woman ever employed by the Interior SHOWING SOPHISTICATED Department. TECHNIQUE The young artists identified by Sam Poblano included several veterans of WWII, including Dewey Leekela and Dempsey Chopito, who was held as a prisoner of war. Sam claimed Dempsey helped him with his moonshine business. There was Billy Weahkee, Johnny Cheama, Hilda Halale and Martha Chavez, who was raised by Teddy Weahkee. There is ELEAN LESSARLEY SPIDER WOMAN DRAWING also a mysterious Roland we couldn’t identify. The next Zuni artist who achieved fame outside the FROM SCHOOL ARTS MAGAZINE 1935 village seems to be Dixon Shebala. He was the son of the famous potter Josephine Nahohai. When she Some Zunis remember Charlie Chuyate as a very large was married to Jerry Shebola, she was making prizeman whose presence dominated a group. They say he winning jewelry. always dressed like a working cowboy, which Dixon got his art education at the Santa Fe Indian he was. Apparently he had large herds of cattle and sheep, School, taking his style from the representational figures though some say they all belonged to others and he just recognized as “Indian” art, but working his way to A DIXON SHEBALA PLATE WITH took care of them. He is only incidentally the father of wonderfully abstract oils. Though he switched to A HILILI DANCER, ONE OF the master painter Alex Seowtewa. jewelry for his bread and butter income, he continued SEVERAL IN A SERIES Charlie was also a largely undocumented artist, to paint, work in ceramics and be one of those multiand though the family has some of his pieces, they talented Zunis who amaze the outside world. didn’t want to share them. Charlie’s family started the His plates were commissioned and produced by Buffalo as it appears in dances today, and the katsina Aggie Ortega (of the vast and influential Ortega (koko in Zuni) dates back to the days when Zunis family, going back to the 1600s), who had a trading still traveled to the plains to hunt buffalo. It is one of post at Lupton, N.M. Zunis nicknamed him several family owned kokos that does not belong to a “Sitting Bull”. He was a brother of Gilbert and particular kiva. Armond. There are paintings by Paul Edaakie, the middle name Dixon was one of the multi-talented Zunis who of Anthony Edaakie, who continued to paint. In the did it all; probably best known for his fabulous early group there is a tantalizing name. Dorothy Dunn inlay figures. The late Preston Mahke lived with says of Eleen Lesarlley that her paintings of Zuni women Dixon for a time and told me what a generous man were, “done in a static, decorative style with intricate he was. He would give help and advice to young detail.” I had already seen the name in a 1935 issue of jewelers, and sometimes designs. Preston did a School Arts Magazine. The black and white picture figure of a horse head in a horseshoe that Dixon shows “Spider Woman” at a loom. The figure looks designed for him. like a female ogre katsina. In the same issue she draws Dixon died young and under mysterious the Hero Twins, labeled the “Twin Great Warriors”. I circumstances when he wandered away from the assumed the drawings were done in a school away from hospital. Zuni, but where she was is not identified. A few years ago a binder of children’s drawings came into my hands. The person who found the album thought it was from the Santa Fe school, but I could see - ernie@buffalomedicine.com A DIXON SHEBALA PAINTING IN that the subject matter was all Zuni. The only date on THE TRADITIONAL STYLE January 2017
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