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2017 TRADICIONES • THE TAOS NEWS

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Katharine Egli

Pot Creek ceramic artist Autumn Borts-Medlock demonstrates her technique for carving out designs.

LEYENDAS

The creative spirits of Taos

RAICES

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. As the proverbial saying goes, art often mirrors life. You could argue, however, that life here in Taos is art. For many decades artists from all walks of life, from near and far, have been inspired by and beckoned to this mountain mecca of creativity. For some artists it’s the special light

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spreading down from the turquoise sky that catches their eyes and spins the wheels of their imaginations. For others it’s the diversity in materials and artistic interests that draw them in. Spirit-moving traditions and historic structures give pause and clarity to many a painter, sculptor, songwriter, potter, metalsmith, wood carver, jeweler, actor, author ... Taos’ guiding light is as boundless as its horizon. The talented people of Taos live life lyrically, in which feelings are more powerful than

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reason. They are thirsty for the magnificent and the mysterious. They courageously strive to transform inanimate materials into lively pieces or perform on a stage or on screen to make the viewer look, feel and sometimes dance and sing. Within these pages of Artes is a taste of Northern New Mexico expression, passion and talent from the past and the present, often throwing conformity to the wind leaving us to applaud and wonder. — Scott Gerdes special sections editor

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3 Sentimental snapshots By Scott Gerdes

14 Bridging the ancient with the contemporary By Virginia Clark

SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL • HONRAR A NUESTROS HÉROES

8 Guardians of Norteño culture 18 One door, two doors, three doors, 12 blue doors Devoted to art By Virginia Clark

By Robert Cafazzo

By Scott Gerdes

Tradiciones Robin Martin owner

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Chris Baker publisher

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Staci Matlock editor

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Scott Gerdes special sections editor

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Karin Eberhardt art director

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Staff

Chris Wood advertising manager

A n d y N i c o l a i s p r o d u c t i o n m a n a g e r • Jo r d a n M i e r a c o p y e d i t o r • K a t h a r i n e E g l i p h o t o g r a p h e r • R o b e r t C a f a z z o, V i r g i n i a C l a r k

contributing writers

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Sentimental snapshots

Taos, as seen through Martin Shaffer’s camera

By Scott Gerdes

hotographs are illustrative, undeniable records of family, friends, places and events that one day become an important part of history. From the 1940s to mid-1970s, one man was busy recording weddings, taking family portraits and snapping his camera’s shutter around Taos. His name was Martin Franklin Shaffer – a name that invokes fond memories of a man described as “one of the nicest people you’d ever meet” by those who knew him. Shaffer was born in Mountainair, New Mexico, on Dec. 10, 1913, to Clem Shaffer and Lena Rivers Imboden Shaffer. He came to Taos in 1933 and 1934 as part of the University of New Mexico (UNM) summer arts program to work with the founders of the Taos

Society of Artists. In the late ‘30s, Shaffer relocated to New York “to understand the arts scene,” relayed his grandson, Aidan Shaffer. There, he had an exhibit in the Students League Gallery, after which he went to the Midwest to earn a master’s degree in fine art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He returned to Taos in 1940 and opened Shaffer Studios along Upper Ranchitos, which focused on portrait and wedding photography and ironwork. In the early 1950s, Aidan Shaffer said, his grandfather owned La Hacienda de los Martínez and ran his ironworks out of it. While the studio was Martin Shaffer’s bread and butter, for his own pleasure, he loved to stroll around the heart of town taking photographs of whatever and whoever caught his eye. Fiestas de Taos definitely got his attention,

as did the everyman on the street. Martin Shaffer died in May 1986, leaving behind a collection of large negatives and vintage images. Aidan Shaffer, while tending to his grandfather’s home that unfortunately has been damaged from vandalism, decided to tackle the task of going through what is estimated to be thousands of negatives and photos stored in about 30 boxes. He soon discovered what a monumental task he had signed himself up for. “I felt the photos needed to be archived after I started looking through them,” he said of the images that had been sitting in his mother’s house collecting dust for many years. “These are historic and valuable images.”

suggestions led him to pictorial archivist Cindy Abel Morris at the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections at UNM Libraries. Now, with the help of Abel Morris and UNM students, the collection is being painstakingly and gingerly organized and categorized for archival. Aidan Shaffer does not believe any of these photographs have ever been published before now. His plan is to digitize them and produce a coffee table book in his grandfather’s honor. The stories these black-and-white windows to the past tell could just as easily have been placed in the Leyendas and Raices sections of this publication.

Finding himself alone in new territory, Shaffer talked to some friends about what to do with the collection. Their continues on page 4

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The building of the RÃo Grande Gorge Bridge taken Feb. 26, 1965. B MARTIN F. SHAFFER/COURTESY AIDAN SHAFFER AND CENTER FOR SOUTHWEST RESEARCH Taos Society of Artists members Victor Higgins (left) and Andrew Dasburg relax with a game of chess. Date unknown. C MARTIN F. SHAFFER/COURTESY AIDAN SHAFFER AND CENTER FOR SOUTHWEST RESEARCH Unknown event at Taos Plaza from the 1940s or 1950s. D MARTIN F. SHAFFER/COURTESY AIDAN SHAFFER AND CENTER FOR SOUTHWEST RESEARCH Tio Vivo E MARTIN F. SHAFFER/COURTESY AIDAN MARTIN F. SHAFFER/COURTESY AIDAN SHAFFER AND THE CENTER FOR SOUTHWEST RESEARCH

SHAFFER AND THE CENTER FOR SOUTHWEST RESEARCH

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MARTIN F. SHAFFER/COURTESY AIDAN SHAFFER AND THE CENTER FOR SOUTHWEST RESEARCH

COURTESY AIDAN SHAFFER AND CENTER FOR SOUTHWEST RESEARCH Taos

Firemen

MARTIN F. SHAFFER/COURTESY AIDAN SHAFFER AND CENTER FOR SOUTHWEST RESEARCH

A night at the Don Fernando Tavern.

MARTIN F. SHAFFER/

D MARTIN F. SHAFFER/COURTESY AIDAN SHAFFER AND CENTER FOR SOUTHWEST RESEARCH E MARTIN F. SHAFFER/COURTESY AIDAN SHAFFER AND CENTER FOR SOUTHWEST RESEARCH

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Guardians of norteño culture Sociedad Protección Mútua de Trabajadores Unidos preserves folkloric dance, music and more Story by Virginia L. Clark • Photographs by Katharine Egli

Reuben Martinez dances the Los Poños during a class taught by the Sociedad Proteccion Mutua de Trabajadores Unidos at the Juan I. Gonzales Agricultural Center in 2015. Los Poños is a traditional Spanish dance that originated when men and women couldn't hold hands, so they employed handkerchiefs to dance with each other.

reservation of folkloric music and dance of the Southwest, particularly that of Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado, is one of the key cultural missions of Sociedad Protección Mútua de Trabajadores Unidos (Mutual Protection Society of United Workers), primarily known by its acronym, SPMDTU. “SPMDTU is said to be the oldest Hispano organization in the nation,” said SPMDTU Vice President Stephen Trujillo, of Taos, who says folkloric music and dance go hand in hand with one’s language and cultural values. Trujillo is a former Peoples Bank officer and member of the Ranchos de Taos chapter of SPMDTU, Concilio No. 18. Angelina Valdez plays violin before taking the stage at the Mariachi Spectacular in 2015.

The organization was originally formed in November 1900 to protect land grant holders from U.S. land swindlers, who by the 1890s were committed to taking every acre of land (and life and limb if necessary) that was protected by the U.S. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo for landholders born and raised in what nowadays includes Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, California, Nevada and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. Those Southwestern citizens alive in 1810 to the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 lived under three different flags in their lifetime alone – first under the Spanish flag until 1821, when Spain finally recognized Mexican independence, then under the Mexican flag until 1848 with the

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, when they came under the rule of the Stars and Stripes. The cultural mix of 500 years of Spanish and Mexican culture, plus many thousands of years of American Indian culture, are all nuanced in the music and dance of the Southwest, captured like cellular memory that comes rushing back with the opening refrains and dance steps of los viejitos – the old-timers in music, such as “La Varsoviana,” “El Vals de los Paños,” una polka, un chotis, “El Vaquero,” “La Cuna” and “El Vals de Don Gorgonio.” “El Vals de los Paños” is performed with bright handkerchiefs, ranging from bright pink to turquoise to purple. Some of the dance songs have migrated from the salons of Paris to Mexico City,

then up El Camino Real in the mid-18th and 19th centuries. They found a home in Nuevo Espagne and Nuevo Méjico before the territory finally became New Mexico. There is also the musical form known as an entriega, a sort of rite-of-passage song that is sung for special occasions. Depending on the occasion, it also takes different forms — la entriega del bautismo/baptism, la entriega de los difuntos/the deceased, la entriega de los matachines/the bullies and perhaps the best known, la entriega de los novios, the rite of passage into marriage. One of the ways the sociedad promotes this traditional dance and music of the Southwest is through grants and fundraising for “Mariachi Espectacular,” the now-famous brainchild of Nick Branchal with the able assistance of his wife and educator, Bonnie Branchal. The Branchals were honored as unsung heroes of 2003 for The Taos News special section, Tradiciones. Branchal said the music is mostly instrumental and synchronized with the dancing, like country line dances, with everybody doing the same step — that was the tradition back in the late 1800s to 1900s — preserving the colonial folkloric music of New Mexico. In 1981, then-Taos High School band

teacher Branchal told The Taos News he was desperate to pierce the indifference most students showed for their Hispanic culture — they didn’t want to listen to Spanish music or sing Spanish songs, much less even speak the Spanish language. By 1988, the Branchals and their student group were finally named Mariachi El Tigre and in 1991, mariachi became an official course offering at Taos High School – and the first in the state. With mariachi, of course, came its colonial dance correspondence. Branchal also created the program with the intent of sharing the language and music with people of different cultures. His students have studied with or performed on the same stage with professional mariachi groups, such as Mariachi Vargas, Mariachi Cobre, Los Camperos, Mariachi Tenampa and Mariachi Sol de Méjico, to name just a few. Currently run by Noberto Martínez, an original mariachi student of Branchal, the annual “Mariachi Espectacular” music and dance event incorporates the music students of violin teacher Audrey Davis, guitar teacher/adviser Nick Branchal and the dance students of instructor Dorothy Gusdorf. Davis used to play music with Jenny Vincent, the Taoseña who wrote down the

‘They developed the dance called ‘Paños,’ where there’s one male and two females, and they direct the dance with the handkerchiefs, so everybody gets a turn to dance.’

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As evidenced by this photo from the Mariachi Spectacular in 2015, young people are interested and involved in keeping music and dance traditions alive.

music that historically was transmitted orally, originally memorized note by note throughout the decades. Vincent passed last year, at age 103. Davis, who started teaching violin in Taos High School’s mariachi program in 1993, plays other music related to Hispanic cultures. Gusdorf used to teach Spanish colonial dances. She had a dance group called Fandango de Taos, showcasing the colonial dances in New Mexico and Colorado. On a CD recording made of the 2016-17 “Mariachi Espectacular,” Gusdorf shared some of the history behind the dances. The dances are simple, she said, and they “came via Mexico to New Mexico.” They have European influences from places like Germany and France. Regarding “Vals de los Paños,” the dance done with handkerchiefs, she explains that with so many men gone off to fight in the wars, there weren’t enough men to dance, so they developed the dance called “Paños,” where there’s one male and two females, and they direct the dance with the handkerchiefs, so everybody gets a turn to dance. The underlying purpose of mariachi is fostering greater understanding of Hispanic culture and the origin and impact of this engaging music – exactly one of SPMDTU’s missions. Trujillo said SPMDTU is working to keep this alive so the performances

somehow become self-sustaining. Trujillo said a lot of credit goes to The Healy Foundation, which gave two years of grants, 2015-17. Peoples Bank is to be recognized, Trujillo said, for a lot of effort in obtaining grants for restoration of the original building of SPMDTU in the town of San Luis, Colorado. But with various cutbacks, Trujillo said the very survival of mariachi at Taos High School hangs in the balance. You don’t have to ban music and dance to destroy a culture, just get people to stop doing them – to broadly paraphrase author Ray Bradbury’s famous quote saying, “Don’t burn books, just get people to stop reading.” And SPMDTU is working hard to keep people, especially young people, engaged. “People are very happy we’re doing this for the sake of not losing what we have as far as traditions,” Trujillo said.

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2017 TRADICIONES â€¢ THE TAOS NEWS

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Martin F. Shaffer/Courtesy Aidan Shaffer and Center for Southwest Research

LEYENDAS

RAICES

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HEROES

Courtesy Taos Art Museum

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Painting done at Taos Pueblo, “Juanita Lucero with her Children,” by Catharine Critcher.

Taos Society of Artists’ Catharine Critcher

DEVOTEDTO ART By Scott Gerdes

oseph Sharp, E. Irving Couse, W. Herbert Dunton, Ernest Blumenschein, O.E. Berninghaus, Bert Phillips. Anyone who knows of the founders of the famous Taos Society of Artists (TSA) has heard these names. Catharine Carter Critcher? Not a name so well known. Critcher was a portrait painter from Virginia who became the first and only woman member of the selective group of Taos masters. Born just after the Civil War in 1868 to an aristocratic family, Critcher was the youngest of five siblings. She loved climbing trees and horseback riding. She was called to the arts at a young age and was encouraged by her parents. But by the time she reached college, Critcher had rejected traditional higher education.

‘Taos is unlike any place God ever made, I believe, and therein is its charm, and no place could be more conducive to work’

“Ever since I can remember, I wanted to draw and paint,” Critcher said in a 1948 interview for the Jefferson Republican, which was provided by Taos Art Museum at Fechin House Director V. Susan Fisher. “Of course, I had the necessary education, but I was not interested in college — I just wanted to study art.” Her dogged persuasion of her parents to allow her to study in New York paid off. With their blessing, she spent a year at Cooper Union and then migrated a little south to the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. During a time in our country when men were the bread winners, had career goals, were the sole lawmakers and defined culture, while women were expected to make a home and raise children, Critcher was focused on her training in the neoclassical tradition of portraiture. The natural observer accumulated many awards along her journey. “Catharine captured an outside likeness that she used as a portal to the inside of a subject’s inner-lying nature,” expressed Fisher. “It came natural to her. It was her motivation. She was fascinated by people around her and she expressed that nonverbally through art.” At the age of 27, Critcher embarked on a professional career starting with painting portraits of prominent Virginia families. In 1904, she jumped the pond to study in France at Académie

“Of course I had very little money,” Critcher continued in the 1948 interview. “I opened a class in art, employing two Frenchmen – artists – as my assistants. They spoke very little English and I acted as their interpreter and conducted the class.” She made a living off the classes for four years during the winter months. In the summer, she conducted tours for Americans visiting Europe to supplement her income. Also during this time, Critcher was the first honor student at Académie Julian. All of her entries into the prestigious Paris Salon were accepted for exhibition, and she was elected the president of American Women Painters group in Paris. Regarding the latter, female artists felt they needed to bond, Fisher explained, “to face challenges – few women’s works were accepted into exhibitions.” Not to mention, this was the turn of the century, when men were drawing from real life in their art, like using nude models. That, however, was deemed inappropriate for women to draw, let alone be in the presence of. In Critcher’s time, artists became known by competing in international salons and in American juried academic exhibitions, of which she was routinely exhibited and honored. Even famed master Edgar Degas once said of Critcher’s work, “Who would have thought a woman could paint like that?”

Julian, taking courses from Jean-Paul Laurens and Charles Hoffbauer. This era in the beginning of World War I was important in the burgeoning art movement. It was a fruitful time for the arts in America and Europe. Critcher had the initiative and drive to make her own money and saw this movement as a good time to stick her neck out there into a sea of male artists – hoping not to get bitten. Really, she was already making a name for herself among her male peers. It was, as Fisher stated, a time of growth, maturity and confidence for Critcher. Just one year after arriving in France, she started Cours Critcher (Critcher Course) while still a student in her 30s. The reasons were to make money and help American students adjust to the requirements of study in France. Even though her father, a prominent judge, was supportive of his daughter, Critcher was determined to make it on her own.

Upon retuning to the U.S. at age 41, Critcher was still just remotely accepted. But she kept looking for work painting portraits. It was her love. All people were her muse. She painted a number of notable individuals, such as bishops, military officers and politicians, including former President Woodrow Wilson. A new love – an instant intrigue – entered her life in 1920. Members of the TSA were actively circulating exhibits around the country because it was difficult to sell their work just in Taos. The exhibits gave their art a more expansive audience and list of potential buyers. The TSA men popularized the view of the West in their paintings. “It was really a campaign to glorify the West and show it as not so scary,” Fisher said. Critcher saw the TSA art at an East Coast exhibit and was smitten by it. She traveled to Taos alone – without any outside financial backing – to see the birthplace and inspiration of the TSA for herself.

“Taos is unlike any place God ever made, I believe, and therein is its charm, and no place could be more conducive to work; there are models galore and no phones. The artists all live in these attractive, funny little adobe house away from the world, food, foes and friends,” as Fisher quoted Critcher during a Taos Art Museum presentation about the artist. In 1922 – her second summer of coming to Taos – with an introduction letter in hand written by fellow painter C. Powell Minnigerode to TSA members Victor Higgins and Walter Ufer, Critcher finally got the “in” she needed. With the facts that they became aware of Critcher’s work, gave her any advice she sought and wanted to continue on a mission of building a national audience, TSA’s Berninghaus and Phillips nominated her for membership on June 29, 1924. That same year, on July 12, 56-year-old Critcher was chosen as the 10th active member of the TSA, as recorded in the book, “The Taos Society of Artists,” edited and annotated by Robert R. White. After that, to her friend, Powell, Critcher wrote, “You will be pleased, I know, to hear that a letter just rec’d [sic] from Mr. Couse informs me that I have been unanimously elected to active membership in the Taos Society of Artists. It is nice to be the first and only woman in it. I am feeling very good about it.” In 1924, World War I was over, prohibition was the law of the land, women had gained the right to vote and the emergence of the “flapper” culture influenced young women to be more free and independent – a fuel of the so-called “sexual revolution.” While TSA meeting minutes reported a “unanimous” decision, given the sheltered and limited gender role still imposed on women, was there much debate about welcoming the first female into the inclusive group of artists? “I rather suspect it wasn’t a big controversy,” Fisher commented. “She already had a great reputation and they were looking to expand their impact.” Fisher is likely on to something. According to Dorothy Berninghaus Brandenburg – daughter of Oscar Berninghaus – the following was written for her daughter, Barbara Brenner, who was gathering information in 1970 that was used in articles about Oscar Berninghaus: “Critcher was a good friend of all of the Taos

Courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), Negative Number 020452

Catharine C. Critcher, the only woman admitted to the Taos Society of Artists, paints a portrait in Taos c. 1925-1927.

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group and in particular of my father, Oscar E. Berninghaus, one of the founders of our Taos Society of Artists. Such a lovely lady she was, quite nice looking and so very gracious. I often wonder how she got along with some of those old boys in the Society because they were pretty positive and pleased with themselves, and to ‘take in’ a woman in their group was quite a consideration. I recall Catharine as having a very deep voice, her complexion very natural, her hair graying and a bit unkempt, and her clothes were unimportant to her I am sure. Those things impressed me more at my

age than her capabilities as a painter. She was so very kind to me and liked to help in the kitchen when she came to have lunch, but I was learning at the time and preferred my own way so would send her back to my father to enjoy a before lunch cocktail.”

clientele, which were all about their vanity. In Taos, Critcher could explore the essence of a person instead of focusing on their shell. Some of the first portraits she completed in Taos were a series of Indian Chief Light Lightning.

For nearly 10 years, Critcher returned to Taos every summer from Washington, D.C., to paint portraits of Spanish and American Indian natives. This is when her style, her technique, really developed. Back in Washington, she was painting commissioned portraits of blue-blooded

“She was not moved by romanticizing the West or Indians,” Fisher explained. “She rejected all of that. She wanted to understand Pueblo people because they were so foreign to her and she was attracted to that.” The TSA disbanded in 1927. Critcher

remained successful throughout her later years, but according to Fisher, she outlived her money and died in 1964 at age 95 in a Virginia nursing home. She taught art until age 72. She never married, never had children. Instead, Critcher bucked the traditional norm – broke the mold of what it meant to be a successful woman – and devoted her life to her art. Critcher’s portraits are hard to find in collections. However, her portrait titled “The Hunter” has a permanent home at the Taos Art Museum at Fechin House.

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Bridging the ancient

Autumn Borts-Medlock holds one of her ceramic pieces outside her Pot Creek home in August.

Pot Creek ceramic artist Autumn Borts-Medlock demonstrates her technique for carving out designs.

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with the contemporary Autumn Borts-Medlock’s Native Southwest pottery Story by Virginia L. Clark • Photographs by Katharine Egli

utumn Borts-Medlock’s signature design in pottery shouts out among all other Native American potters’ designs. Her curvilinear, art deco style is as unmistakable as a thumbprint whorl.

grandmother’s Indian name, “Blue Rain.”

Granted, her Santa Clara Pueblo designcarving technique is a heartbeat away from her sister, Tammy Garcia’s, technique (Garcia is formerly of Blue Rain GalleryTaos fame and now in Santa Fe).

“I’m inspired by everything,” she says, “tapestry from other countries, Greek pots – I love the handles – art deco, pots from archaeological dig sites, the corner edge of a tattoo.” All are included in her particular designs.

In fact, her famous forebears, including her mother, Linda Cain; grandmother, Mary Cain; great-grandmother, Christina Naranjo; and great-great grandmother, Sara Fina Tafoya, have established a family tradition of great Santa Clara potters who have won accolades for generations. Not everyone knows it, Borts-Medlock said, but Blue Rain Gallery was named after her

But on top of the traditional Native processing, coiling and incising of design into clay, it is the style and cockiness of Borts-Medlock’s sensibility that is remarkable and stunning.

“Having grown up in two very different worlds, with one foot in modern California and another in Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, I draw from two distinct cultures for my inspiration,” she adds. Born in Southern California, her mother moved her two daughters back to Santa Clara Pueblo when Autumn Borts-Medlock

average, between six and 12 pots per year.

was 4 and her sister age 3. Borts-Medlock was introduced to pottery at 5 years old by her mother and grandmother. By age 13, she embarked on her own artistic adventures in clay, incorporating art deco and commercial art influences from summers living in Los Angeles amid surfers, Hollywood, Disneyland and Walt Disney Productions in the San Fernando Valley, and spending the other nine months a year with her mother, among the Tewa tribe of Santa Clara Pueblo.

Every couple of years or so, she goes with tribal members to collect the clay and volcanic ash needed for the Santa Clara clay recipe. After digging, the clay is cured, or dried, for three to four months and then screened of debris – pieces of roots, pebbles, insect wings or other impedimenta. Once the ash is secured, she wears a mask to protect her from silicosis, a serious lung disease caused by inhalation of the silica released while sifting it of impurities.

Despite her contemporary blending of traditional and contemporary styles, Borts-Medlock digs and makes her clay as Pueblo potters have done for centuries. And it is a feat to be appreciated – no bopping downtown to the crafts store for 100 pounds of manufactured industrial clay whenever the mood or commissions strike. She finishes, on

They mix the clay and ash together and beat it to eliminate air — the direst enemy in every potter’s firing nightmares. Her shaping tools include pot sherds, Popsicle sticks, chopsticks and a surfboardcontinues on page 16

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continues from page 15

wax-spreading comb, among others.

clay just right before applying the design.

Once the clay is prepped, she makes a base using various-sized dishes lined with newsprint, placing the base in the bowl, pinching the clay coil onto the base and building the sides of the pottery she is creating. Sometimes it takes a month to build a large pot and about two weeks for a small, palm-size piece. Then each piece gets about an hour’s daily work on the shape, using wooden sticks and water – wetting and pressing the clay looking for bubbles, working over every square inch every day for a week or more, to get the

“A 12-inch clay parrot and the egg to go with it took two years to prepare before it was ready for the design,” she said, noting that her natural surroundings are her greatest design inspiration. “Sometimes it’s an experience while walking the dogs – the clouds or a butterfly landing on a branch with red berries,” she says of things that tell a story. Hummingbirds, dragonflies and flowers, a butterfly snapped up in the large beak of a stellar jay, a writhing cloud serpent – all can be found carved intricately onto her pots.

She’ll draw the design freehand with a pencil on a clay piece kept soft in between work sessions by wrapping it in plastic. The designs sometimes come together in a day; but then sometimes after a week’s work, she’ll look at it and decide it just doesn’t flow with the piece and start all over. Borts-Medlock carves the design using a razor craft knife, screwdrivers and even toothpicks, whatever is necessary to scoop out the clay to finesse the design. Then comes sanding – blocks and blocks of sanding – to get the textures just right. She goes over everything with a rinse

sponge and wash brush to remove the sanding lines, cleansing the backgrounds, adding slip colors and then polishing the shiny parts with a stone. She seals the pieces with oil, nowadays using light daubs of olive oil, but says they used to use pig fat. It’s allowed to dry again and stone buffed once more to smooth and sometimes round the edges. She can work anywhere from a month to a couple of years on a given piece and then it gets pit fired on Santa Clara Pueblo land, where all the work may be for naught if a stray bubble has

Autumn Borts-Medlock uses harvested clay and volcanic ash in her creations.

a handcoiling method she learned from her mother and grandmother. out designs.

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Demonstrating

Technique for carving

Autumn Borts-Medlock burnishes a ceramic piece at her Pot Creek studio in August.

F Autumn Borts-Medlock holds one of her unique ceramic pieces at her Pot Creek home.

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F remained and blows the pottery to bits. “Everything can burst in the firing. You don’t get paid till it all gets fired,” she says. “I may make thousands on one pot, but that pot may have taken years to make.” In 2014, she began casting a few clay pieces in bronze. Her limited-edition bronze pots, tiles and sculptures are each distinctly colored with patinas applied by her sculptor husband, Jeremy Medlock, making each a unique work of art. She has received numerous awards at the Heard Museum Guild Indian Market &

Fair and at the Santa Fe Indian Market. She won first place in contemporary Native pottery at the 2015 Indian Market in Santa Fe, no small feat considering the competition – hundreds of outstanding indigenous North American artists, working and pushing Native art traditions to their penultimate each year.

In addition to working alone, she occasionally includes her favorite potters – her teenage daughter, Rochelle, and mother – in collaborative pieces.

Her use of multiple-colored slips has also captured the interest of her peers and collectors. In an otherwise typical red-andtan vase, Borts-Medlock may apply up to four or five different slips, allowing her to accentuate different aspects of a design.

Borts-Medlock lives in Pot Creek, just east of Talpa, New Mexico, and she is represented by a number of galleries in the nation and the Case Trading Post at the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe. For more information, see autumnborts-medlock.com.

Besides private collectors, her work is in the permanent collections of such museums as the Denver Art Museum and the Heard Museum.

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ONE DOOR,TWO DOORS, THREE DOORS, BLUE DOORS A

By Robert Cafazzo

here is a long standing tradition in Taos of painting a front door blue. The color blue of doors and window frames next to the soft beige and flesh shades of adobe create a unique and striking contrast. You can see blue doors everywhere in Taos, and once you notice one, you’ll notice others. More and more they begin to appear. Have there always been this many? Yes, and some of the most beautiful blue doors can be found at Taos Pueblo, but not just there, they are indeed all over Taos. Start

The blue doors of Taos come in many shades of blue. Here in New Mexico, blue indicates one of the four sacred directions of Pueblo life, the direction of the Southwest. The most popular notion is that blue doors are thought to keep evil spirits away. This has either been good advice for generations or an age old wives’ tale told over and over again. Painting your front door blue has traditionally been one of the most popular ways to keep evil spirits from your home. “Mention the blue sky, and images of calm summer afternoons and wideopen spaces come to mind … Its effect, in architectural spaces as in language, depends on its context. Placed alongside natural wood, blue will heighten the warmth of the material at the same time it provides a respite from it,” according to the interior decorator book “Color, Natural Palettes for Painted Rooms” by Kaufman, Dahl and Graeber. The color blue is associated with royalty, peace, the natural colors of a clear sky and a shimmering sea. It is also the color of the robes of the Virgin Mary. To open and walk through a blue door is to walk into the arms of the blessed virgin herself, offering tenderness, warmth and love. Which are you more drawn towards, the soft blue of the inner robes of Our Lady of Guadalupe or the warm deep blue of the robes of Our Lady of Sorrows, the choice is yours. “Blue. Shown to be the most popular color

in many studies, a blue front door signals that the homeowner views his or her home as a place of refuge — calm, serene and relaxing, the perfect retreat from an often harsh and demanding world,” said Debbie Zimmer for the Paint Quality Institute. Your own version of “Taos Blue” may be slightly different from others versions, any of the local Taos hardware stores can help you with your own preference. Start by picking up some color sample chips, walk around Taos and try matching the right sample to what you like best on the doors you see here. There’s a vast array of blue doors all over Taos, so finding exactly what you have in mind will be a worthwhile adventure. Shades of blue vary greatly; some blues are more of a turquoise color in appearance and some are a bit more green. Painting contractor John Hayes of Casa de Colores developed his own version of “Taos Blue.” “Basically, I started ‘Taos Blue’ 25 years ago. It’s simple, it’s just 'Taos Blue.' You can ask for it at Río Grande Ace Hardware or at Randall Lumber and Hardware, they have it on file. I get a lot of requests for it. It’s preferred in the landscape. It goes well with the color of natural adobe.”

sky, that’s the color you’re after. Painting your door and window frames blue keeps bugs from flying into your home. A simple logical conclusion, perhaps not as romantic as some of the other reasons given for blue doors, but it does make sense. No one wants insects flying into their homes. Perhaps Taos has too many blue doors and the color has become far too trendy. Has everyone painted their doors blue? Blue doors are even popping up all over Santa Fe. Is it possible that we may see fewer doors painted blue here in Taos? Will Taos blue doors go the way of the howling coyote and Kokopelli imagery and become unwanted and even shunned? Instead, let’s hope the phrase “Taos blue door” will remain in the vernacular, and that blue doors themselves will be forever popular with homeowners everywhere.

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A calming, mythical Taos tradition

to look, take notice as you walk around Taos and explore. As Georgia O’Keeffe reminded us, “Take time to look.”

The tradition of blue doors may have come with the Spanish Moors from the Old World. In northern Africa, Spain, Portugal and along the Mediterranean coast, blue doors are prevalent. In those regions, blue is thought to be a deterrent and repellent to insects. The reasoning for this is clear enough, insects do not fly into the apex of a blue sky. The particular shade of blue you’re looking for in this case is the color of the sky. Look straight up at a blue cloudless

A Back door of Tres Estrellas Design Robert Cafazzo B Doors at The Harwood Museum of Art Robert Cafazzo C Doors and shutter at Ranchos Plaza Scott Gerdes D Kit Carson Home and Museum Door Robert Cafazzo E Our Lady of Guadalupe Church door Robert Cafazzo

F Rustic turquoise gates Robert Cafazzo G Door with objects at Casas de Melissa Robert Cafazzo H Door of Taos Blue Gallery Robert Cafazzo I Taos Pueblo Scott Gerdes J Back door at the Couse Foundation Robert Cafazzo

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