The Roots of Art in Arivaca
April 1, 2009
The Desert seems to lure artists. Back in the days before World War II when Arizona’s population was thin, its wide open spaces and lovely vistas beckoned to those who wanted to paint and draw outside all year round. When the War was over, artists began to move here and spread out across Southern Arizona. Of course the lure of the West with its ranches and cowboys was being promoted by Arizona’s tourism industry. Many of the artists of that era were featured in Arizona Highways magazine. Although Tubac is now well known as an artists colony, the Arivaca area and the Altar Valley have always attracted artists, as well.
Tucson had its Tucson Fine Arts Association, the predecessor of the Museum of Art, which sponsored shows and events and provided a strong support of art by the Tucson community. “Sis” Bradt remembered having a marvelous time going downtown to have lunch and visit galleries. Ash Alley was the center of the gallery area. In those non-competitive days, S.E. “Red” Cullen and other artists like Pete Martinez met together to paint or draw and then have a sandwich afterwards. They were cowboy artists, but it didn’t matter what style their fellow artists practiced. As Stanford Stevens said, “There are a hundred ways of painting…” Pete Martinez sometimes painted on copper, and the Altar Valley was a frequent subject.
Stanford Stevens (1897-1974), who was from Vermont, had lived and worked in Tucson throughout the forties. He and artist Garry Pierce taught classes and collaborated on a wood-covered book, Plants of Sun and Sand. A watercolorist, Stevens was never tied to one place for long. He had a degree in Fine Art from Harvard and had studied in France. His permanent collection is housed in the Wood Gallery of Montpelier, VT, but the UA Museum of Art has a substantial collection. He and his wife lived for a couple of years in Sasabe in the early fifties, and he painted landscape scenes all over the area, before moving to Mexico in his later years.
In the 40s and 50s, Sasabe was trying to be an artist’s colony. Dick Jenkins, the manager of La Osa at that time, welcomed artists and knew many of them in Tucson. He brought many of them out to decorate the Santa Elena Chapel, including Leionne Salter who designed the interior and six painted glass windows that are no longer in place.
Maynard Dixon (1875-1946) was another well-known Western artist who spent time in Sasabe in the 1940s, perhaps drawn there by the other artists. His home was in Tucson, but he loved to travel across the desert, painting and drawing inspiration from the wide-open scenery. In his collection there are several paintings of houses in Sasabe. He is represented in Tucson by the Mark Sublette-Medicine Man Gallery.
Another artist was Hurlstone Fairchild (1893-1966), a trained mining engineer, who visited my parents in the mid-50s and left an indelible impression on me—suddenly I knew real artists existed. More likely, he was talking old mines with my father. Examples of his work are in the Tucson Museum of Art. Favoring the vast sweeps of southwestern skies, which you can find in abundance in the Arizona, he illustrated a book entitled “Grand Canyon Sketches and Verse. ” He portrayed the Altar Valley in many of his landscapes.
In his book, Path to Enchantment: an Artist in the Southern Arizona Desert (1963), artist/writer William Schaldach (1896-1982) described the attraction he felt for the area. Cowboy artist Ray Strang had encouraged him to move to Arizona in the 50s. Ernest Miller, who operated the Elkhorn Ranch, found a house for Shaldach and his wife to rent in Sasabe. They settled in and William began to draw and paint the desert as he saw it, often visiting the Arivaca area and making friends here. His book is full of drawings of the area and includes descriptions of the natural history of the area, culture and a little history. Coming from Vermont, life around here seemed exotic and strange. With Baboquivari Peak in the background, he painted a little masked bob-white quail which found its way onto the frontispiece of “Birds of Arizona, ” published in by the U. of A. Press in 1964. He died in Tubac in 1982.
In the late 60s, artist Cecil Broadhurst and his wife Mary Jane came to Arivaca for the much the same reasons. Cece loved the West and the Desert. A Canadian, Cecil had studied art with two artists from the “Group of Seven,” a group of Canadian artists who practiced landscape impressionist painting. He starting painting professionally during the Depression but soon found his way into the Theater where he worked most of his life. He wrote music, acted, sang and traveled around the world with Outward Bound and Moral Rearmament, the predecessor of Up with People. But he kept painting and drawing, and when time came to retire, they found Arivaca. He wanted to be in ranching country. Early in his life he had lived on a ranch in Nevada where they were having trouble with water rights. So he wrote a musical entitled “Jotham Valley,” which played on Broadway and elsewhere, and told the story of a fight over water. Mary Jane said that everywhere they went in the world, people related to that subject.
Cecil wanted to depict the cowboy’s life and the beauty of the West. Each picture should tell a story. He had been an actor for so long that when he painted, he tried to be the person in the painting. Early in their stay in Arizona he was represented by the Rosequist Gallery in Tucson, but soon he felt that he could have his own gallery. As they say, if you build it they will come. And they did. All around him he found suitable subjects. He painted Arivaca creek, Baboquivari Peak, and activities on neighboring ranches. He depicted the cowboy of the 70s, a declining but tenacious breed of people. He said, “Some say the cowboy is a vanishing species, but in my book he’ll be around as long as the paint stays on the canvas.” Cece passed away in 1981.
Over the years, representational or realistic artists and photographers have memorialized the images of their time, providing us with a visual memory of our town, the surrounding country and people. Arivaca continues to be the home of artists of all kinds. The Caviglia-Arivaca Library holds art from a number of local artists, such as Cecil Broadhurst, Patty Lopez and Hawk Clinton, as well as C Hues, who also painted the murals at the Old School and La Gitana Bar. The Arivaca quilt and other pieces by local quilters are on the walls, as well as watercolors by former resident Jean Buchanan, and a tromp d’oeil by Green Valley artist Georgia Doubler.
The Arivaca Artist’s Co-op, across from La Gitana on Main Street, features the works of some of Arivaca’s current resident artists, who will be featured in next month’s article.
Thanks to Mary Jane Broadhurst, the Wood Gallery, Tucson Museum of Art Library, UA Art Museum Library, Sis Bradt and SE Cullen.
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