Remarkable Women of Taos

In 2012, Taos museums, galleries and other institutions are banding together to celebrate one of the valley’s primary distinguishing factors – the preponderance of strong, independent women who settled here during the last century and created a virtual cultural matriarchy. The Harwood Museum, founded by Elizabeth Harwood, will mount major exhibitions of art by Agnes Martin and Bea Mandelman. Millicent Rogers Museum will honor its founder, the fashion maven and collector extraordinaire of Native American and Hispanic arts, along with a major show of pottery by the legendary Maria Martinez. The Taos Historic Museums will feature work by under appreciated artist wives and daughters of the Taos Founders. And the Mabel Dodge Luhan House will host seminars and lectures on various aspects of the subject.

            What follows is an essay I wrote for a book in production, “A Precarious Balance: Creative Women of Taos,” with photographs and essays by Robbie Steinbach and Lynn Bleiler.

 

left to right: Mabel Dodge Luhan, Freida Lawrence, Dorothy Brett

When I stumbled into Taos for the first time, September 30, 1973, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. A few months earlier I’d packed my small family into a Volkswagen van, crossed the Hudson and headed west in search of a new life. As it turned out, September 30 was (and is) San Geronimo Day at Taos Pueblo. The men were engaged in their centuries-old ceremonial foot races, and the rooftops of the pueblo’s magnificent adobe building were lined with women wrapped in colorful robes. Behind them was the stately Taos Mountain which in the evening burned blood red in the setting sun. Needless to say, I thought it might be interesting to hang around for a while.

I quickly became enamored with the town and its history, and one of my first and strongest impressions was that the place was filled with strong, independent women. In those years, 4 of the 5 best galleries in town were owned by women – Maggie Kress and Tally Richards, Mary Sanchez and Rena Rosequist. The co-founder of the Lama Foundation was Asha Breeson, a woman of great physical and spiritual authority. Billy Blair was the fearless editor of the Taos News. All the elected officials in the town and the county were male, but arguably the most influential political figure in town was Sally Howell – she gave me my first job in town as her gardener. Then I tended bar for a few years at the old La Cocina on the plaza, a raucous joint on a Saturday night but nobody messed with Ruth Moya, the sweet but steely strong cocktail waitress who could stop a drunken brawl without raising her voice.

Kathleen Summit, 1980

            And there was Kathleen Summit, a storyteller and, I’m convinced, bruja or shaman or shape-shifter. She lived alone in a little adobe on the side of the hill, overlooking the Valdez valley. Kathleen was short, on the stout side with piercing blue eyes and white hair cut straight across just above her eyes. She had the mien of an owl. Kathleen knew the legends of Taos, where to find the petroglyphs and ancient shrines. On the full moon she drummed and danced and howled in unison with the coyotes.

            Why Taos? What attracted Kathleen here, along with so many other strong women? The great preponderance of sky could be a lure, with its mythical associations with the feminine, as opposed to the common connection of males with the earth. Conversely, spirited women -- and it is spirited women who are drawn here, women dissatisfied with traditional roles and expectations and possessed with the gumption to test their limits  – seem drawn to the primeval, ritual-rich influence of Taos Pueblo, that most earth-bound of cultures.