Painting Taos; 23; Taos 23

We talked about Spud, isn't it? There was indirectly, there was a man that had enormous influence in Taos, also associated with Mabel, but the name of Spud Johnson. He was a lover of Witter Bitter, a famous poet who happened to be headquartered in Santa Fe, and he left this city, a love affair to go join Mabel and become her editor of her works. He believed in Mabel's dream of Taos. He was a very frail, delicate, highly intellectual, tremendous cutting sense of humor, and I don't know how I got along with him and my wife too. We just always liked him and he liked us in some strange way, but all of his books that Mabel did, he edited and worked on it, and he became an enormous influence on Mabel.

She depended on him, and a lot of the things that happened in Taos, he was responsible for. He took a repage in the Taos paper that actually became nationally famous, called The Horse Lie, and it was, he was merciless in his critique of books and art, and yet at the same time, if he liked it, he would give it a hell of a boost, and I always admired him tremendously. He had a self-containment about him, that I admired, and of course he was writing. I waited every week, everybody did, and anticipated who he was going to sting this week, and the first book I ever published wasn't much of a book. He gave me a pretty darn good review, and I couldn't believe it.

I thought that was the amazing occurrence, but Spud Johnson is one of the great influences of Taos. Very little known. Now, I think more research and attention should be paid to him. Some lady did do a book on him, but it wasn't widely circulated, and it's a good little book I have in here, and there was writer Frank Waters, who was one time the editor for about a year or so of the Taos news, and it did have international circulation, not big, but the people who subscribed to it all over the world are interested in Taos, and Frank was a really, really good per-taos. He was very close to Tony, and he was husband, and they were the best of friends. They made trips together in New York and various places, and the man who killed a deer was one of the finest literary works ever come out of Taos, or any where else, and Taos

didn't, and still adore it. Excuse me, you can cut me out now, but anyway, I talked for a long time, but commercial artists would come and say, and writers, and then they'd go on, but they, some were influential, or Frank O'Rourke, they'd call him a Western writer, but he was like me, he wrote everything in the world, and Frederick Brown became the first real famous mystery writer out of New Mexico, there in Taos, and long before Hillamon and all these other people, it became known around the world, and there were other writers that I can't remember, but Spud Johnson is indelible in my mind, he influenced tremendous, and he had an honesty about him that I think

Taos needed, that in its center, he kind of held it all together, and people could laugh at his barbs, they could laugh at them, you know, they kind of liked to be Stungbowl, but he didn't such a wonderfully stylish way, he went, he went, he went for the New Yorker sum and other magazines around the literary type magazines around the country, but if he'd have been with the New Yorker for his example, his whole career, he'd have been world famous instead of that, he'd gave it all to Little Taos and made books in her books and her works, and Frank Waters launched a great Indian print movement that Woody Crumbo started, he'd have what he'd launched, he did a whole page on Woody, and some newspaper writer took that page and sent it out to newspapers all over America, and it became the biggest

publishing thing it's ever come out of Taos, and it's almost forgotten of what a great, great help it was to the Indian art of America and around the world, it was advertised for the first time, and people ridiculed him because they were press reproductions, but they were very beautifully done, and now they don't, this biography comes out for Oklahoma University press in October this year, where they realize what a great entrance he was, and Frank Waters, and directly launching this huge career, these prints are thousands of thousands of them all over America, and people love him, he invented the blue deer, a lot of people think credit for him, he was the first one to ever really do it and put it out, the blue

horse, the spirit horse, spirit deer, so there's another element, the writers you see, that helped the artist, and they were all in it together, and one wonderful, actually unknown conclusion, they weren't aware of what they were doing. And what's the legacy of all those folks coming together today? What do you think their legacy is that still kind of lives on? Well, you're going to have to ask me again. What do you think the legacy of all of those artists in that time period who are there all together? What do you think their legacy is today that kind of continues on? How do we feel the reverberations of their time there? Well, I subscribed to Art Magazine, and I love Art, and I've ever formed the world, and I love Art from all over the world, and today when they have auctions, Art auctions,

he doesn't matter where it is, there's a talent art task artist, and they're known as the task artist, and so it continues on, their influence is eternal, the reproductions that are done, the books that are done that are included in, and in lunch and all the powders, certain powders, all those people who made the book there, their influences around the work. Well, I can't think of the name of that great director, Sikaskier, or something like that. You still hear his works being played, so it's just going to go greater and expand more. It's not going to be bad. In this effect they had on the world of art, it's just still expanding, still growing, still influencing, giving people deep pleasure and insight into wondrous, wonderful, mysterious

and spiritual world. It was tough. That's great. Can I just ask for one other thing? You want to cut it off? Let me think about that. Sure, sure, sure. I think I'll tell it. Well, I can remember one little experience, part of the grand, the grand experience you had at the Sacred Cave in the mountains above the Pierblo. You want to tell you that now? Tell me when you're ready. Okay? Well, you know Philip's told me a story, including my book, we fell for any of my finest book and I put more into it, so I didn't include anything lightly in that book, but a story

he told me, I'll just, just a part of it, the Indian's house Indians had a Sacred Cave and they had an annual ceremony at this cave, a great spiritual, and they had visions and talked to the spirit world up there, and so they offered Philips an opportunity to accompany them to this cave, and he was just stunned and honored, and he went. So that, one of the little things there was so many had taken another whole book just for that. But one of the things that stunned Philips, it would be called supernatural or whatever fantasy by some people, but Philips was a very real, strong realist, and they were chanting around the fire and calling up the great spirits to give them direction for the rest of the

year. In front of this cave and this fire, you can just picture it as a painting in itself, and Birk told me almost in all, he just got to where he almost whispered, it was a longer story than this, but this is one part, a rabbit just suddenly came out of the cave and just jumped over the fire and just stopped there and right in front of Birk, and he didn't know, you can just imagine setting the fire away in those mountains, those high they tempered mountains in that cave and the chance in the fire, and this rabbit jumped there in front of him, he looks at him, and then all of a sudden it jumped back and went in the cave and vanished, but he never forgot that, that rabbit. I mean, there's no way a rabbit's going to do such a thing in reality, it had to be

a spiritual world or maybe they'd created illusions or whatever, but it was so real to him that among the many other things that he experienced on that venture, he never got over it, and I used it, he fictionalized it in my book, and of course he was already gold and I wrote that here in Albuquerque long after I left Tiles, but it didn't, it just amused me in the sense that anybody would doubt it, you know, it didn't doubt anything about that, because it was all very natural to me, my grandmother had told me a lot of experiences when I was just a little kid, stayed with her, so quite often, one time I was expelled from school and had to go stay with her for a year, and she told me things like that, so it was just a very natural thing for me to hear, that I realized I couldn't run around telling

it, and I never told anybody about it, except my wife, and she just understood it immediately, and then later I thought, my God, there's a place in this book, I'm including the Tiles Indians, and I have to recall part of that, and it was my way of sort of honoring old Phillips, it was my hero, they went up there instead, well he was my hero too, I'm sorry, that's really, I can't read it, no that was great, that was a great story, but I think it kind of fits in nicely with a lot of the description I've been getting about him from people as far as, like you said, really a sincere relationship with the Indians from the pueblo, that they welcomed him in a real intimate way. One of my best friends is still alive, they're totally right, did you get to see him? We didn't, I tried to arrange it, but the

morning didn't work out, he wasn't feeling really really well, but he's even older than I am, he had the Prisoner Award and all the things he said, but he's a great man, and a wonderful storyteller, but you have to get very close to him before you share this kind of thing with you, but I got close to him when I was a very young man because of the fact my mentor, wife talked there, they scooted, and he lived there, so I got to go out all the time, he spent a lot of time out there, and I got a queen with him. Besides the great medicine man that they had, there's not many left, the traditions are not handed down, but Joe Bernal was a great medicine man, he had tremendous influence on Towson directly and Maverick and me, and I wasn't as truly miraculous as he did, but it seems that the ability, his son was supposed

to take it on Paul Bernal and continue a thousand years of this, and he didn't, he finished early life fighting for the Blue Lake, and he won, and all people in the world, Richard Nixon signed it, it was responsible for them, they were getting it, but it seemed to die out right there, they still have medicine men there for women, all the powerful medicine women, and that seems to be neglected like women were, even Indian women had the same thing, but I've been around different parts of the world, country, American Indians, and I've never found any that touched him, even close, it seems like it's modernity, it's sort of died out, it's a wonderful gift that

they had, and he had a tremendous influence on everybody, Joe Bernal, but he had to, you found him, you know, you just found him, nobody was running around telling, he didn't have word of mouth been, actually, but he helped me a lot of ways, and I watched him perform, what would be called medical miracles, one of my daughters, anyway, I guess we're done, huh? Yeah, that was, that was great, thank you so much for taking the time today. Oh, it's a really good connoisseur, he nailed me for things that I had promised John Donne, I wouldn't tell him, as long as any of his family was around, and I don't think he didn't have left, it was one daughter three or four years ago, she didn't care,

so I felt free to tell him, so I told him things about John Donne, and he's got him for his, but nobody knows, actual facts, it's really historical, and so I'm kind of shocking in a way, and certainly revelatory. I like his title, I think he's calling it, uh, I don't know if you you might bring me up to date, every now and then I'll write him about once a year and say, I want to know when you're going to publish your John Donne book, and you never answers me, if I mention the John Donne book, he won't answer me, I write him a letter about anything else you'll answer me. I have about three of those in me, so... Okay, you know what? I think you should come shoot it, then.