The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, located on the Kansas State University campus in Manhattan, decided to take its annual Art in Motion series virtual in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. In November, museum curator Elizabeth Seaton organized a digital screening of Citizen Potawatomi Nation tribal member Minisa Crumbo Halsey’s 2016 documentary, Woody Crumbo: Spirit Talk.
“It was one of the greatest experiences of my life to be able to put that together,” Crumbo Halsey said.
She served as writer, director and producer of the 44-minute movie that delves into the inspiration and life of her father, acclaimed Potawatomi artist Woody Crumbo. His influence and unique style continues to influence contemporary Native American art, and Crumbo Halsey’s film sought to celebrate and archive his work with museums and other artists across the United States.
“Woody Crumbo was, in his work, was only about one thing, and it was about connecting with spirit and then connecting the viewer with spirit through the artwork,” Crumbo Halsey said in a Q&A session following the screening. “There were no words. There was no song. And a lot of times, people would come away from looking at the work in a very non-verbal state.”
Inspiration
Crumbo Halsey is an avid documentary watcher, and her upbringing cultivated her fondness for the medium.
“I watch them all the time,” she said. “I like nonfiction, and I’ve been a reader my whole life. My mother was a schoolteacher. She started me reading early, early on. … I’ve always been very interested in biographies, history and nonfiction.”
Her idea for the documentary came naturally in 2015, continuing what she referred to in a recent Hownikan interview as a “very creative time” in her life. Crumbo Halsey felt called to make the film, not unlike her other work.
“I feel like my father appeared to me in spirit, and he had been gone for 20 years already when I was writing (my book) Spirit Talk.
… The documentary was spirit driven. It was clear that the work that I
was doing was fine — do whatever you want. But don’t forget to do one on
your father because he’s your biggest and your best subject, and it
hasn’t been done. And, someone needs to do it,” she said.
Portraits had been a passion of hers for quite a while, and Crumbo Halsey began interviewing people and documenting their lives with her camera as she traveled in the early 2010s. She decided to take it further after realizing she recorded quite a few artists and musicians who knew her father.
“I got to thinking, ‘If I’m documenting anyone, I should be documenting my father,’” she said.
Inspiration also came from encounters with a crew for one of the world’s most famous video documentarians, Ken Burns. While working on the epic eight-part series Country Music for PBS, they used office space with Crumbo Halsey’s husband, Jim Halsey. Principle writer, producer and director Dayton Duncan interviewed him, Roy Clark, Wanda Jackson and many other Oklahomans who have made irreplaceable contributions to the genre throughout the last century.
“That was very rich to be around some people who just lived and breathed (making documentaries),” Crumbo Halsey said.
Burns taught her that video “eats up” still images, and she knew it would be hard work finding enough photographs and clear shots of paintings to tell her father’s story.
Creation as art
She contacted Tulsa’s Gilcrease Museum to search its archives for paintings, photographs and audio recordings of her father. Woody Crumbo worked extensively with the museum in the late 1940s and ‘50s as an artist-in-residence and helped owner Thomas Gilcrease build his art collection.
The Oklahoma Historical Society also provided many black-and-white photographs, and OHS Executive Director Bob Blackburn, Ph.D., worked with Crumbo Halsey. She found audio, news clips, images and pieces of Crumbo’s artwork she never knew existed.
“Everyone was so gracious and so helpful about bringing things forward and making them available,” she said.
Then, she storyboarded the entire film on tables and other surfaces around her house, laying out the images roughly in the desired order using index cards while writing the narration. Crumbo Halsey found it best to follow her father’s life from birth to death.
“That was my cue about what the subject matter and the text was going to be was the timeline of the artwork — when it was done, where it was done, who was there, what was the subject. … As a good documentary does, it tells a story,” Crumbo Halsey said.
Choosing the music that plays throughout the film also brought many emotions and memories. Her son, Woody Carter, wrote many of the songs, using a sacred flute passed down from his grandfather. The movie ends with a video of Carter performing a piece from his most recent album.
“When I got to the end, it was like it just wrapped itself up itself and let me know what the end was — what pictures were going to be used, what music was going to be used, what was going to be said. … It was very interesting,” Crumbo Halsey said.
She recorded the film’s narration and then spent three to four months with an editor, piecing it together and making her vision come to life.
Crumbo Halsey told the Beach Museum of Art webinar participants that Woody Crumbo: Spirit Talk continues to transform her and each viewing brings her to tears.
“It moves me so deeply every time that I watch it,” she said. “I remember, I remember! And that’s exactly what the artwork is supposed to do.”
Much of Woody Crumbo’s art depicts ceremonies, dances and traditional stories from various tribes in places he lived throughout this life — Cimarron, New Mexico; Tulsa, Oklahoma; La Junta, Colorado; and many others.
“When a person paints a picture, if he has the right feeling and his aims and all towards his depiction, if everything is alright and he is successful, he has given that picture a spirit,” he said, in an archival recording used in the documentary.
The creative process is more than the product — perhaps the most crucial lesson Crumbo taught his daughter. Crumbo Halsey captured her father’s spirit in her documentary and put more than a little of herself in it as well.
“Being is the doing, and all life is ceremony,” she said.
From April 4, 2020: 
Picturing the American Buffalo: George Catlin and Modern Native American Artists (SAAM)
Crumbo was born in Lexington, Oklahoma, the son of an Indian mother and a French father. He attended government schools as a child and showed such promise that he received a scholarship to the American Indian Institute in Wichita for his last two years of high school. While at the Institute, he became interested in expressing Indian tradition and culture through his art. After three years at the University of Wichita he transferred to the University of Oklahoma where he studied with Oscar B. Jacobson. At the early age of 21, Crumbo was appointed Director of Indian Art at Bacone College, the only institute of higher learning exclusively for Indians. Bacone offered Crumbo the unique opportunity to familiarize himself with his heritage and to instill in him cultural pride. At that time he conducted research into Indian design and revived ancient techniques of silverwork, vegetable dying, and weaving.
Crumbo’s career has been diverse; known also as a musician and Indian ceremonial dancer, Crumbo played the cedar wood flute and danced with Thurlow Lieurance’s symphony in Wichita. He also worked as a designer with the Douglas Corporation, with the Gilcrease Collection in Tulsa, and from 1960 to 1968 as curator of the El Paso Museum of Art.
A Pottawatomie
Indian, Crumbo explores in his art the traditions and ceremonies of his
own tribe as well as those of the Creek, Sioux, and Kiowa nations, and
says of his work, “I
have always painted with the desire of developing Indian art so that it
may be judged on art standards rather on its value as a curio—I am
attempting to record Indian customs and legends now, while they are
alive, to make them a part of the great American culture before these,
too, become lost, only to be fragmentarily pieced together by fact and
supposition.
Crumbo works in oil and egg tempera, as well as in watercolor, sculpture, stained glass, and silkscreen. Under the guidance of Olle Nordmark, he also learned etching. The largest collection of Crumbo’s work, about 175 paintings, is owned by the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, although his work has been exhibited in many museums throughout the United States.
Virginia Mecklenburg The Public as Patron: A History of the Treasury Department Mural Program (College Park, Maryland: University of Maryland, n.d.)
Excerpts from 'Spirit Talk': It is from the unified and receptive language interaction of
our mind, heart, body, and spirit languages that we are able to communicate with
the realities and even messages from denizens of the natural world – refreshing
and newly emerging spirit beings in the forms of plants, animals, the
Grandmother Moon and Star Beings, the Wind, Fire, and Water Beings, and even
the heartbeat of Mother Earth, the pulses of Father Sky-Sun, and the mind of
the Prime Creator, the Master of All Breath …
The Medicine Wheel 4 X 4 wagon is
building its wheels. The finely meshed and recognized gears of language that
carry our loads, provide a center and direction, are beginning to be
directionally and seasonally purposed to function as an inclusive true home and
spiritual sanctuary. The home is under final construction and livable … always
a dance and a song in the process of becoming
at spring, or any given time. Welcome
home traveler and seeker …
Spring
Equinox: The east-west arm of balance is the ‘hard road of life’. The
east-west axis provides the essential cross balance with the north-south cross
balance – spinal axis of harmony – the Good Red Road … This mental spring arm
extends forward and out from the center, joining with the introspective,
medicine autumn arm of the autumnal equinox. The Medicine Wheel is in an active
and visible building process.
The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, located on the Kansas State University campus in Manhattan, decided to take its annual Art in Motion series virtual in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. In November, museum curator Elizabeth Seaton organized a digital screening of Citizen Potawatomi Nation tribal member Minisa Crumbo Halsey’s 2016 documentary, Woody Crumbo: Spirit Talk.
“It was one of the greatest experiences of my life to be able to put that together,” Crumbo Halsey said.
She served as writer, director and producer of the 44-minute movie that delves into the inspiration and life of her father, acclaimed Potawatomi artist Woody Crumbo. His influence and unique style continues to influence contemporary Native American art, and Crumbo Halsey’s film sought to celebrate and archive his work with museums and other artists across the United States.
“Woody Crumbo was, in his work, was only about one thing, and it was about connecting with spirit and then connecting the viewer with spirit through the artwork,” Crumbo Halsey said in a Q&A session following the screening. “There were no words. There was no song. And a lot of times, people would come away from looking at the work in a very non-verbal state.”
Inspiration
Crumbo Halsey is an avid documentary watcher, and her upbringing cultivated her fondness for the medium.
“I watch them all the time,” she said. “I like nonfiction, and I’ve been a reader my whole life. My mother was a schoolteacher. She started me reading early, early on. … I’ve always been very interested in biographies, history and nonfiction.”
Her idea for the documentary came naturally in 2015, continuing what she referred to in a recent Hownikan interview as a “very creative time” in her life. Crumbo Halsey felt called to make the film, not unlike her other work.
“I feel like my father appeared to me in spirit, and he had been gone for 20 years already when I was writing (my book) Spirit Talk.
… The documentary was spirit driven. It was clear that the work that I
was doing was fine — do whatever you want. But don’t forget to do one on
your father because he’s your biggest and your best subject, and it
hasn’t been done. And, someone needs to do it,” she said.
Portraits had been a passion of hers for quite a while, and Crumbo Halsey began interviewing people and documenting their lives with her camera as she traveled in the early 2010s. She decided to take it further after realizing she recorded quite a few artists and musicians who knew her father.
“I got to thinking, ‘If I’m documenting anyone, I should be documenting my father,’” she said.
Inspiration also came from encounters with a crew for one of the world’s most famous video documentarians, Ken Burns. While working on the epic eight-part series Country Music for PBS, they used office space with Crumbo Halsey’s husband, Jim Halsey. Principle writer, producer and director Dayton Duncan interviewed him, Roy Clark, Wanda Jackson and many other Oklahomans who have made irreplaceable contributions to the genre throughout the last century.
“That was very rich to be around some people who just lived and breathed (making documentaries),” Crumbo Halsey said.
Burns taught her that video “eats up” still images, and she knew it would be hard work finding enough photographs and clear shots of paintings to tell her father’s story.
Creation as art
She contacted Tulsa’s Gilcrease Museum to search its archives for paintings, photographs and audio recordings of her father. Woody Crumbo worked extensively with the museum in the late 1940s and ‘50s as an artist-in-residence and helped owner Thomas Gilcrease build his art collection.
The Oklahoma Historical Society also provided many black-and-white photographs, and OHS Executive Director Bob Blackburn, Ph.D., worked with Crumbo Halsey. She found audio, news clips, images and pieces of Crumbo’s artwork she never knew existed.
“Everyone was so gracious and so helpful about bringing things forward and making them available,” she said.
Then, she storyboarded the entire film on tables and other surfaces around her house, laying out the images roughly in the desired order using index cards while writing the narration. Crumbo Halsey found it best to follow her father’s life from birth to death.
“That was my cue about what the subject matter and the text was going to be was the timeline of the artwork — when it was done, where it was done, who was there, what was the subject. … As a good documentary does, it tells a story,” Crumbo Halsey said.
Choosing the music that plays throughout the film also brought many emotions and memories. Her son, Woody Carter, wrote many of the songs, using a sacred flute passed down from his grandfather. The movie ends with a video of Carter performing a piece from his most recent album.
“When I got to the end, it was like it just wrapped itself up itself and let me know what the end was — what pictures were going to be used, what music was going to be used, what was going to be said. … It was very interesting,” Crumbo Halsey said.
She recorded the film’s narration and then spent three to four months with an editor, piecing it together and making her vision come to life.
Crumbo Halsey told the Beach Museum of Art webinar participants that Woody Crumbo: Spirit Talk continues to transform her and each viewing brings her to tears.
“It moves me so deeply every time that I watch it,” she said. “I remember, I remember! And that’s exactly what the artwork is supposed to do.”
Much of Woody Crumbo’s art depicts ceremonies, dances and traditional stories from various tribes in places he lived throughout this life — Cimarron, New Mexico; Tulsa, Oklahoma; La Junta, Colorado; and many others.
“When a person paints a picture, if he has the right feeling and his aims and all towards his depiction, if everything is alright and he is successful, he has given that picture a spirit,” he said, in an archival recording used in the documentary.
The creative process is more than the product — perhaps the most crucial lesson Crumbo taught his daughter. Crumbo Halsey captured her father’s spirit in her documentary and put more than a little of herself in it as well.
“Being is the doing, and all life is ceremony,” she said.
It
is a windy day, here on the land ... which recalls an earth wisdom story
told to me many years ago. It is the story of the three little winters
of spring. Now, even though stories are traditionally told in the winter
when we are are spending more time inside by the fire, our time now,
seems to describe now. In many ways this is truly a little winter with
accompanying vision quest qualities. Our collective retreats at this
time bring opportunities of deep rest and healing. The spring medicine
wheel season continues to radiate rays of inspiration and illumination
which can and will penetrate and permeate all historic, tender and even
hardened layers of memory and condition, all the while delivering the
benison of light and love, capable of stimulating mental processes for
future plans (and present), and able to plow the deepest furrows of
every fertile and fallow field, be it of day or night, dream or vision.
The Winds
These
are some of the gifts of spring. Ordinarily, there is more outward
movement but spring this year, seems to be temporarily holding onto the
hands of winter for a few more weeks ... at least the hands of: the little
winters of spring. Let us give them our full attention, sit with them
and allow the strong winds of spring to reach back, on and into aspects
our innermost being, loosening and tearing away those limbs of our
sacred flowering trees that may be dead, dying or diseased; no longer
wanted or needed, winds which are scattering green winds of pollen, and
driving southern rain clouds to the fields, forests, ponds and gardens.
RedBud Winter
This
one comes first, when the redbud trees bloom ... when spring has truly
seated sometime in the third week of January. Then a warm spell.
Dogwood Winter
The second little winter comes when the dogwood trees bloom. Then a warm spell.
Blackberry Winter
The
third and last winter comes when the blackberries bushes bloom. It can
seem to be the coldest and most unnecessary of the little winters ... but
it is the last.
The Rains
The
cold, hard, male rains come ... drumming the Mother alive and calling
upon the return of her heartbeat to bring send sap rising, invite sprout
and shoot, unfurling bud and leaf..softening, melting ice, moistening
and warming the world once more..and so, the world is renewed once again
and life begins anew with us in the northern hemisphere and reversed,
down under.
Provisions and activities
for personal ceremony come forward as we visit the shelving of memory
and practice, selecting this or that according to interest or need, that
we fashioned through decision and discipline for just such times as
these. Provisions and activities, sacred all, fashioned in solitude or
circle...to bring solace, lift the heart and lighten the mind, are our
proven and worthy tools. We will sit in circle once again. Review these
things and add to them ... there will be new stories to tell ... reach out to
our brothers and sisters ... and in these times of relative inactivity for
some of us, remember: BEING IS A DOING. Prayers and blessings to all who
are or have ‘walked on’, to the caretakers and ones most heavily
burdened, may they and we know good health and the restoration of
balance and harmony, all ways, all days, now and forever more.
Migwech
That’s the way it is with me.
Curiosity, restlessness, patience
Inventiveness, endurance and bravery
Remembering, being breathed alive and a sun ceremony
Water song, traveling song..silent prayer songs and groans of the heart are all heard.
The drum..redbud singers and dewebenkwe rock!
A purification fire, inside on a cookie sheet or outside, w/ sema offering
Smudging and fanning off, self, others and the room, remembering to open a window
Basketry
Sage, ginger and sassafras teas..green tea, chaga thunder, miso
Wild onions and eggs, dandelion greens in salads, corn soup, fry bread ‘n salt pork
Moon time
Collecting and drinking clean rain water
‘Putting Down’ some sema, tobacco.. tobacco down-prayers up
Offering plates
Being breathed alive
And always, the inner vision quest of:
Gratitude
Picturing the American Buffalo: George Catlin and Modern Native American Artists (SAAM)
Crumbo was born in Lexington, Oklahoma, the son of an Indian mother and a French father. He attended government schools as a child and showed such promise that he received a scholarship to the American Indian Institute in Wichita for his last two years of high school. While at the Institute, he became interested in expressing Indian tradition and culture through his art. After three years at the University of Wichita he transferred to the University of Oklahoma where he studied with Oscar B. Jacobson. At the early age of 21, Crumbo was appointed Director of Indian Art at Bacone College, the only institute of higher learning exclusively for Indians. Bacone offered Crumbo the unique opportunity to familiarize himself with his heritage and to instill in him cultural pride. At that time he conducted research into Indian design and revived ancient techniques of silverwork, vegetable dying, and weaving.
Crumbo’s career has been diverse; known also as a musician and Indian ceremonial dancer, Crumbo played the cedar wood flute and danced with Thurlow Lieurance’s symphony in Wichita. He also worked as a designer with the Douglas Corporation, with the Gilcrease Collection in Tulsa, and from 1960 to 1968 as curator of the El Paso Museum of Art.
A Pottawatomie
Indian, Crumbo explores in his art the traditions and ceremonies of his
own tribe as well as those of the Creek, Sioux, and Kiowa nations, and
says of his work, “I
have always painted with the desire of developing Indian art so that it
may be judged on art standards rather on its value as a curio—I am
attempting to record Indian customs and legends now, while they are
alive, to make them a part of the great American culture before these,
too, become lost, only to be fragmentarily pieced together by fact and
supposition.
Crumbo works in oil and egg tempera, as well as in watercolor, sculpture, stained glass, and silkscreen. Under the guidance of Olle Nordmark, he also learned etching. The largest collection of Crumbo’s work, about 175 paintings, is owned by the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, although his work has been exhibited in many museums throughout the United States.
Virginia Mecklenburg The Public as Patron: A History of the Treasury Department Mural Program (College Park, Maryland: University of Maryland, n.d.)
Winter Vision Quest Cave
In this season, many inner compasses will begin turning toward
seeking, creating and crawling into the blessed peace of the seasonal
vision quest cave.
Here, ones bones can and may be deeply CLEANED: healed and loosened
from the labors, challenges, cares, aspirations and fulfillments of the
previous season, then slowly put back together as an honoring dream
dance echo of all the ancestral journeys made before ours and those yet
to come. The womb quest awaits. Draw aside a veil of the great mystery,
breathe your name, make an offering and ask permission to replicate and
renew the journey that all beings have made, do make and will make..from
earth to sky ... breath into clay ... so we are made and so we reenact the
sacred moves, as we see them.
For, we are the new myth makers. Many dreams and messages have been
brought forward, by ourselves and others … accept these offerings, feast
upon the tears of bitterness and gratitude from which they were born and
prepare to embark upon making the new myths and creation stories … OUR
new myths drawn from a place where our sacred beingness meets with and
is fused with mysterious elements emanating from an indivisible and
indestructible connection with divine consciousness and personal
discernment.
This is how we stay alive and keep the world alive. This then, is our
Sacred Charge. Where we will feel most alive and know who we are.
Many are the ways of personal, creative ceremony ... Now, it is time to
smudge off, pray for the highest good for all concerned and ask that
bravery, wisdom, willingness and endurance walk with us.
Know that one may emerge, or come and go, from the cave at any time
and trust that commitments and responsibilities in the outside world
reside on physical and mental arms of the Medicine Wheel and will not
suffer from ‘medicine’ attention directed elsewhere.
When ones visit to the cave is accomplished there will be a natural
and unremarkable reunification of elements. The shifts and gifts will be
ours for life. Do not speak of these things too soon but hold them
close to mature and unfold. Journaling is a creative thing to do as many
of the realizations, visitations or visions will be of an ephemeral
nature. Do not censor or process the writing, that can be done later.
May we be eternally rich in Spirit, have good minds and strong
bodies. May we know no fear and may we have hearts filled with love..now
and forever more.
RedBud Winter
This
one comes first, when the redbud trees bloom ... when spring has truly
seated sometime in the third week of January. Then a warm spell.
Dogwood Winter
The second little winter comes when the dogwood trees bloom. Then a warm spell.
Blackberry Winter
The
third and last winter comes when the blackberries bushes bloom. It can
seem to be the coldest and most unnecessary of the little winters ... but
it is the last.
The Rains
The
cold, hard, male rains come ... drumming the Mother alive and calling
upon the return of her heartbeat to bring send sap rising, invite sprout
and shoot, unfurling bud and leaf..softening, melting ice, moistening
and warming the world once more..and so, the world is renewed once again
and life begins anew with us in the northern hemisphere and reversed,
down under.
Provisions and activities
for personal ceremony come forward as we visit the shelving of memory
and practice, selecting this or that according to interest or need, that
we fashioned through decision and discipline for just such times as
these. Provisions and activities, sacred all, fashioned in solitude or
circle...to bring solace, lift the heart and lighten the mind, are our
proven and worthy tools. We will sit in circle once again. Review these
things and add to them ... there will be new stories to tell ... reach out to
our brothers and sisters ... and in these times of relative inactivity for
some of us, remember: BEING IS A DOING. Prayers and blessings to all who
are or have ‘walked on’, to the caretakers and ones most heavily
burdened, may they and we know good health and the restoration of
balance and harmony, all ways, all days, now and forever more.
Migwech
That’s the way it is with me.
Curiosity, restlessness, patience
Inventiveness, endurance and bravery
Remembering, being breathed alive and a sun ceremony
Water song, traveling song..silent prayer songs and groans of the heart are all heard.
The drum..redbud singers and dewebenkwe rock!
A purification fire, inside on a cookie sheet or outside, w/ sema offering
Smudging and fanning off, self, others and the room, remembering to open a window
Basketry
Sage, ginger and sassafras teas..green tea, chaga thunder, miso
Wild onions and eggs, dandelion greens in salads, corn soup, fry bread ‘n salt pork
Moon time
Collecting and drinking clean rain water
‘Putting Down’ some sema, tobacco.. tobacco down-prayers up
Offering plates
Being breathed alive
And always, the inner vision quest of:
Gratitude
Picturing the American Buffalo: George Catlin and Modern Native American Artists (SAAM)
Crumbo was born in Lexington, Oklahoma, the son of an Indian mother and a French father. He attended government schools as a child and showed such promise that he received a scholarship to the American Indian Institute in Wichita for his last two years of high school. While at the Institute, he became interested in expressing Indian tradition and culture through his art. After three years at the University of Wichita he transferred to the University of Oklahoma where he studied with Oscar B. Jacobson. At the early age of 21, Crumbo was appointed Director of Indian Art at Bacone College, the only institute of higher learning exclusively for Indians. Bacone offered Crumbo the unique opportunity to familiarize himself with his heritage and to instill in him cultural pride. At that time he conducted research into Indian design and revived ancient techniques of silverwork, vegetable dying, and weaving.
Crumbo’s career has been diverse; known also as a musician and Indian ceremonial dancer, Crumbo played the cedar wood flute and danced with Thurlow Lieurance’s symphony in Wichita. He also worked as a designer with the Douglas Corporation, with the Gilcrease Collection in Tulsa, and from 1960 to 1968 as curator of the El Paso Museum of Art.
A Pottawatomie
Indian, Crumbo explores in his art the traditions and ceremonies of his
own tribe as well as those of the Creek, Sioux, and Kiowa nations, and
says of his work, “I
have always painted with the desire of developing Indian art so that it
may be judged on art standards rather on its value as a curio—I am
attempting to record Indian customs and legends now, while they are
alive, to make them a part of the great American culture before these,
too, become lost, only to be fragmentarily pieced together by fact and
supposition.
Crumbo works in oil and egg tempera, as well as in watercolor, sculpture, stained glass, and silkscreen. Under the guidance of Olle Nordmark, he also learned etching. The largest collection of Crumbo’s work, about 175 paintings, is owned by the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, although his work has been exhibited in many museums throughout the United States.
Virginia Mecklenburg The Public as Patron: A History of the Treasury Department Mural Program (College Park, Maryland: University of Maryland, n.d.)
