Oral history interview with Doris Littrell

Little Thunder: This is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. I'm here on October 1, 2010, with Doris Littrell. We're at Doris' home and thank you Doris for taking the time to interview with me.

Littrell: Thank you for coming.

Little Thunder: You are at least a third generation Oklahoman, as I understand. Would you like to tell me where you grew up and a little bit about your family?

Littrell: I grew up at Apache, Oklahoma. That's the southwestern part of our state, and we had eighty percent Native American people as I grew up there. My best friend was an Indian girl, and my grandmother was part Cherokee. They came from Tennessee through Arkansas, and on into what was then Indian Territory. My 1:00grandmother married and had four daughters. He [her husband] had a dray service, and he worked in all kinds of weather. He had TB [tuberculosis], and the doctors told her he should be taken to Pueblo, Colorado, and if that didn't help then they'd need to go on into Arizona. He lived three months, and she came back with her four girls in a covered wagon. He had left her with some money, so she bought a ranch outside of Apache, but also near the edge of the Wichita [Mountains]. She had cattle, and through the years she met Mr. Cook, who lived on the farm adjoining her. His wife had died, and they got married. He had four 2:00children, so she assisted in raising them, and then they had five, and of those children, one was my mother.

It was near Cache Creek Mission and School, and a few miles outside of Apache is a little community--it had a church and a store and a school. It was called Boone, and when the Presbyterian church closed the school at the Cache Creek Mission, then the Indian children were taken into Boone. And those children and my grandmother's children were the only non-Indians. So my mother grew up with all Indian children in her school, and that was brought into my life from that side of my family.

I went to Apache [high] school and I graduated high school there, but when I was thirteen I went to my aunt. My mother's sister owned the telephone office in Apache, and I asked if I could live with her and go to school and work for her. It was the Depression, she lived with her in-laws, and there were no accommodations for me to live in, but she could hire me. I worked nights. I went on the job at 9:00 at night, and there was a night bell and so forth, and I could do some sleeping, and then I could do some studying, and I was there until 7:00 in the morning. And from the time school let out and before I went to work and on weekends, I lived with this Comanche family who were parents of my good friend, Betty. They were just very understanding of my working, and if I was 4:00ever at school and needed to go home for any reason, through illness or something, he just treated me like I was his own and he would be there and do it. So I had that experience.

Then when I graduated, since I had gone to work so young for the telephone company, I was waiting for my experience to be bridged to Southwestern Bell in Oklahoma City. That was like 1949-50. I went to work and I worked at night, and at four in the morning it was my lunch hour, and I went to Bishop's, which was a 5:00restaurant on Broadway and Fourth, to have my lunch. I met Bob McCabe there, and we got acquainted, and then in 1951 we were married. And in '52 we had our first daughter, Toya, and then eighteen months later we had Kim. His mother lived in San Diego, so every summer we would go to California to visit her. When we went through Santa Clara Pueblo, we started collecting black pottery from Santa Clara, and Navajo rugs. We had a limited budget, so we would camp out, which we 6:00liked to do anyway, and we saved our money by camping out to buy art. We bought pottery and rugs, and then one day I said, "You know, the town I came from has a lot of painters, why don't we see what in Oklahoma we might do."

So we started buying Oklahoma painters in 1952, and it sort of passed around through the Indian community that we were doing that. They would call on us and ask if we wanted to buy things, and so that's how we started. I went to states--not so much into the East, more Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and 7:00California--and I called on museums and galleries with the art. And that was a help to introduce Oklahoma Indian art outside the state. But then, I thought, the thing that seemed to help in marketing Native American art in Oklahoma was, in 1968, I went to the Oklahoma Art Center. Imogene Mugg managed the museum gallery [at the Center], and I asked if she would be interested [in Native art]. She let me consign some, and that was in March. In August she called, she said, "We don't have a show in August, it's too hot, no one will come, but would you 8:00like it for your Indians?" I said, "I sure would."

So we started having these shows, and I would consign. I'd buy them; the artist would get fifty percent, the Oklahoma Art Center received thirty percent, Imogene Mugg worked for ten percent, and I worked for ten percent. And after a time, she got acquainted with the painters and she worked well with them. So I didn't need to consign anymore. And it was through her they learned to market by consignment, and invitational shows, which she did for fourteen years. Instead of just buying and selling, it was a very important thing for the artists to learn how to handle that part of their career. Then I, with my husband Bob, opened the Oklahoma Indian Art in 1979.

Little Thunder: Was that your first gallery then?

Littrell: That was the first retail business that I had had. I'd always traveled and been a wholesaler. And so I had now a retail business with him, but we had done some printing, and he really wanted to be in the print business, and I didn't. So he took the print business, I took the gallery. Then he became an independent art dealer, dealing with painters other than the ones that I dealt with. I did that until 2010, September, and I retired at eighty-two from the gallery. But at home now, I have Merlin Little Thunder: and Robert Taylor. I 10:00broker their art because I have been with them eighteen to twenty years, and have a fairly vast, established market for their work. And their patrons would ask me, "Well, where can we find their work?" So I'm going to show that at my home. Plus, if collectors have things that they would like me to sell--the older art, which I worked with in the beginning--I have a close feeling to that, and some customers for it, so I'll be doing that as well here at home. I was reluctant--that's the reason I worked so many years--

to ever quit, because I've had such a good feeling and so much fun. I always 11:00felt so rich that I could make a living at something I love so much, so I just will continue at home. But it's nice to be home, too, because I'm domestic and I garden, so I have the best of both.

Little Thunder: Well that's a wonderful overview of your career, Doris. I'd like to go back and expand upon a few things. I'm really curious about how you first got interested in art. Whether you had art at school, or your first experience was indeed seeing a piece of Indian art. How did you get interested when you were young?

Littrell: Mother's brother, my uncle Everett, took me to pow-wows and things when I was very small. He was in school with Allan Houser and Spencer Asah, and 12:00later neighbored close by George Geionety. And Mr. Geionety visited my uncle a lot, and he would have paintings on the wall, unframed, and he would just put them up with push pins. I would like those, and sometimes he would say yes, I could buy them. So he would pay Mr. Geionety whatever he paid him, and then he would mark them up fifty cents and sell them to me.

Little Thunder: (Laughs) How old were you then? Is that when you were working?

Littrell: Well, eighteen.

Little Thunder: Eighteen?

Littrell: Eighteen. So that was my first awareness of Native American painting, but the Indians' ways, I had been living with the Comanches and Uncle Everett had shown me how fun it was to know them, and Mother, her friends were Indian people. So that was very easy for me, too. But as a very young child, I felt 13:00close to color. I was allowed, in my childhood, to dream. My sister could paint cabinets and build cellar doors and do all that--I could do none of that. We lived on a farm, we were farmers. And the cows were always supposed to be treated gently, so they allowed me to do that. That was my job, to drive in the cows for milking, because I would dream so long that they were well tended. When I was five, my mother sent me to what we called "expression lesson classes" then, and I went to a little school outside of Apache called Broxton, before I started to school. I'd give readings at these, and they were usually humorous 14:00readings, and the audience would laugh, and I would think that's pretty fun. So I think I was accustomed to talking to people, which has to do with selling art. But also, there was a kinship in all of this with feeling color. I really felt color. I remember thinking as I'd walk, how many ways could I think to use pink. I wasn't a painter, but I felt art things.

Little Thunder: That's really interesting.

Littrell: And that's how I think it started. And then, of course, it went into [an interest in] Native [art] because innately they are such strong colorists. I acquainted myself with that early on. I saw, no matter how untrained or anything, that there was a dignity in their use of color.

Little Thunder: I think your cultural exposure and familiarity with the different cultures of Southern Plains comes through. You had mentioned in an interview your family's closeness may not have been typical, and Indians weren't always well treated in that part of the country. I wonder if you ever felt any of that was deflected on you because you were friends with so many Indian people. Were you ever conscious of--

Littrell: Oh, from the very beginning. Way young, much younger than, as I reflect on it, you would think a youngster would feel that, but I did. As Betty and I, my Indian friend, would walk down the street in Apache going to her home from school, we had to pass a pool hall. The guys would stand out there and call 16:00her "Squaw," and I would go up to them and offer to fight them. I was going to hit them, and she'd say, "Oh, just don't pay any attention." But we were in the fifth grade. That's why I was so close to my mother and my grandmother, and her side of the family, because that other side of my family was more like the people in Apache. You could have someone like Doc Tate, who's very famous, the only Indian person who ever played at Carnegie Hall, and they didn't know any of that. They didn't know that he was a great painter among them. That always bothered me that they were so prejudiced against Indians. That's why I say it was eighty percent Indian, but that twenty percent that wasn't, was very strong 17:00against them.

I don't know why I first wanted to know [Betty] when we were, like, in the second grade. But I know very early on I regretted [how Indians were treated.] I didn't feel that had to be. And so that's been in my life the whole time, but it didn't have anything to do with me trying to market [Indian art]. I tried to look at the value of each individual person and how they might grow, and how indeed they did grow. And if they remained a painter, they just got better and better and better. So I learned like that. There was always that kinship that made it joyful to work with the painters, and joyful to work with the collectors that bought their work, because they were so close to it, like I was. And so you 18:00had it coming and going, just a lovely love affair both ways.

Little Thunder: Both relationships.

Littrell: Yes.

Little Thunder: It was in 1956 when you and Bob decided, as I understood it from another interview, it was your idea, of "let's start collecting some Oklahoma Indian paintings." That wasn't happening a lot yet, was it?

Littrell: Oh, there were hardly any persons [collecting]. That's why I traveled and went out of state. I don't like to think that Oklahomans won't buy now, because they do. But that took a lot of loving and caring, and the artists availing themselves of invitationals, where they were awarded awards for the finer blue ribbon winners and so forth. It just grew until it became introduced 19:00to more and more Oklahomans. And now I don't like to hear that they won't buy, because they do buy, but when we started, there was a very narrow market.

Little Thunder: And you had been, previously, as you explained, collecting Santa Clara pottery and Navajo weaving--

Littrell: But that was just to take home.

Little Thunder: But there's kind of a learning process involved in just the collecting part.

Littrell: Yes.

Little Thunder: I wonder if you could talk about that. You actually have expertise in a lot of different areas, partly because of that collecting process.

Littrell: It's true. I ended up, our name was Oklahoman Indian Art Gallery, and that was my primary item to market was the painters' work from our state. But I did love it all, and do today. Pots, and the baskets, and the rugs, and the 20:00jewelry. The more you read about it, and let dealers who dealt in that, like I dealt in the paintings, talk to me, and explain who the finer potters were, or what made this rug be a finer rug than that rug. I learned from people who were marketing. Not so much that I knew Navajo weavers, but I knew the people that dealt in their work, and they taught me. Of course, today I was reading a book on Navajo rugs. I never tire of reading about all of it. The only thing I never collected was Kachinas. That's a whole other thing. Nor did I carry them in the gallery because they were so hard to ship. But a lot of galleries in the 21:00Southwest do carry Navajo dolls and Hopi Kachinas.

Little Thunder: Can you describe the kinds of paintings that you started out collecting in the mid-fifties with Bob, in terms of Oklahoma Indian painters?

Littrell: Well, at that time, they were primarily very traditionally done, two-dimension, no foreground or background. Most of the painters were still expressing themselves in that manner, and I learned to love that. I still do love it.

Little Thunder: A lot of cultural information--

Littrell: Yes. If they painted a dancer, they knew all about that dancer, and so everything about it was done correctly. And you could learn from it. But also the very fact that they were painting something they knew made it somehow end up 22:00[being] more history and ethnography, rather than for art's sake. That started to diminish as I worked years and years with it. There was an artist named Bobby Hill, [aka] White Buffalo, who started doing scenery. A lot of people didn't want to encourage that, and [said,] "Don't buy that, because that's not traditional." But if we let them alone, and let them go ahead and evolve into what was their natural makeup to do, then I could see that, also, the Indianness was filled with it, their love of the scenery and so forth. Merlin Little Thunder: is an example of that. He has a memory for any landscape that he has 23:00ever seen in his whole life, and he can just pull that up and it comes through his mind to his heart to his paper. It would've been so wrong to have ever said to him, "You mustn't paint that."

Little Thunder: Which actually did happen, but not with you. You were known for handling Doc Tate Nevaquaya's work, a Comanche artist. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about your relationship with him.

Littrell: Yes. First of all, he went to Apache school, he was my brother's age. He was younger than I am, but I knew him through school. And then his parents both died within a few months of each other when he was thirteen, and his 24:00brother Malcolm tried to keep the children together, but it was not possible, so they sent Doc to Fort Sill Indian School. I didn't see him through those years, and I was in the gift shop at the Southern Plains Museum in Anadarko, and we were buying art, and I looked over and I saw this miniature, maybe two by three inches, and it was a Comanche couple on horses. Rosemary Ellison was the curator, and I said to Rosemary, "Who did that?" and she said, "Well, it's Doc Tate Nevaquaya." And I said, "I didn't know he painted. Where does he live?" She said, "Well, there's his wife standing right there, ask her." That was Rosemary's way.

And so I introduced myself to Charlotte, and he lived where he'd always lived, in the Nevaquaya land, and so we went down to see him. It had started raining, 25:00and the property was on a non-graveled road off of the main road, and so Bob sort of drove where he could, and then he stopped, and I walked through the mud up to Doc's house to see him and introduced myself again. He had four paintings, and I bought them, and he always said that he hadn't really decided that he was going to be a painter. But since I liked all four of them, and bought them, he thought he'd just keep on painting, and he'd be a painter. And so there was that closeness there. I handled him from--he always said '58 but I thought it was '60--but it was in that time, until he died in 1996. And, of course, he made 26:00flutes, and played flutes, and was famous for that, probably more than painting because there were so few flute players and makers at that time. He was always so professional. It was just a pure joy to deal with that man and to know him.

Little Thunder: I like hearing that because, of course, he tells the funny story about you coming through the mud in your high heels, so elegant, but you actually had a lot of history. And it's the fact that you valued those paintings, and were buying them, that partly encouraged him to go ahead. Not just anybody, but in particular, you.

Littrell: I think that somehow he knew that I was going to always be marketing. We just knew, and so, [were] having such a fine relationship with him, and such 27:00a comfortable and a happy time. Bob also--they enjoyed each other a lot. It just was a nice foundation to start dealing with more and more painters.

Little Thunder: He was painting in the flat style, somewhat, but he was also innovating, wasn't he?

Littrell: Yes.

Little Thunder: In what ways?

Littrell: He started putting in foreground and background. The things that I had purchased at first were two-dimensional dancers, and he went away from that. His horses were naturalistic, and they were still very much traditional, in ways. It was like blocks of color. In a snow, it was blocks of whites and grays that 28:00seemed very traditional. But at the same time he had gone on to more than just two-dimensional, and that was fun to see develop through the years. Mostly people who would buy his things enjoyed both. One thing he was famous for, he and Archie Black Owl, Cheyenne, were the only two that painted on black board. And there were no erasures. You had to have a perfect hand for that. And he would always play [music]--Doc painted dancers only on black--and he would always play dancer music while he was painting them, and they were always inspired. He never repeated the same posture, [it] was always different, a 29:00different pose of the dancer, when he painted. They were always original. Even though it might be the Comanche fancy dancer, it was always different. They took so much time, he couldn't do a lot of them, so there was always that feeling that it was non-commercial.

Little Thunder: That's neat to know. You mention Imogene's show, the annual invitational, and how it helped artists manage their careers because they had to consign for that show. Were they also present for the show? Was that a part of it, too?

Littrell: Yes, they all attended. Since I didn't own a gallery, and I worked as a wholesaler, that was my first experience with watching them, and how they attended shows, and enjoyed meeting the patrons that were buying. It was just a 30:00joyous experience. She [Imogene] was very good with her handling of the patrons and the artists, and when I was in town I would always go. Not to work--I'd help if she needed help, but I didn't work for her. I just attended and observed how that was evolving, and later, when I had my own gallery, I had shows all the time. One of the purposes of that was so they could meet their patrons, and the patrons would come because they wanted to see what they had created, fresh and new, just for this opening. It was a lot of work on all our parts, but it was always something that we all enjoyed.

Little Thunder: Are there any highlight memories that you have about a particular show? Numerous ones, probably--

Littrell: Well, I didn't do invitationals. So I never awarded [ribbons] after Imogene was done with Native Americans at museum shows, and those kinds of things. We just had a fun time with food and a certain period of time to have them there. I remember that I never wanted to serve anything alcoholic, because that seemed rude to me. Many of my artists were in recovery, and I thought, "Well, why do that?" but it is, of course the stylish thing to do, to serve wine and cheese, but no, I can't remember any in particular. They were all just fun.

Little Thunder: (Laughs) I wanted to talk to you a bit about opening the 32:00gallery, because as I understand from a previous interview, you took almost a year to prepare for it. What were you--

Littrell: What was I doing?

Little Thunder: What was the preparation involved?

Littrell: Well, we had to notify the painters that we were going to do this, and Oklahoma has never had a lot of Native American galleries. So we selected a space that people thought was an odd space in south[west] Oklahoma City. We leased from some people that we knew, who were collectors. And we had the 33:00availability of a lot more floor space than we could've had anywhere. And so it was a large gallery, and we opened with forty painters.

Little Thunder: That's a huge amount of artists.

Littrell: Yeah. Even with this, I think we opened with 4,000 square feet, but we covered the front so the sun couldn't come in and harm the art. It also provided us, for these forty painters, with more wall space to hang. It was in a strip shopping center, and as another little business closed, we expanded. So at one point we had 6,500 square feet, but that preparation was just actually making 34:00the inside, a gallery, and having a place for all of them to hang their work. And then later some of our finer painters died young. We lost them, and they were irreplaceable, like Mirac Creepingbear. And as I went through the years--this is not what you asked--but I just finally reduced to Merlin and Robert. Actually Robert didn't have a Santa Fe gallery at that time, and whatever he produced we were able to sell in that gallery, and it was a joyful experience. But to this day I don't know why I felt that I could sell his, it 35:00was so unlike what I had been known for. But [there] evolved rather rapidly a market for his expression.

And then shortly after, Merlin came. Of course he already was more well known, and had had another gallery, and also made shows. Robert never made shows. Merlin, being a full-blood Indian man, could go with CDIB into any and all of the shows that he wanted to go to, and he did. You get exposure that way, and so he came to me with exposure.

Little Thunder: I was hoping you would talk a little bit about Mirac Creepingbear, who's a Kiowa artist, whose work just continues to grow in stature. How did you meet him, and a little bit about your relationship.

Littrell: Mirac was Kiowa, Arapaho, Pawnee, but he lived his Kiowa part. Rita Creepingbear was his mother, so he grew up among the Kiowas. He was from Carnegie, so he was close by. He was only forty-two when he died. He died in '90, and I gave him his first one-man show in '81, and his last one-man show in '90. He sold other places, but I was his main gallery, and the only gallery that gave him shows.

Little Thunder: And you documented, didn't you? I remember a video tape [of Mirac talking about his work].

Littrell: Yes, that last show I did. He came to the gallery one day and 37:00introduced himself, and had work. But when the Susan Peters Gallery in Anadarko opened--the same day that Joe McBride opened his gallery--Bob and I went to both of those openings. McBride had been buying a lot of Miracs, and they were in the windows, and I said to Bob, "The finest art in Oklahoma today is that Creepingbear work that we're looking at." [Mirac] lived in Carnegie, and he never charged very much, and so if he could get over to Joe McBride's over in Anadarko and sell something, then he'd have money to go back home. So I got acquainted with Mr. McBride, who owned the Anadarko Daily News, he and Carolyn. 38:00I asked him if I could buy some of Mirac's [work] from him, and that's how I first started.

He told Mirac that I was buying, and then he called on me. I bought some from McBride and some from Mirac, but on the last show, I said to him, "Mirac, I want to give you a show (in '90), and I hope you'll paint for it, and you'll have income from it. But if you don't want to, I'm going to have it anyway, and I'll just buy the show from McBride." And so I bought a show from McBride and reframed them, and Mirac came and he painted one very large piece, which took him so long. He would call every now and again, and he'd say, "I just can't get 39:00this black right, and I wish sometimes that I had gone to school, but then it wouldn't be my work so much. So here I am. I'm spending all my time on this very large piece." Then he also had time left, and he did one pastel, small, but he saw the work on the wall, and he just couldn't believe it was his, because it was a whole gallery full, and we sold so well. And I told him, "I'm going to re-price your things, and I'm going to give you some of that income from where I went up from Mr. McBride's prices." And we got enough for him to buy a new little car.

Myra, his sister, lived in Los Angeles, and he went to see her, and he was lost 40:00in East L.A. He stopped and asked for directions, and they beat him almost to death, and they stole his car. Bob always photographed, so he had this photographic reproduction of the whole show--he loved that packet. I also had it taped, and he talked about it, but that wasn't what he liked. He liked carrying those [photos] in the car. Well, he lost his photos, and he lost his car. He was in the hospital almost a month and I didn't know it, and as he got better, he rang and he said, "I'm going to stay awhile longer. I think they might find my car." Which I didn't think was very hopeful, and they didn't.

He sent for Mirac Jr. and he went out to be with him, and then he called and 41:00said, "He has to come back to start school, and mother's meeting him at the airport. He'll have a pastel, would you buy it? She'll bring it over and will you buy it so he can have it to start his school things with?" I said yes, and all of his work was just a treasure. It didn't matter, pastel, whatever, large canvas, just gorgeous, gorgeous pieces. So that was the last piece I got. And then he came home. That was in August when he was in the hospital, and he came home first of September, and he died that October. He never really got over that. That was a great loss of a young talent that, my goodness, no telling where [he would have gone]. It was already so finished, in my mind, you know.

Little Thunder: What a beautiful thing, when he was in the hospital doing the pastel, basically for his son.

Littrell: Yes.

Little Thunder: I remember that you and Bob, I know Bob went to Gallup Ceremonial probably more than you did, but once in awhile the two of you went--

Littrell: Well, I went until '82, and then he continued going. But it was kind of hard for him to go. We did all kinds of things to generate income for the art, because we still bought. [The artists] consigned, but we still bought a lot, and so you could consign your work to the Gallup Ceremonial and they would hang them for you and market them. Then you'd give them a percent for doing that. And it was kind of hard for him to have to stand in line and have all of his art with him, but have to do all of this registering and so forth, and leave 43:00for a little while, the art there by the car. It was difficult, but he did it after '82 because the gallery was such a business, I couldn't leave it. So he went all those years by himself, and he marketed there.

For a time, the State Fair of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City had [the] Cottonwood Post. It was a large area, and they had prepared it for Native American painters. But you had to pay in March--quite a lot of money for your space--and most of the time the artists just were not prepared to do that. So we would take a whole big long wall, and we'd put up Oklahoma Indian Art Gallery. But we would invite artists to be in there with us, and we'd market there. Things like that seemed easy and fun. Then, finally, it got to where he was doing the Ceremonial 44:00at Gallup, and I was just at the gallery, and we didn't do that anymore. But it was fun to do a variety of things.

Little Thunder: How did you come up with the name? I mean, it seems like a simple name, but--

Littrell: A good friend and a collector said, "That is the dumbest name that I have ever heard in my life. Why can't you name it something like 'Ni-Wo-Di-Hi?'" which was a gallery in Austin, Texas. And I said, "No, we're going to name it, 'Oklahoma Indian Art Gallery.'" And I had read that, if you have a good feeling of self, and you open a business, you name it after yourself, like Ray McKee's Indian Store in Anadarko. But I wasn't naming it 'Doris Littrell: .' It was 'Oklahoma Indian Art Gallery.' Not McCabe, not Littrell: , just Oklahoma Indian 45:00Art Gallery. And then another friend of mine said, "Gee, that was so wise, because your name tells exactly what you market." And I got more business off that. They would be looking in the phone book for Indian art in Oklahoma, and there I was, Oklahoma Indian Art Gallery.

Little Thunder: I'm thinking about how Merlin would occasionally come with a couple of paintings, and you would look at them, and you might want one of them, but sometimes you might call Bob in and say, "Would you like to buy one of these paintings?" I was wondering if you two ever wanted the same piece at the same time, and how you worked that out.

Littrell: That was very interesting because if I had already picked, but I was 46:00getting too much inventory--maybe [Merlin] had three--I would pick one, and I would ask Bob, and he'd pick. But then sometimes I'd just let Bob pick first. And it was just really kind of magical. Always he got what he wanted and I got what I wanted, and hopefully, Merlin got what he wanted. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: The artist got what he wanted.

Littrell: And sometimes, I remember, he brought just one painting, and it was called "First Born," and I cried. It was so beautiful. It was this mother holding up her newborn to all of the Ancestors that had gone before, there in the clouds, and the beautiful water where she stood and everything. [The] landscape was beautiful, even without all of the rest. And I thought, "Oh, it's so beautiful." It was the only print I ever printed on my own, and I printed 47:00that with Merlin.

Little Thunder: We did well with that. One of the things I loved about your gallery was the fact that it didn't seem like it was solely, "this is a business." It was a business, but it was also a place where you could sit on a really nice piece of furniture, look at a beautiful weaving, sometimes we'd see flowers that you might have cut and assembled. Why did you want that look for your gallery?

Littrell: Well, I just love a sense of home, number one. And I thought, "I'm going to be up here"--at first it was seven days a week, later it was six and then finally, less. But I wanted to feel like I was at home, so I did it for my 48:00spirit. But in so doing, it reached out to others. I didn't say to myself, "I want to show them how it looks." You'd often hear [collectors] say, "Oh, [this art] needs to go in a cabin or it needs to go on a brick wall." It doesn't need anything. It can hang anywhere with anything, so it wasn't that. It was just that I wanted to have that feeling, that you could pick a bouquet and put it there.

Also, I never "sold." I always felt that I "introduced" or I "shared." That's why I loved having shows, because it let them get together with the painter, and 49:00see how fun that is to talk to them about what they were thinking. Or how they felt about the subject that they're looking at here that they've painted. And that's a different way of presenting for sale, than someone who is a hard sell. I was never taught to sell. I never had any training. What came natural to me was kind of a teaching. I had books if they wanted to buy a book. They never sold a lot, but that feeling in the air was there, I think--

Little Thunder: Of learning.

Littrell: Of learning that also goes with home. So it was a gallery, but it was more than a gallery, I thought.

Little Thunder: Can you talk to me about how you see the artist/gallery owner relationship, your relationship with the artists? Because every gallery owner 50:00has a slightly different take on it.

Littrell: Surely.

Little Thunder: What you kind of see as your responsibilities or your role, I guess, as the gallery owner, and what you see as their end of the deal?

Littrell: How did I feel? As I established a gallery, I think the first thing I felt was their Indianness--even before their paintings. That a spirit lived with them, that was first. And I brought that in from my grandmother and everyone that had touched my life came into that. And it went over to them. That was the first thing. And then what we had to show was their talent. That was the next 51:00thing, how do you present it? You present it as if it was their home and mine. And I think they responded well to that. That's not to say that there aren't other ways, but if you find what your way is, and be true to it, that's when it really works. But if you try to make yourself a hard seller when you're not, by nature, one, it probably is not going to work for you very well.

Little Thunder: That's a really good point. I was thinking of the fact that you seemed very focused, also, on helping the artist build their career.

Littrell: Oh, by all means. By all means, any way I could, right up until the 52:00very last months that I was there. If I wasn't going to be in business any longer, and I wasn't going to be able to help them, to market their things and see them grow because I was ending my gallery time, you could always tell them where there were going to be shows that they could enter to expose their works. So there are things that you could help with, even if it didn't end up in your gallery. We always did that. We had a helping hand.

Little Thunder: You were kind of known for the fact that you wouldn't take just any Indian artist who showed up. Can you tell me about some of the qualities you looked for in an artist before you took them on?

Littrell: I tried to spend enough time with them and with their work to get the feel of how serious they were, and how, professionally, they had already grown 53:00to be. Robert had been in a Dallas gallery--I'm speaking of Robert Taylor--and he had made up his mind that his life work was going to be painting. And sometimes if we didn't have, maybe, the sales that we had had at another time, he treated that exactly the way I treated it. It was his business, and then it was my business. We called it just tightening our belt, believing in the bounty, and working, working toward when it would pick up again. Someone said to me, maybe in '84, '83, there was a recession in galleries. I didn't even know it, I was so busy working. And I didn't read the books that told me. So I'm just thinking that worked.

Little Thunder: You were saying, in terms of artists who were sort of interested, who were professional and interested in the [business]--

Littrell: So I assumed from that that any of us who choose anything to do, if we continue doing it as a life's work, we're going to grow in our ability. And, in that way, if they were already extremely attractive to me, and I felt that I would like to handle them, then I also felt they're never going to be working for commerce only, because I never wanted that, I didn't want to do it myself, and I didn't want them to do it. So those were some of the things that I sort of 55:00pulled together when I said yes. As I grew older--because I was fifty when I opened my gallery, because I had worked in Indian business a long time, but not in a gallery--I took fewer and fewer [artists]. I could not have done a good job later on with forty--there probably weren't even forty to be had. When we opened was one thing, and what it's like now, is another thing. If you took all of the ones throughout the state, and where they go to invitationals, and all the beginners, yes, there are a lot. But they're not showing in galleries yet, or 56:00something, you know. But they need to continue showing, and that's what the museum shows are good [for].

Little Thunder: We're going to move on to looking at paintings here in a minute, but I wondered if there's anything you'd like to add to or clarify, or something we didn't cover that you'd like to cover?

Littrell: I think you've done a wonderful job of interviewing and asking questions. I feel honored to be having access to both Merlin and Robert's work, and them including me in their marketing. Even though it won't be as expansive 57:00as the gallery, that means a lot to me. I feel very honored because people are waiting--all over, not just this state, but lots of places--they're waiting. I went to an auction last Saturday with Robert, and a gallery owner asked where he was showing and he said, "Well, Gallery 822 in Santa Fe, and Doris Littrell: , broker," and he said, "Well if you ever [are looking for a gallery], we're waiting." So I know that is true.

Also people who call me to buy and sell still, that's an honor. I don't want a 58:00lot of people in, just those that I felt really close to, that had asked where they could find Merlin or Robert's [work]. This one lady came to me, even before I told her I was the owner forty years, and she said, "I want a Doc Tate and I want a Ha-So-De. And the money that I want to spend is this and this." I had bought and brought home just a few days before, a Ha-So-De, but it isn't for sale. But the fact that she's telling me, "If you locate these, this is what I'd like you to call me on." And two other persons have come to say, "Could you take these on consignment and market them for me?" So I can do a bit of that.

Little Thunder: Work goes on.

Littrell: Work goes on.

Little Thunder: Doris, you've picked a couple of pieces that you particularly like that are in your home, and I wonder if you could talk to us about those paintings?

Littrell: This is called Antelope Hunt, and it's by Ha-Do-De, who happens to be a Navajo painter who passed away, I believe, a few years back. He was considered the first contemporary Native American painter. He went very young to the Santa Fe school, and Dorothy Dunn was instructing a little later on, but she never tried to change his composition. In 1981, I gave him a one-man show in the gallery, and I've always been comfortable with his pieces, so I'm living happily with this one.

Little Thunder: It's really lovely. I'm going to hand you another one and I'm 60:00going to adjust the camera.

Littrell: This one is by Robert Taylor. It's his most recent piece that he's brought me, and it's a medicine bundle. He's well known for his birds and feathers, and I thought it was attractively presented with the red feathers of the parrot. He also did a nice writing for the prospective buyer, about what he was thinking when he created it.

Little Thunder: Thank you.

Littrell: Now I'm worried about the glass on this, so just do the best we can. This is by Merlin Little Thunder: . Merlin's been with me maybe eighteen or so years, and after he had been bringing things for maybe a year or so, he brought 61:00this one. It's called On the way to Oklahoma Indian Art Gallery. There are all of the horses, and they're loaded with paintings, and I always felt a kinship to it, as if he was saying to me, "Okay now, you wanted to work with it, so I've got a lot of art right here, and let's see what you can do." (Laughter) My daughter Kim wants it for hers later on.

Little Thunder: Thank you.

------- End of interview -------