Conversation with Minisa Crumbo Halsey, Director of 'Woody Crumbo: Spirit Talk' (YouTube)

Conversation with Minisa Crumbo Halsey, Director of 'Woody Crumbo: Spirit Talk'

From: October 29, 2020

Sponsored by: Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art

Voices of the West Online Exhibition

Join artist and filmmaker Minisa Crumbo Halsey as she responds to questions about her efforts to document the career of her father, Woodrow (Woody) Crumbo (1912-1989), a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Crumbo’s career included contributions as an artist, dancer, concert musician, arts educator, and museum administrator. During the late 1940s, he was hired to assemble the American Indian art collection for the Thomas Gilcrease Institute in Tulsa. He later became director of the El Paso Museum of Arts in Texas.

'Woody Crumbo: Spirit Talk' by Minisa Crumbo

Picturing the American Buffalo: George Catlin and Modern Native American Artists (SAAM)

Picturing the American Buffalo: A Conversation (SAAM)

Picturing the American Buffalo: George Catlin and Modern Native American Artists (SAAM)

Buffalo Hunt by Woodrow Crumbo (SAAM)

'Hunting the Spirit Buffalo' by Woody Crumbo (1930s)   

Woodrow Crumbo

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

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.

Inside, a deep breast of the resting Mother Earth, is where the Medicine Wheel slowly turns in an earthly circumambulation of all seed dreams, penetrated by fiery shafts of our Father Sky Sun into the mind, heart, body and Spirit of individual inner pools of quiet.

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.

AHO!

Dawn Woman

Panel: Native American Perspectives (YouTube)

Panel: Native American Perspectives (YouTube)

Sponsored by: Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art

From: February 27, 2020

Online Exhibition: Voices of the West

 

 

 

 

A closer look at historic and contemporary Native American imagery in the museum's Voices of the West exhibition (2020). Guest speakers are Norman Akers (Osage), Lauren Ritterbush, and Minisa Crumbo Halsey (Citizen Potawatomi Nation and Muscogee). 

 

Three Little Winters of Spring - an earth wisdom story ...

From April 4, 2020:

Bozho! Greetings all, from the Spirit Horse Ranch!
Smiling talks: let us gather together and think on a medicine wheel tale.

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

Migwech, Mamogosnon, prime Creator for ALL of the gifts.

Dawn Woman

Conversation with Minisa Crumbo Halsey, Director of 'Woody Crumbo: Spirit Talk' (YouTube)

Conversation with Minisa Crumbo Halsey, Director of 'Woody Crumbo: Spirit Talk'

From: October 29, 2020

Sponsored by: Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art

Voices of the West Online Exhibition

Join artist and filmmaker Minisa Crumbo Halsey as she responds to questions about her efforts to document the career of her father, Woodrow (Woody) Crumbo (1912-1989), a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Crumbo’s career included contributions as an artist, dancer, concert musician, arts educator, and museum administrator. During the late 1940s, he was hired to assemble the American Indian art collection for the Thomas Gilcrease Institute in Tulsa. He later became director of the El Paso Museum of Arts in Texas.

'Woody Crumbo: Spirit Talk' by Minisa Crumbo

Picturing the American Buffalo: George Catlin and Modern Native American Artists (SAAM)

Picturing the American Buffalo: A Conversation (SAAM)

Picturing the American Buffalo: George Catlin and Modern Native American Artists (SAAM)

Buffalo Hunt by Woodrow Crumbo (SAAM)

'Hunting the Spirit Buffalo' by Woody Crumbo (1930s)   

Woodrow Crumbo

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.)