(upbeat music) - Hey there, welcome to Big Blend Radio with your host, Lisa and Nancy, editors of Big Blend Magazine.com. - Hey everybody, welcome to Big Blend Radio's Toaster the Art Show. Today we welcome back to Victoria Chick. She's a contemporary figurative artist in early 19th, 20th century print collector based in beautiful Silver City, which is in the southwest corner of New Mexico, right next to the Hila National Forest, the Hila Wilderness area, and the Hila Cliff dwellings. I encourage you to go to her website. It is victoriachick.com. And she's been a long time expert contributor in our different Big Blend magazines. And of course here on Big Blend Radio, you can hear her every third Saturday, where we talk about art, we talk art history, we talk about Silver City, New Mexico, which is really an awesome art destination. And also this continuing development of the Southwest Regional Museum of Art and Art Center. We've been following this story as she came up with this idea and now she's working with different people and it's starting to become a reality, which is very exciting. So welcome back, Victoria, how are you? - Oh, thank you, Lisa, Maya, doing great today. - Good. - We're glad to be here with you guys. - You too, you too, you know. How is, I know we're gonna, I just have to let everyone we are talking about, Kyra Markham today. She is our topic as part of a series of women artists and we're trying to, you know, we've talked about Georgia O'Keefe and, you know, Grandma Moses and, you know, all those big names that we do know about women in art, but we're gonna be focusing on some of the lesser-knowns who were known in their time and are just extraordinary women. And Kyra Markham definitely is not even, not just in art, but also as an actor. And we got, we got a lot to get into about her, but I do wanna see how is everything going with the Southwest Regional Museum of Art and Art Center? - Well, it's coming along very well. We are waiting for a reply from the state of New Mexico. We have, we've applied for capital outlay funds to make a purchase and we hope that comes along, but we have other plans too. And if one thing doesn't work, we try another thing. So, it's moving forward. And right now we are getting so many wonderful gifts of quality artwork from various people. And they are excited about the museum and they wanna be part of it and they wanna contribute. So we are very blessed in that way. - Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, I mean, this has been, you've been working on this what, for two, three years, how many, don't tell me four? - Well, it's like, I don't know how long it takes a turtle to lay an egg or an egg or an egg or an egg or an egg. But it seems like it's taken a long time. Although, I mean, from an idea to where we are now, it's really been, since I first came up with the initial idea, it's probably been about six years. - Wow, yeah. - Maybe seven, but it takes a while. You have to collect a group that is excited about it. And we have done that. And then you have to learn what the possibilities are, where it might be. We've gone through this whole long talking process. Now, kind of weaning on ideas and filtering them and sifting them. So we feel like we're in a really good spot now to move forward. - And I like that it's the Southwest too. Because you guys are in Southwest New Mexico. And I think a lot of people, when you think about art, it will go Santa Fe, Albuquerque, you know, Tals, you know, immediately. And those places are all awesome. But it's, you know, Silver City is this, you know, here's the blossoming new child on the block. And in just, you know, really prolific though, with the amount of artists, art galleries, studios, you do have some amazing museums already in place. But I love that at Southwest, because you're on that corridor, you know, from Texas all the way to San Diego, you know. So it's, yeah, it's a good name to have. - Now, we expect to, we'll get a lot of visitors, but we also expect this to be a real community asset. Not just for Silver City, where it's going to be located, but for the entire Southwest quadrant of New Mexico. We eventually have big plans to have outreach programs and have like a mobile art bus or art studios. - Oh, cool. - Into small communities in the Southwest. Because right now, so many schools have gotten rid of their art programs, music programs and so forth. So this, I think, will be an opportunity for us to serve, well, not just young people, but everybody in the area. - Yeah, because you've got so many small, small communities. I mean, New Mexico's like that. You know, we always say when you get near half a tank of gas fill up, when you're in New Mexico. - You better fill up. - And go potty whenever you need to, because you may end up going for a few miles going up. - It's true. - But it's very good advice. - It's true. - It's true. - From way too much experience with it. But you've got places like Las Cruces, Deming, you know, all with near you. And you know, there's, you know, just going, even when it comes to parks. He looked cliff dwellings. You've got the City of Rocks, State Park. You've got, you know, also White Sands, now becoming a national park, also in your backyard in Carlsbad Caverns. So that's not that far from you. So when you think about all those areas and all the smaller communities that do need to have that network, I think that's fantastic. - Yeah, for sure. So let's talk about Kyra or it may be Kira, we've never met Kyra or Kira, but she, - I've never seen a pronounceer. I have a feeling, yeah, I have a feeling it's Kira, but I'm not sure. - Kira, Kira, but she was born in 1891 in Chicago, Illinois, and she passed away in, oh my gosh. So she has a really interesting life, but she passed away in Haiti in 1967. So she had quite a life, but let's, you know, start about how she got started in art. She really, it started pretty young, right? - Well, she did. She, of course, in Chicago, being in Chicago, we have the Art Institute, Chicago Art Institute, which is a great institution. She went, started going there to study art. She was quite young, actually. Only 16, when she started her Art Institute. I just was so amazed at her life. And she, at the same time that she was, was studying art, she, she was being an actress. She goes 'cause that wasn't the other interest she had. And so she was, she started at the in Chicago, playing with the little theater there. And shortly after that, I mean, like in the same year, she was in Providence, her line with the Providence players. So, and then, within about a five year period, she did all kinds of acting jobs in well-known places. And she wound up even going to Hollywood to do movies. Which, you know, we haven't heard of her in that theater aspect of her life. It's interesting to me how many, how many times you look at these artists of, you know, 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago. And you see how successful they were. And somehow they've dropped off the map as far as, you know, us knowing about them. So, studying her was interesting. She lived in Greenwich Village and she went to the East Coast. And keep in mind that she was only like 20, 21, 22 when their offices went on. She lived with Theodore Dresler. - Oh, yeah. - He was a very famous playwright and author. She lived with him for about four years, maybe, man, maybe less than that. But she left him because he was a womanizer. And of course, he was married at the time. - Okay, okay, oh wait, wait. - No, because I said, the first thing I said to Nancy was, you know, I was looking at him up. - Now this was getting a little racy. - Yeah, he was a journalist. He had the novelist playwright. And that was in the '20s. And I'm going, they weren't married. And then he, here is married. Was this a no-no at that point, do you think? - Well, I'm sure it's running around on your wife. It's probably a good idea to think of it as a no-no anytime. - Yes, that's right. - But, and I think in most circles at the time, most social circles, but of course they were living in a different social circle where this was, I don't know how accepted it was, but it was maybe more common than it was in the average community. So, but anyway, she left him, which was probably a good idea. (laughs) And she wound up, continuing on in the process. She went back to Providence. She then was tied up, not emotionally tied up, but worked with Eugene O'Neill. - Mm, amazing. Absolutely amazing. - And I read her life and I think she just drifted from one famous person to another. And it was not like she was trying to do this, it just happened. And I think what an interesting life that she had. - I think it comes from her also being putting herself out there. - Yeah. - You know, versus, she wasn't a socialite, you know? - No, and she didn't let, she didn't, she was an interesting person in her own right, right? And she produced good things. And at the same time, these people were producing plays so far. She was doing other work, for instance. When she was with Eugene O'Neill, she was making book jackets and illustrations. And that doesn't sound like a lot, maybe. But this helped her so much because from there, she moved to Hollywood and she was the art director for film companies. She worked for Fox. She worked for Dr. Golden Bear. I mean, she promoted herself, she word, she excelled. And then she took it to a different level. So I have a lot of respect for her. - Yeah. And then she also met Frank Lloyd Wright's son, right? - Yeah. - And hooked up with him. (laughs) - You know, another little aside of her life. - Yes, she's like, "Oh, hello." - She married Lloyd Wright, who was the son of Frank Lloyd, right? So not many of us have a famous father-law. She didn't, she stayed with him for maybe like five years. It, that marriage just didn't work out. And then a couple of years after that, she married a set designer named David Gaither, which, who you don't really hear much about, but they, they had a good life together. And they, she collaborated on set designs with him. He was, he did a really great one that he's, only what I know that he's really noted for was a, was a children's production, which was a very extensive thing. And they worked on that. I think he knew she loved to paint and he encouraged her to go back to school, you know? And because he knew painting was her first love. And so she did what, what most of us wouldn't do in the age. And then she went back to school. She went to the, the Art Students League, which was probably a pretty good place for, for somebody like her, who didn't, she wanted, she wanted to learn more, but she didn't want necessarily degree. So she was at the Art Students League for a couple of years. And all this time she was building, not just, not a resume, but she's building a style. And her style was, was really unique. At the time that she was working in the 30s, the Depression, and we have the WPA, we have the Arts and Progress Administration, the programs that were developed to hire artists. She was involved in that. And she was very conscious of what people were going through at the time, what the average person was going through, you know, there was, you know, various old work. People, people were, I don't like to use the word suffering, but they were certainly in a position where there was a lot of hardship. And at that time, social realism was a very strong genre of art, of visual art. And she, she used that because, but she, she, she liked doing average people. She liked doing, or she thought they were interested. She liked workers and she liked, she liked the stuff that went on backstage. And so she was sympathetic to that, but she didn't do her compositions like any other artist was doing because of her theater background and staging her staging knowledge and her experience in both in movies and in theater, live theater. She, she did paintings that were structured, very structured. And so they're almost like, I don't know, we've talked about George Tooker, who is a surrealist. She, her works were kind of like his, except they weren't quite as hard edged. But she, she had a different, a different take on social realism. As a subject matter. Sometimes she showed what went on backstage. Sometimes she showed, you know, other aspects of New York life or city life that that was, that was interesting because she was like, she could show it and what was going on in an alley, but she would do it like it was a stage set. Or she would position the figures very infrastructured way. So that you, she was big on narrative. And you could tell by the way she positioned things that there was a story going on here. - I think that's also interesting. I mean, 'cause of the theater background, right? But at the same time, also doing book illustrations and book jackets are always a narrative. And you have to get to the point. Like a book cover, if that book cover sucks, no one's gonna pick up a book. - No one's gonna buy the book. - Yeah, it's a sales job. And art is a sales job, you know what I mean? It's like you're selling the story, you're selling, you know what I mean? And so I think she got that and maybe her work also in theater as an actor and being in that and the plays and things like that, she understood what connected with audiences better than an artist that doesn't go out. You know, when you paint in front of people, you get a feedback. So maybe she understood that. - Well, and you want to know what's going on backstage? I want to know what's going on. (both laughing) But she'll never tell. - No. (both laughing) Yeah, I think the audience is important, yeah. - Yeah, and the other thing about her work that was slightly different from other social realist type, you know, subject matter. Generally, it was generally most of the painters that did social realism subjects were printmakers. So maybe it was black and white or if they were painters, the colors tended to be rather dark. And she kind of more or less worked in pastels. And I think that this is again, where theater plays a role in how she saw things because stage lighting is really important. And her subject matter was almost pastel sometimes or the lighting was very, you know, just as her figures were structured, the lighting was directed as it would be on the stage. So that distinguished her work. - That's amazing. I think when you do different avenues, you start to just immerse yourself in all these ways. Art is not limiting, you know, that's a beauty in anything in the arts, whether it's music, theater, you know, there is limitations on some things, which teaches you even more, you know what I mean? But I think for her to have all these different avenues and not shy away from him and just involve herself, I think that makes her a better artist. I really do. The ones that connect, you know? - Yeah, she was a social person, basically. You can tell by the way she eased from one area to another area, she just didn't see another, nothing seemed to block her from going from painting to studio to meeting great people. She wasn't shy. She, life stimulated her. And I suspect that she was a kind of a person who made things happen. And she was a very interesting person to be around. She and her husband, we don't hear much about him, as I mentioned. And I, anyway, after he died, he died, I think around 1960, maybe a little later than that. And she, you know, some people moved back to back home, some people moved to the town they came from. No, she moved to Haiti. - Oh, that's exciting. - Which is where she'd never been to before. - Mm-hmm, and so she went to Port Oak Prince and she established within very short period of time, a kind of group, like a salon, like a French salon, where people would meet and stimulate, have stimulating conversations and share their discoveries. And so she quickly had a social circle of local celebrities and expats that would come and live in Haiti, people who were tourists for a short period of time. So they all gathered in her house and it must have been quite a, quite a, - Little party. - Simulating. - I think she sounds like her. - And she's told she can change things. - She's a people person. - She's a people person. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - And a lot of artists are not. - Yeah. - And a lot of artists just want to be a lunge and then here comes this lady who's like, "Let's have a party, this is fun." - But artists will talk to other artists. You see, that's the other part, you know? Artists and theater. Now, didn't we do an interview with you before where one of the most prominent, was it Picasso or Cezanne that lived in Haiti for a short period? There was somebody that went to Haiti. It's actually been bugging me for a while that one, it's one of the big ones. - Yeah, you know, I'm sorry, I can't recall. - Yeah, me neither, because it's been bugging me. I'm going to have to look it up because somebody was in Haiti at some time and I'm wondering if that kind of influenced her to go to Haiti. I wonder what it was. - Not to Haiti, was it? 'Cause that was the-- - Oh, maybe that's what I could be thinking. - Yeah, I think you might be thinking of that. - Okay. - Yeah. - It sounds similar, yeah. Cezanne, so it's a song. - Oh, yeah, again, yeah. - Oh, go again, that's right, okay. - Is that go again Haiti, Tahiti? It's all, it's all linguistic. - Sounds like a party to me again. - Yeah. (laughs) - That's what it was. I was just wondering what, you know, what led her to go there, but maybe she wanted, I didn't know her husband wasn't with her when she went to Haiti. - Yeah, no, it was a total solo thing. And I mean, I think she was braver than most people to do that. - She sounds very, let's go see, you know, yeah. Curious. - Yeah, mm-hmm. - She's cool. She's cool, I'm glad she brought her up. - And maybe confident in her abilities to use social connections to her own purposes, you know? - Yes. - She, I think, you know, they weren't unique, get spandied around kind of freely. But to me, she was, she was a unique person in the way, a unique artist and a unique person in the way she lived her life. - Mm-hmm. - I've studied other, researched other artists that are unknown. And they lived interesting lives too. - She seems to me to be in a class for herself. - I love this. Well, I know next month we're gonna be talking about Margaret Jordan Patterson, looking forward to hearing about her. She's got quite a life too. All these women that you sent me this list of women, I'm like, "My gosh, this is cool." - When I, maybe some of you have, the people who are listening have taken our history and you read books or you hear names of certain people. Maybe your literary people have studied, studied American literature or so forth. And so I think that when I research these people, it's so interesting to me because they know so many people that I've heard of and their lives intertwine and find it really interesting to find out how it sort of helps make the other people come alive to me. - Yeah, that happens to us all the time. In fact, we were just doing an interview last night recording it, it'll be on April 1st, everyone. It's a reunion show with the National Parks Arts Foundation artists in residence. And we were talking to two photographers, completely different style. One is black and white and all film. The other one's Mr. Color. You know, it's completely different styles, but both of them we're talking about when they go to these different parks, how you learn about one person's history or you'll see one marker and then you'll go to another one. You're like, "Oh my gosh, this story continues on from here." And that's how it is for us as we travel and then do all these interviews that we do too. Suddenly it's like Eugene O'Neill. There's actually Eugene O'Neill as part of the national, has his own national historical site, you know, part of the National Park Service. And so you think, you know, it's like everywhere we go, F. Scott Fitzgerald's been there, done that. You know, it's like, what? So it's all these people that you mentioned, I'm like, "Oh, well, I've seen their gravestone over here." It's just wild. - It's just all connected. It is. - There's always a connection to something else. - And I just wanna go down the rabbit hole with each person somehow and do like this big web of like, now this person was over here doing this, you know what I mean? It's like a big scandal, it's gossip. That's what it is, it's gossip. - It's gossip, it is, it's good gossip. Positive gossip. - In this way. - Yeah, no, I love that. So next month everybody, you know, I was saying that Victoria comes on every third Saturday. So next month we're gonna be talking about Margaret Jordan Patterson. And of course, keep up with Victoria, go to VictoriaChick.com. And especially if you also wanna connect with her regarding the Fine Art Museum project, you can connect with her through there too. And also listen to her past interviews, just go to bigblendradio.com and type in Victoria Chick in the search bar. She's also been part of stories that we tell from the road and also in how art influenced national parks and how the national park system got created through the arts. And it's very important to talk about that this year because Yellowstone National Park turned 150 years old and that's our very first national park in the world. And so when you think about art history, you've got to think about the national parks that we have that started in America. And there's of course, national parks around the world that are just mind-blowing started here. And if it wasn't for artists, these parks would not be there. - It's pretty amazing. In fact, we have to do another segment on that, Victoria, as I'm talking about saying this. I know we're gonna have to, but everyone again, you can go to nationalparktraveling.com or bigblendradio.com to listen to Victoria's interviews and also read her articles. So thank you so much for joining us again, Victoria. - Hey, it's always fun. - Yeah. 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