Notes on Xavier González & etc.

Podcast 21 is (ayyyy) still in-progress. Meanwhile, a note from my other blog, Madam Mayo:

Notes on Xavier González (1989-1993), "Moonlight Over the Chisos" and My Visit to Mexico City's Antigua Academia de San Carlos, the Oldest Art School in the Americas

It was in 2012, when I first started on my still in-progress book about Far West Texas, that I first encountered the paintings of Xavier González in the Museum of the Big Bend on the Sul Ross University Campus in Alpine, Texas. I was there to see "The Lost Colony," an exhibition  of works by painters associated with the summer Art Colony of the Sul Ross College (now Sul Ross State University). The works were from 1921-1950; the Art Colony, formally so-called, spanned the years 1932-1950. >>>CONTINUE READING

Podcast #3 Mary Bones on the Lost Art Colony

Podcast #4 Avram Dumitrescu, an Artist in Alpine

Podcast #9 Mary Baxter, Painting the Big Bend

Two New Podcast Transcripts: #2 "Charles Angell in the Big Bend" and #3 "Mary Bones on the Lost Colony"

You can listen in to all my podcasts anytime, but I know some of you read at a faster clip than you can listen, so I've been posting the transcripts bit by bit. As of last night, new on the website are two more transcripts of Marfa Mondays podcast interviews, both of which provide excellent introduction to the topic at hand, adventure in the Big Bend and the "lost colony"-- of artists who came to this spectacularly scenic region well before Donald Judd.

Marfa Mondays #2 Charles Angell in the Big Bend

"I just love to be in the river. It's like the best seat in the house for the Big Bend, I think. You can see canyon walls. You see desert. You see riparian zones. There's more wildlife there than anywhere else, and even if it's a really, really hot summer day, you can stay cool." [READ MORE]

Listen now




Marfa Mondays #3 Mary Bones on the Lost Art Colony

"Julius Woeltz is my favorite... He was really known as a fine muralist. I think he painted well over 30 murals in his lifetime. He very much was influenced by Rivera and Orozco. He and his very good friend, Xavier González, spent many summers down in Mexico and Mexico City looking at the muralists..." [READ MORE]

Listen now


There will be more Marfa Mondays podcasts until there are 24. The latest, #17, is Under Sleeping Lion: Lonn Taylor in Fort Davis

Your comments are always welcome.

Marfa Mondays Podcast #16: Tremendous Forms: Paul V. Chaplo on Finding Composition in the Landscape

Happy 2015! Just posted, Marfa Mondays podcast #16 (of a projected 24), an interview with photographer Paul V. Chaplo, author of Marfa Flights: Aerial Views of Big Bend Country (Texas A & M University Press). Recorded at the Texas Book Festival in October, 2014. 

Marfa Flights was published to coincide with the opening of the exhibition of Chaplo's large format color photographs in the Museum of the Big Bend, in Alpine Texas. That show is open through January 18, 2015. Don't miss it!

Listen in anytime here.

Listen in to the other Marfa Mondays Podcasts here.

Find out more about Chaplo's magnificent Marfa Flights here.

***UPDATE*** The transcript of this podcast is now available here.

Podcast #3 Mary Bones on the Lost Art Colony

Just posted: the third podcast in the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project 2012-2013:

>> Click here to listen in

Yours Truly interviews Mary Bones, curator of the exhibit "The Lost Colony: Texas Regionalist Paintings," in theMuseum of the Big Bend, Sul Ross State University, Alpine, Texas. 

The Lost Colony refers to the summer art colony at Sul Ross which began in 1932 and ended somewhat mysteriously in 1950. Alpine is 30 minutes northeast of Marfa-- right next door. Of the region, as Michael Duty writes in the introduction to the exhibit's catalog, "It... has long called to artists who have been captivated by its natural beauty, its history, and its people. In recent times, the area has also drawn the attention of writers and reporters who have written numerous articles touting the area's prominence as something of a center, albeit a far flung one, for contemporary art. Those articles focus primarily on Marfa and the influence that minimalist sculptor Donald Judd has had on the town..." Later, Duty adds, that Judd "was certainly not the first artist to be so captivated". 

Mary Bones explains the inspiration for the exhibit, and shares the stories about and friendships of some of the painters, in particular Texan Julius Woeltz and his teacher Xavier González, a native of Spain, both of whom made trips to Mexico City to study the Mexican muralists, including Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. 

Some of the other painters discussed are Mabel Vandiver, Anna Keener, Elizabeth Keefer, Coreen Mary Spellman, Harry Anthony De Young, Beatrice Cuming, Otis Dozier, William Lester, James Swann, Ethel Edwards, Alice Reynolds, and Juanita Montgomery. Several of these paintings can be seen in the article by Mary Bones, "The Lost Colony: Texas Regionalist Paintings - Rediscovering an Artistic Past," Cenizo Journal, 4th Quarter 2011.

>>Previous Marfa Mondays podcast: Charles Angell in the Big Bend.

>>For more Marfa Mondays podcasts, and to read about the project, please visit www.cmmayo.com/marfa

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