New Board Member 

Marla Ziegler 

MEMBERS SPEAK

Why I Am a Member of CASETA 

Stan Price, Houston 

My grandmother, Will-Amelia Sterns Price, was a Texas artist born in Denison in 1907.  As a child I was surrounded by her art, but took it for granted until I inherited a number of her works. I knew she co-founded the Beaumont Art Museum (AMSET), but didn't know much about her studies and her artist network. I knew much less about the extensive art colony that existed in Texas. I was frustrated; I wanted to learn more about her and share her talent.

I met Randy Tibbits and Tam Kiehnhoff at an art exhibit, and they suggested that I come to the CASETA symposium in Dallas last year. I did, though I expected it would be another bunch of art snobs meandering around looking at art and drinking cocktails. From the time of the opening reception, I knew I was in the company of a serious appreciation group that was actually sharing information, insight, and expertise. The symposium sessions not only brought elementary enlightenment about the extensive Texas art scene, but intricacies of why this State's talent is equal to the best in the nation. I was hooked and even bought my first early Texas work (besides my grandmother's), a David Brownlow, at the art fair. With the continuing guidance of CASETA and its members, my studies and collecting efforts now have a focused objective.

Central Texas

GALLERY EXHIBITIONS

August 26 - September 17, 2011

Opening Reception: Saturday, August 27, 2011, 5-8pm

Gallery Talk: Saturday, September 10, 2011, 2-4pm

OTHER EVENTS

North Texas

FEATURE

Friends and Family: An Early Texas Art Story

by: Robert Alan Summers

The 2011 CASETA Symposium in Dallas reminded me of the reasons that I still enjoy collecting Early Texas Art after almost 25 years: scholarship, passion, humor, and generosity.  I always enjoy making new Early Texas Art friends as well as seeing old ones, like my friend Bill Cheek.  Mark Kever's thoughtful introduction of Bill for the collectors' panel told how Bill graciously opened his collection and generously offered his help to Mark when he was just getting started as a collector.  Bill has done this for many of us over the years.  Mark's experience is one of the many stories of Bill's generosity.  And I have one of my own.

About the time that Bill Cheek and Bill Reaves asked me to become a member of the founding CASETA Board, I mentioned that I had a family member who was pictured in a WPA fresco mural in San Antonio.  Painted by Howard Cook from 1936 to 1939, "San Antonio's Importance in Texas History" is located in the U.S. Postal Office and Federal Courthouse on Houston Street.

Howard Cook, Texas 12" x 14" Charcoal Pencil & Watercolor on Paper, 1935

A short time later, I was reminded of this conversation with Bill when an envelope arrived in the mail.  To my surprise and delight, Bill had sent me a give of an original preparatory work for the mural - what the artist called a "portrait drawing" - for the very panel fo the mural that includes my great grandfater and namesake James Robert Bell.  Bill's generous gift inspired me to learn more about the mural, the artist, and ultimately my own family's history in Texas.

It took Cook some two-and-one half years to complete the mural which was one of the largest murals painted by a single person for a New Deal agency (Goldfarb).  The mural won the national mural competition sponsored by the Section of Fine Arts in 1939, and represents a selection of significant historical events in Texas history from the entrada of the first explorers along the Rio Grande - the Spanish Conquistadors - to Texas' dramatic struggle to independence through its current history (Parisi, 2004).  After the mural's completion, Cook (1942) stated that he "desired to express in terms of color as well as design the exciteemnt and sturdiness of exploration and pioneering, the drama and tragedy in the struggle for political freedom, the final opening up of a full, settled life provided by the industry of man and fed by the wealth of natural resources." (p.8)

Hipolito F. Garcia Federal Building & U.S. Courthouse San Antonio, Texas

The new federal building and Cook's mural were both products of the Federal Public Works programs enacted to relieve widespread unemployment during the Great Depression of the 1930s.  The building's construction accomplished several goals: generating employment, housing all federal agencies in a single building, and streamlining San Antonio's quickly expanding postal needs.  Today the grand building functions as the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Texas, and Howard Cook's mural is regarded as one of the showpieces of the federal mural program (GSA).

Howard Cook was born on July 16, 1901, in Springfield, Massachusetts.  In high school he received a $500 art scholarship which he used to attend the Arts Students League for two years.  Like many young men at the time, Cook was a traveler.  For five years, beginning in 1922, Cook financed traveled through Europe, North Africa, Turkey, the Orient and Central America by publishing his sketches and doing illustration art for The Forum, Survey Graphic and The Century magazines (Goldfarb).  But a train ride from the port in San Francisco back East trhough the Southwest exposed Cook to a region of the United States with which much of his life's work would be associated.

Cook returned to the Southwest in 1926, first to Santa Fe and then on to Taos.  In 1928 he and his artist wife, Barbara Latham, aided by a Guggenheim travel grant, wen tot Taxco, Mexico, where Cook painted his first mural in fresco on the wall of the Hotel Taxqueno.  After returning to the United States, he painted a two-panel fresco for the library of the federal courthouse in his home town of Springfield, Massachusetts under the Public Works Art Program.  This work was completed in early 1934, just months before he left to return to the South on a second Guggenheim travel grant (Goldfarb).

Cook explained in his application for the continuation grant that his curiosity caused him to seek out the character and significance of humble working people in the southern states - Virginia and Alabama African American rituals, the poor whites and remote moutain people, steel workers and, in Texas, the cattlemen.  When he arrived in Texas, Cook sought out J. Frank Dobie, Texas' dominant literary and cultural voice in the first half of the 20th century.  A long-time professor at the University of Texas, Dobie brought regionalism into the realm of academia by championing "southwestern studies."  Cook's ongoing work gave the two a strong connection.  To support Cook's work, Dobie interested officials at the University of Texas in the idea of having Cook do a mural for the university, but the project was never approved (Golfarb).  Dobe then arranged for Cook to visit South Texas to see the cattle business.  During that trip in 1935, Cook created the mural study Texas - Bill Cheek's generous gift.  I would only later learn that the work was done while the artist was visiting my maternal family's ranch, "La Mota", in LaSalle County.

Dobie had longstanding connections to South Texas, to LaSalle County and to "La Mota" ranch, founded in 1876.  Since he was a teenager, Dobie had visited his uncle Jim Dobie at this Olmos Ranch.  During these early visits Dobie met and befriended James Robert Bell, my great grandfather, who is pictured in the mural.  Dobie and "Jim" Bell becfame friends and visited over the years.  Dobie even once accompanied Jim Bell when he was driving wild horses from the "La Mota" Ranch to Cuero (Sturken, 1989).

Howard Cook, Texas Cattlemen Oil on Canvas, 1937

Back in New York in the winter of 1937, Cook worked on his designs for the San Antonio mural competition, shutting himself up in a studio where he "lived only in the remembrance of South Texas" (Cook, 1942).  The formal structure of the cattlemen from the study - taking a break under the limited shade of the single, stylized mesquite tree - led to an oil portrait painting that Cook submitted for the San Antonio mural commission.  This painting,

Texas Cattlemen,

1937, still remains over the fireplace in the old "La Mota" Ranch house.  Except for the more colorful palate, the final mural is remarkably identical to the painting.  Jim Bell's only complaint about the finished mural was that Cook made the cattle, which were longhorns and Mexican cross-breeds, look like show cows. (Bell Family Correspondence)

I would not have had the opportunity to learn this story of my personal connection to Early Texas Art without the generosity of Bill Cheek.  As CASETA continues to evolve, and no matter what its form or function, we "enthusiasts" need to remember to focus on scholarship, passion, humor and generosity (or whatever your personal list is) and most of all to have fun.

Howard Cook, Cattle Ranch, 1939 Panel from San Antonio's Importance in Texas History, fresco, 6' x 93' Hipolito F. Garcia Federal Building & U.S. Courthouse

Howard Cook, Cattle Ranch, 1939 Mural Panel Detail

Sources:

Bell Family Correspondence.

Cook, H. (January, 1942). The road from prints to frescoes, Magazine of Art, 4, 8.

Goldfarb, S. howard Cook: Drawings of Alabama. Retrieved from http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/7aa/7aa116.htm

Parisi, P. (2004).  The Texas post office murals: Art for the people. College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press.

Sturcken, J.C. (1898).  Amanda Nite Burks, Willie Baylor Bell and J. Frank Dobie: A brush country friendship, the Proceedings of the Southwest and Texas Popular Culture Association Meeting, Purview Southwest.

U.S. general Services Adminstration (GSA). Hipolito F. Garcia Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, San Antonio, TX. Retrieved from http://www.gsa.gov/portal/ext/html/site/hb/cateogry/25431/ac
tionParameter/exploreByBuilding/buildingId/551

NEWS

MEMBER NEWS

Ann Ekstrom, member from Fort Worth, will have an exhibit - Conversations, Situations, Meditations - at the Baylor University Martin Museum of Art in Waco, August 30 - October 1. The exhibit includes large-scale oil paintings of miniature, everyday household objects. The works, inspired by family memories, include extreme detail of magnifying glass quality. For more information, see the Museum's website: http://www.baylor.edu/martinmuseum/index.php?id=32817

HISTORICAL AND RELATED INFORMATION OF INTEREST

RESOURCES FOR THE COLLECTOR AND THE RESEARCHER

Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, TX

EARLY TEXAS ART TRIVIA