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Little Thunder: This is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. Today is November 2, 2012, and I'm interviewing Minisa Crumbo at her husband Jim Halsey's office in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Minisa, you're an artist who grew up around Native art. Your father, Woody Crumbo, is a celebrated artist. You're also a supporter of women's art and have spent much of your life thinking about tribal spiritual traditions, those of your people and other people. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me.

Crumbo-Halsey: You're welcome, Julie. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm honored.

Little Thunder: Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

Crumbo-Halsey: I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I lived here until I was seven years old and then the family moved to Taos, New Mexico.

Little Thunder: Your mother was Muscogee Creek, and she was a school teacher who painted watercolor painting?

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes.

Little Thunder: How did she impact you growing up?

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, she gave me a love of learning and reading that endures to this day. She gave me a love of education. She was an educated woman. She valued 1:00that from the very beginning. She always brought me books home from teachers' meetings, things like that. Straight from Dick and Jane, I was with the reading agenda! (Laughter)

Little Thunder: How about your father? What was his influence on you growing up?

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, of course, I sat by his side, earlier than that, on the floor when he was working because he nearly always had a home studio. It was just a part of my environment. He influenced me in that I really grew up with that as my predominant world view.

Little Thunder: Right. Was your brother artistically inclined like you were?

Crumbo-Halsey: [Woody] is a fabulous silversmith.

2:00

Little Thunder: Now, your father was Citizen Potawatomi, but he was also raised by Muscogee Creek people, I think.

Crumbo-Halsey: For a few years.

Little Thunder: Would you say that cultural influence was a little more dominant in your life, growing up?

Crumbo-Halsey: I would say that the pan-Indian experience, very much of a culturally bilocated experience, is what influenced me more than anything. By culturally bilocated, I mean not only pan-Indian but also dominant society and Indian cultures. I have a lot of influences. I'm also mixed-blood. I have Scots-Irish and German tribal influences that run deep and strong in me that I value very highly.

Little Thunder: Were you close to your grandparents on your mother's side?

3:00

Crumbo-Halsey: Very close to them.

Little Thunder: What are your memories of them?

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, I have a lot of memories. They lived on a farm. They weren't on the original allotment, but they were close to it. Like a lot of Oklahoma populations in the 1940s, they were still on the farm and completely rural. They had a wagon and a team of horses that they hitched up when they went to Checotah or to Pierce. The only cash income was from forty acres of pecans and cattle that my grandfather raised. They never had indoor plumbing or electricity. They grew all their own food. I grew up in a great deal of that atmosphere, and I was there for some of what were the last butcherings.

4:00

At a certain point, the family had a huge smokehouse because they had to get through the winter and cared for a few other hands. They had a three-room smokehouse. Having smoked, myself, I can tell you it takes a lot of meat to fill three rooms. There [are many] processes involved. [Those were] very valuable [lessons in sustainable farming, gardening and animal husbandry that I draw upon today].

There was a vineyard. Of course, there was a huge garden, lots of canning. Gran made her own soap, grew their own corn and the food for the animals. Had hogs, chickens, a milk cow. Made their own butter, buttermilk, dairy products. There was a spring [near the house]. I value it.

5:00

Little Thunder: Wonderful experiences. What is the first piece of art that you have a really distinct memory of when you were young, when you sort of become conscious of the fact that, "I'm looking at a piece of art"?

Crumbo-Halsey: Oh, my. What would that have been? I think I would have to back it up a little bit to a piece of art that I experienced before I knew it was art, and that would be the Peyote Ceremony mural that's in the Philbrook Museum. I was about three years old when our father was working on that, three or four, 6:00and he worked on it at night when the public wasn't there. I would go over with him and be present while that was going on. I remember getting lost in the Philbrook. There wasn't anyone there.

Little Thunder: How exciting to be in a big museum! Or scary?

Crumbo-Halsey: It was scary. I was calling around and running, running and calling for him. (Laughs) Then he came up and got me. That probably marks my experience more because I really noted what he was doing then when he had to come up and get me.

Little Thunder: Right, wow. What is your first memory of making art, yourself?

Crumbo-Halsey: Art. What is art? That's what it brings my thoughts around to. I 7:00don't really classify art as an activity. It's more of a connection of spirit and the combination, unification of mind, heart, body, spirit connecting with spirit energy, which then infuses whatever it is that we do. So I would say probably digging in the earth was my connection, my first connection and then handling the material because art by its definition, then, has to have a material, a physical property. I would say mine was just first a handful of clay, earth, or sand.

Little Thunder: At your folks' house or grandparents' house?

Crumbo-Halsey: At my grandparents' house. In front of the house there was a spring that [flowed] by [the house]. People still stop to get water there.

8:00

Little Thunder: So you moved to Taos when you were around six?

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes.

Little Thunder: What was the reason for the move?

Well, our father had asthma. Not quite asthma. He had respiratory problems that were aggravated by the humidity (do you relate?) and the pollens, so he had traveled [west previously] and found that he was able to live and breathe much more clearly and aside from loving the area and knowing [many] people.

Then, of course, he had [accompanied]Thomas Gilcrease [west while] serving as artist-in-residence at the Gilcrease Foundation in the mid-'40s. [While] 9:00traveling [west], and Thomas Gilcrease purchased [many paintings] from the Taos founders [which served to] broaden our father's relationship with the area even more deeply. [The relocation to New Mexico] was a combination of health and work-[related interests].

Little Thunder: Was he still working a little bit for Gilcrease at that point when you moved or not?

Crumbo-Halsey: No, he'd completed his work, the body [of which totaled] 160 pieces that he [completed while] in position [of artist in residence]. That [body of work and more] will be represented in the Gilcrease Centennial Exhibition, February 2013.

Little Thunder: Oh, that's really exciting.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes.

Little Thunder: I don't know if you ever met Gilcrease, and you would've been so young if you did, but I just wondered if you had a memory of him.

10:00

Crumbo-Halsey: Oh, certainly, certainly. I have many memories of him [as very kind and nice]. I went back and forth all the time. I wasn't [yet] in school, so I was [present and observing]. The museum was [under construction and] not open yet. Our father was there to paint and accompany [T.G.] on buying trips and assisting in the [establishment] of the museum. His sons [and their] children, I knew and played with at that time. Bart's daughter, Jana, and I were friends, and we connected [recently] after many, many years.

Little Thunder: That's cool. So what are your memories of Taos and that big change from these landscapes of your grandparents' farm, northeastern Oklahoma, 11:00and Taos?

Crumbo-Halsey: I didn't view it as [a] radical change. It was just a change. I'm a Potawatomi, and Potawatomis are migrators and travelers. We trace our Anishinaabe roots back to Nova Scotia and have been following the seven shell [fires] prophecy for the last several hundred years. Now [the Potawatomi] are [principally] gathered around the shores of Lake Michigan in Indiana, [Kansas, Oklahoma], and Michigan. [The Potawatomi] were [again] on the move [by government order] when relocated to Kansas and Oklahoma.

The tradition [of movement] is alive and well in me regarding the new optimism. 12:00[The family] traveled back [to Oklahoma] every summer and Christmas to be with the grandparents. Then, eventually, we had some family move to New Mexico from here, so I can't say that I experienced any separation at all. It was an enhancement and enrichment of an already very rich life.

Little Thunder: What school did you attend in Taos?

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, I went to the Taos Day School, first of all, because our mother was [a BIA] teacher there. She was a first-grade teacher, and was my first [grade] teacher.

Little Thunder: Oh, wow! (Laughs) Did that present challenges in any way?

Crumbo-Halsey: No. She was just my teacher. No, she didn't single me out at all. She was very professional, and it was just a wonderful experience. I went there for three years, and then they moved into town, and I went to the elementary 13:00school and junior high school in Taos, New Mexico.

Little Thunder: So you probably have some strong memories of Taos Pueblo, too.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes.

Little Thunder: Do you mind sharing a couple of those?

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, it's a very, very deep, unique, and powerful place, and my stories are only superficial vignettes and observations from the outside because I'm not Taos. What I do recall was in the early days, there [was] a guard, a person that stands guard 24/7 [at different points] around the Pueblo, [making] prayers, watching the movements of the sun, [the wind, night sky],the comings 14:00and goings of the people. There is a great deal of attentiveness that is very present with the people, coordinating the activities [of the people] with those of the natural world.

[The Taos people are] agrarian. They still had a granary society at that time where seven years of grain [was stored in] prepar[ation] of famine or drought. [The Taos Pueblo people are] very culturally-oriented in terms of bringing forward the old [ways, teachings, and] ceremonies, the foods and [continuing to] live in that way [still].

In the Pueblo itself, there [was] no [running] water or power. I remember [a] friend's grandmother wanted to get [electric] power into her house, which was a ways away from the [most traditional] Pueblo grounds. She could've gotten power 15:00where she was, but her grandson looked at her, and he said, "Grandma, are you sure you want to have to pay to live?"-- They don't need money.

That and my experience with my grandparents were very formative in my world view and establishing my priorities about what it was going to take to [define] liv[ing] well, what [that] looked like, and what I had to do to live well, which first of all comes from establishing [and maintaining the right] relationship with the Creator, the land, family, and community and tribe, in whatever order that happens to come, and endeavoring to remain in balance and harmony and fine attunement with [all living] things. Everything else is accessory, [important 16:00but of secondary importance.]

Little Thunder: Who were some other Native artists you got to know growing up?

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, of course, I knew Bert Phillips and Joseph Henry Sharp.

Little Thunder: Wow.

Crumbo-Halsey: They were Taos founders.

Little Thunder: They must've been a little bit older, pretty elderly.

Crumbo-Halsey: They were getting on up there at that time. A lot of the Taos artists, Ila McAfee--let's see. There's just so many, and then a lot of the Oklahoma artists, Archie Blackowl, Blackbear Bosin, Willard Stone, [Fred 17:00Beaver], just everyone that was working around here at that time that Dad came back for shows with and he was personal friends with.

Little Thunder: Did you think of yourself--and you've kind of explained your views in not wanting to categorize in that way, but I'm wondering if you thought of yourself as an artist from a fairly young age?

Crumbo-Halsey: No, it wasn't even hardly an identified word because I was growing up in a community, a tri-cultural community at that. Everyone had their own connection with Spirit, community, the land. It was full of art, if you 18:00will, and no one used those words. A bowl of beans and chicos (corn) that you have cooked with maybe a little pig from your own yard and some chile that you grew is high art. [It's a] high art that feeds and nourishes the people. People love what they produce, and they love the simplicity of the land and the diet and the relationship of the land that it takes to bring forward a meal like that, which is no small feat, given the vagaries of weather and the things that can happen. There's much appreciation for [the gifts of the Mother Earth, the Father Sky-Sun, our labor combined with the "medicine" of the elements.].

Someone that [had] a gallery [and/or gift shop] and is selling things for [respectable] prices on the street is viewed as on exactly the same level as a 19:00person that opens the acequias (ditches), keeps them clean, sings the songs, is up at sunrise greeting the sun and sunset, letting the sun go back into the night. Those things are on a parity that has more to do with Spirit than art [as an abstract concept].

Little Thunder: Now, you did study at the Taos Academy of Fine Art, is that right?

Crumbo-Halsey: I did, yes.

Little Thunder: What did you learn there? What was that experience like?

Crumbo-Halsey: I learned one very important thing. My teacher[s] at a certain point, [Ron Barsano and] Ray Vinella, [Ray] who[m] I saw this [visit] is [now] retiring from painting. It was very [good] to reconnect with him. [While still 20:00in training with Ray] I said, "When I got good or when I think about identifying as an artist--," he said, "Stop it right here. You're an artist right now. Don't ever view yourself any differently. You don't become an artist. You are an artist."

Then he taught me about value. Draftsmanship [was a value I received from my father and] has always been my first love, drawing. [Ray then] introduced [me to] the concept of color and value in some very interesting ways. He had been an artist for Disney, and [had initially] began drawing with the Famous Artists course. You probably saw those [ads] in the comic books [of] the '50s, right? Well, I have his Famous Artists book series that he purchased and went through when he was in the Army! (Laughter) He learned how to do that. Then he went to 21:00work for Disney, and [later] he [moved] to Taos and [continued as] a fine artist.

So, [as] he was teaching about value, "Value is the temperature of color, warm or cool grade within it," he said, "You'll understand that much. I'm going to give you a whole lot more teaching now that you won't understand, but you will later." And it went that way. (Laughter) At the time when he said that, I thought, "Well, I don't understand. He's telling me I don't understand. I'll accept that." Then one day he said, "It's like a light bulb will go off in your head, and you'll understand what I'm saying." And it went that way. (Laughter) It was [good]!

Little Thunder: Thanks for sharing that story.

Crumbo-Halsey: I learned to do portraits [while studying with Ray Vinella]. Portraits [as subject matter has come with] time [and] I enjoy [it] very much. I have one of the portraits over here, we'll talk about a little bit later. [As an instructor in TAFA (Taos Academy of Fine Art),] he brought in people from the 22:00Taos Pueblo to sit for us, and one of them was a man named Joe Sandoval "Sun Hawk". He was also a Peyote Road Man and a good friend of our father's.

His wife, Annie Sandoval, took care of us when Mother was teaching. My brother [Woody, Jr.] was younger and [not yet] in school. Annie became our surrogate mother. In recent years, we've all reconnected again, and it's been very nice. Annie and Joe are gone, but the children and the grandchildren are around, and so the association comes on down through time. We're coming into something of a story here, and I would like to interject something here of the Spirit of the story.

23:00

Little Thunder: Sure.

Crumbo-Halsey: It's one thing to read a story, and it's another thing to write a story. I attended a gathering last night. N. Scott Momaday was there. He began right on target with me, right on line, saying that he was at the confluence of evolution, prayer, and story, and I [thought, "Thank you for your words.] I'm all about this. I'm there." Then went on to give a wonderful evening.

It reminded me of the chapter that I wrote for the Gilcrease book on the Taos years. I was moved to write something about the story. I would like to contribute this to the interview and introduce and shift into yet another of 24:00your gears of storytelling of life, as oral tradition is actually story, and the story of life is a precious thing that you are doing in order to preserve that history and that message for posterity. So if I may take a moment, I'd like to read a paragraph that I included in the Taos chapter of the Gilcrease book on Woody Crumbo about the nature of "story" as I see it.

"[Our] stories are what keep us alive. When Spirit ways unite with the mind and the body, we [are] connect[ed] with our [essential] divinity. A story is a Spirit way, a sacred thing, and must be told [truly]. The storyteller and the 25:00listener must both be ready and [travel] at the same pace. [When we] tell a story well [we are] engage[d] in a ceremony. [Our] stories are what keep us alive."

Little Thunder: That's wonderful. Thank you for reading that.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes, you're welcome.

Little Thunder: So, what path, after studying at the Taos school there, the art institute--and I'm not sure how old you were, but I'm just wondering what you did after that. Were you a teenager at that point?

Crumbo-Halsey: No, I was in my early thirties.

Little Thunder: Oh, okay! Maybe we could just go back a little bit and follow 26:00your journey from the time that you graduate from school, I guess. Would that have been in New Mexico?

Crumbo-Halsey: No, it was in El Paso, Texas [at the University of Texas-El Paso].

Little Thunder: Okay.

Crumbo-Halsey: --and Mount Pleasant, Utah. I married, and I had my children, my lovely children: Woodrow Rexford Carter and Christine Heather Carter. Then in the early '70s, we moved to Taos, and that's when I enrolled in TAFA, Taos Academy of Fine Art, and studied with Ray Vinella and Ron Barsano.

I studied color, draftsmanship, portraiture, art theory. It was a very eclectic program and unfortunately all too short because of life changes in both of the 27:00teachers' lives. The Taos Academy closed, and I applied to School of Visual Arts in New York City and went immediately there to [live and] study. [It] was a very interesting experience.

I loved being in New York at that time [and] met a lot of people. The school experience was [complex and broadening intellectually], but it was [my] personal experience of the city and the peoples I met there, some of the workshops [such as] the Society of Illustrators and [other] places that were most valuable. The 28:00larger experience of the world had a spiritual underpinning and instruction.

Little Thunder: In New York, what was your style and subject matter when you went in?

Crumbo-Halsey: It was the same. It was draftsmanship and painting.

Little Thunder: And were portraits sort of a focus already then, too?

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes. [The instructors at Visual Arts allowed us to] follow our own subject. Some of the classes were more specific than others. There was [the] Spider Man [comic] class. Who was the creator of Spider Man? Spider Man was just getting big [and served] on staff [where I was able to] monitor some of [the] classes. I would walk by, and [being] so full of information, a dynamic 29:00communicator and teacher, I [was drawn to enter] and soaked up what he had to say because [in art] it's all relevant.

Harvey Dinnerstein was a famous illustrator in the city. I had a class with him. I worked with live models in a large studio with windows, black and white, silverpoint, learn[ing many] new and interesting techniques. [The film school] experimental filmmaking, pre-video days, [was available] so in my off-time I caught some of that. It was very interesting.

Little Thunder: Now, did you connect with some galleries while you were there, or not? Did you have your work in any?

Crumbo-Halsey: No, I didn't show in any galleries. There's a large population, 30:00and [there are] only so many galleries. It's a very competitive [atmosphere and market. An artist must be prepared] to pay for [a gallery] to take you on, and then they're probably going to take 50 or 60 percent commission, much more so than they do in the West. I was strictly there to study.

The alternative galleries were starting up at that time. A lot of them were--at that time it was--what do they call it? It was where it happens. You know what I mean. There was a demonstration of the activity [occurring.] Some galleries were in lofts and undeveloped portions of the city [with] space [available for artists to hang]. Even [so,] those people were fairly well connected with the art scene, with the New York art scene [and] making initial movements into the 31:00off-Broadway of galleries--

Little Thunder: Right.

Crumbo-Halsey: --off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway of galleries. (Laughter) I was strictly there to learn and experience, but I did recognize that when I got back home that life for me as a professional artist was going to be infinitely easier for me than it was for those people in the city. Many of them would never find gallery space and would never come in for their share of PR, would never be recognized outside of a very small area. I didn't endeavor to compete there at all because it was not going to be my home, and it wasn't my--leave them their place where they need to live and work and grow in because I had my own place to 32:00come back to.

Little Thunder: What was your first sale of artwork?

Crumbo-Halsey: Probably at Gallery A, a gallery run by Mary Sanchez in Taos. I spent a number of years studying and working and wanted to reach a point where I felt like I could respect my work as an artist and [have] a broad enough appeal to sell. I held back looking for a gallery until I felt I could reach that point. [When] I took my portfolio around she liked what she saw and took a chance on me. [It] paid my rent for years.

Little Thunder: That's wonderful. So this was when, approximately?

Crumbo-Halsey: In '73, '74, '75, '76, '77, like that.

33:00

Little Thunder: Were your children living there, too, then?

Crumbo-Halsey: Off and on. Sometimes with their father in Denver and sometimes with me.

Little Thunder: How did your dad respond to some of the directions you were taking in art? Was he passed on by then?

Crumbo-Halsey: No, no he wasn't. He liked it just fine. He was not a [formal] teacher. He declined to say anything about what anyone did because he recognized it as [expression and as] a process. He did teach a few times off and on. It was always when he was living else[where] and I didn't have the opportunity to sit with him. At the time when he devoted himself to [teaching], he was a superb 34:00instructor. A [student] that really wanted to put a lot into the work and spend a lot of time with it could get a lot from him. If they were not willing to put time into the work in the direction that he was giving them, they had a very hard time because they couldn't keep up. If his direction wasn't followed, they just weren't there. They just weren't there on the same page together at all. So no, he never did say too much about what I did.

Each person's work is so personal. That's your relationship with the [personal core source and] Creator. I mean, you can say a little something about perspective or value or drawing, but even so, if someone's drawing a perspective, or a color value is off a little bit, unless you're in a classroom, 35:00[an] ongoing classroom circumstance with them, it's going to be very hard to identify, address, get them to understand and accept what you have to say.

[Generally speaking,] artists do not really want to hear what someone else has to say about their work, especially if it's a critique, and get them to make the shift and make it habitual. There's a menu, a long and a complex menu, that has to do with perception, habit that really leads one to [allow] a person follow [to] their own process. If [someone] asks [or offers] a critique and you're in a position to give a critique, tread very lightly and correctly so they can accept 36:00and grow to [understand] what [has been offered]. If it's not direct, objective and correct to some extent, it 'will] , it will be rejected. Whatever is not correct is there forever, probably, and you've probably lost a friend.

Little Thunder: That's really well put.

Crumbo-Halsey: [Thank you. Successful judging, critiquing and even the offering of opinion must be made with acuity, kindness and compassion.]

Little Thunder: You made a trip to Russia. You had an exhibition in Russia in 1979. Is that right?

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes, yes.

Little Thunder: How did that come about?

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, [a] Russian [cultural delegation was] traveling in the United States with Gos Concert [a state agency]. They attended a concert of Roy Clark's at Roy Clark's invitation in Las Vegas, leading to a relationship which brought them, ultimately, to Tulsa where they saw some of my work in exhibition and asked if I would prepare for an exhibition [in the Soviet Union].

37:00

The only stipulation was it could not be [a] commercial [exhibition]. It was [agreed upon two years [hence]. I had to be working on a non-commercial exhibition and also keep my income coming in while prepare[ing]. It was fine. It happened. I ultimately took thirty-six pieces of portraits, primarily tri-cultural portraits, and some poetry, which was very well received. It was at the height of the Cold War, and the misinformation was flying back and forth. The air was full of it.

[The Russians] were getting the same [propaganda] that we [Americans] were. 38:00[They] were [very essentially] interested in looking into the eyes of the Americans, Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo, and plumbing our depths for themselves, finding out who we were for themselves. It was very successful in that way. They would stand before the portraits for a long time and look and look and look. Each one of those portraits that I sent, I [had] asked permission of the person that sat for me if [asked] they would come and be present in that exhibition. Some said no, and most said yes, so they were [fully] there. They were there, looking as well as being looked at].

Little Thunder: That's a wonderful dimension to that because they're meeting the people.

Crumbo-Halsey: Got to be real. Got to be real, otherwise you're just looking at 39:00nothing. You're looking at a design if the spirit of the person isn't there. When I got home I unpacked them and returned them to the sitters.

Little Thunder: Wow. What a wonderful gift.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes, presented them with a painting or a drawing that was framed and had been on the exhibition, and they were so glad to be back.

Little Thunder: When and how did you meet Jim?

Crumbo-Halsey: At an exhibition here in town, [Tulsa, Oklahoma].

Little Thunder: Can you tell us a little about it? Did you notice him right away?

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Being around the music business, did that impact your creative process or your creativity in any way?

40:00

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, it was another creative [sense] that was going on concurrently with mine, yes.

Little Thunder: But Gilcrease Museum gave you a solo show, as well.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes.

Little Thunder: What was that like?

Crumbo-Halsey: Oh, it was great. I think I had fourteen pieces, and it was a group show. There were a lot of other Indian artists were exhibiting. It was a wonderful opportunity.

Little Thunder: And with all the memories, also, that you had of Gilcrease.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes.

Little Thunder: Did you find that your subject matter and style and palette were 41:00changing at that point? Could you identify any changes?

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, I was beginning to work more in dream and vision, alongside the portraits.

Little Thunder: So there was realism, and then there was--

Crumbo-Halsey: Right. Dream and vision. The dream and vision were executed in flat line and color instead of the three-dimensional classical European studio style.

Little Thunder: I know that you and Jim also attended some Native art shows and collected some work. Why was that important to you?

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, he's the one that attended most of the shows and bought. It 42:00was before we met. After that the [investments] went into the household. (Laughter) The collecting was over! There was plenty of art for the walls.

Little Thunder: You were providing art.

Crumbo-Halsey: Right! (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Oh, that's great. Did you ever do any booth shows at all, or was it always museums?

Crumbo-Halsey: No, I didn't. I assisted and accompanied my father in a lot of booth shows. I've never been that prolific and never produced multiples. You have to have multiples. You can't just have originals up there. There's just not that many. Our father worked a lot with silk screens and etchings, especially the silk screens, what people are so familiar with.

Little Thunder: How big a part of your art have commissions been over the years?

Crumbo-Halsey: Not very big. I don't like to do commissions. Someone really has 43:00to have their own relationship with something already [complete]. I don't work to direction [and deadline, preferring to complete a portfolio of work for exhibition and then seeking a time and space with a gallery].

Little Thunder: One of the portraits that I did see was the one you did of Rennard Strickland, the writer and legal scholar, and it was just a wonderful, wonderful portrait.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes, I have it right here in the exhibition at the Fred Jones [Jr. Museum of Art]. No, I don't usually work to--this was a friendship piece that we did here.

Little Thunder: Were there any challenges to doing that?

Crumbo-Halsey: No.

Little Thunder: I think that relationship really translates in that.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes. Whenever I did portraits in the past of someone, I never 44:00took commissions. If they liked it, fine, and if they didn't, it was mine.

Little Thunder: Besides creating art, have you done any judging of art shows?

Crumbo-Halsey: Don't do that. Absolutely not. No, my father gave me two pieces of advice at a certain point. He said, "When you reach a certain point in your career, don't participate in judged shows because if you don't make it, then people will say, 'Well, so and so can't make the show anymore,' or, 'They weren't accepted' or whatever. Just forget that. And don't judge your fellows' art because you'll make an enemy of everyone but the first three awardees. They will not understand. Just don't do it." I did once, [regretted it for I found the counsel to be] true.

Little Thunder: Was it here in Oklahoma?

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes. It was not a good thing. Let someone impartial, someone 45:00who's not connected with the community do that. Big mistake to sit in judgment of your fellows any time, really. A big lesson there. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: You have friends who are women artists, men artists, and a very eclectic, as you said, approach to art, yourself. Can you talk a bit about some of the things you appreciate about the work of women artists that you've become friends with.

Crumbo-Halsey: I'd rather talk about my work as a female artist [than comment on another artist expression.]

Little Thunder: Okay. That'd be great.

Crumbo-Halsey: --and let the works speak for themselves. I taught traditional 46:00women's ways for many years, and I had a lot of art come out from that. For me, my work, where I happen to be differentiated as a female in this world of duality, gives me a unique world view of Creation. The teachings came out of that, and the art came out of that. In that way, each person's work speaks of their personal relationship with the Creator and the family, their gender affiliations and experiences.

My work in traditional women's ways is uniquely feminine and female in that it 47:00talks about and addresses the blood mysteries, which is the way that, as women, we are grounded and seek and forge and manifest personal power and relationship power, being a relationship with the Creator, through our biology.

That is the definition of every person's relationship with art. If you happen to be a female, that is our story, but it's also the other side of the story because it's a gift to the side of the story that it's not the story of. So, both are, both ways, always blended gender. Masculine, feminine are very, very important because ultimately from whence we came we shall return. We are spirit beings and living in a physical body, which is defined by masculine or feminine 48:00definitions and ephemeral by its definition because [first of all] we are Spirit beings.

Right now we are differentiated and enjoying that dance, enjoying the beauty of that dance, but it's always desirable to bring it back into fine attunement, in touch with our [inner] masculine and feminine [natures]. That is the true marriage. The true marriage that's spoken of in the marriage ceremony is really each person's marriage with their inner masculine or feminine. It's spoken of in the physical marriage ceremony that the two shall become one. Well, that's where it comes from, is here. Spirit that comes together and becomes one, [unity] 49:00there. [From the unity center we radiate the whole person] to the physical world.

When a person meets t[the unity] center and comes in and engages in whatever ceremony or observation or prayer that they do, then they are renewed and restored, have gifts and energy of harmony and balance to take out to the world through the left or the right, the masculine or the feminine, back into duality mak[ing their] contribution [of art and vision].

That's it in a nutshell about my work with traditional women's ways. I did offer sweat lodge and dance opportunities and ceremony and was trained by some very fine medicine teachers. Marcellus Bear-Heart Williams of the Muscogee Creek tribe was my first teacher. [He] gave me an exceptional grounding in universal 50:00and nonjudgmental love for all beings and grounded that teaching very well for me, which I'm carrying on to this day.

Little Thunder: When did you start that teaching? Was that in your forties?

Crumbo-Halsey: Thirties.

Little Thunder: In your thirties, the same time.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes. He was a friend of our father's and a distant blood relative.

Little Thunder: But when you, yourself, began teaching traditional women's ways, about the same time?

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes.

Little Thunder: Exploring it.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes.

Little Thunder: Have you worked around the country a little bit, workshops around?

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes, yes, extensively. I'd like to add that traditional women's 51:00ways are universal ways. If you bleed, you're a traditional woman. If you breathe, you're a traditional woman. If you eat, sleep, drink. No one has a lease on the word "traditional." We're universal. Traditional just has its own particular definition that someone wants to bring forward and share [culturally saying], "Now this is our tradition," but it's not the only one. The deepest grounded traditional traditions that we have [originate] from the mind of Creation [for all beings].

Little Thunder: In what ways do you think maybe your teaching has influenced your painting a bit, or maybe vice versa?

52:00

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, it would be vice versa. I have not developed the teachings of the women's ways into paintings as much as the painting tradition came into that, simply because holding energy for the teachings 24/7 put me in service to the teaching and not as a painter. I have not painted professionally for thirty years. I've been teaching. I get a little bit in, here and there, but you have to make some choices about how you're going to spend your time and express yourself.

Little Thunder: That's been the art you've been focusing on.

Crumbo-Halsey: Right, right. I went back to school a couple of years ago and 53:00picked up a course in silversmithing with Bradley Oliver who was a teacher at TTC [Tulsa Technology Center], a fine silversmith here in town. I had the pleasure of sitting with him for a year and receiving his support.

I sat with my brother earlier and worked with him in the studio there, but Bradley is the one that drew me through the keyhole. (Laughter) Yes. Very exacting, which was--it's wonderful. You [must] have someone, hopefully, [who] knows exactly what they're doing and asks you to do only that and nothing less, and then you get it. (Laughter) I've been on a high learning curve the last number of years. I moved into video documenting artists and creative people, myself.

54:00

Little Thunder: I understand you've been interested in documenting the work of other artists with video.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes, I'm very much interested in that. It really started so many years ago when I was doing the portraits. I would just draw whoever was in my life, and if they passed into my living room, I was likely to ask them if they'd sit for me. I always had materials handy, and I'd pull [them] out and do a drawing. It's the same thing. It just depends on who's in my life. I've always got the camera in the car. It's in the car now. I may not use it very much for a long period of time, but I want to have it [handy]. Now, thank goodness for iPhone cameras. They're just great. I carry a little microphone around with me, 55:00too. I appreciate your work. I know you have a lot of fun with it. Do you do your own editing?

Little Thunder: No, Juliana [Nykolaiszyn].

Crumbo-Halsey: Hooray! (Laughter) You sit beside her when she does some editing, I suppose. It's so nice if you don't have to do both.

Little Thunder: Yes.

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, it's like that, the painting and the teaching. It really comes down to one or the other. They're two necessary but specific talents, very time- consuming.

Little Thunder: Right. In 2006 the Oklahoma History Center hosted Crumbo Spirit Talk [Exhibit]. Can you tell us how that came about?

Crumbo-Halsey: The 2006--

56:00

Little Thunder: I've got the wrong date. I'm thinking of this year actually, I think.

Crumbo-Halsey: Twelve.

Little Thunder: Yes, 2012.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes.

Little Thunder: Sorry about that. (Laughter)

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, this year is our father's [Woody Crumbo] centennial year. He would've been 100, so there's some things going on. The History Center, Dr. Bob Blackburn, asked if I would be interested in doing something with them. I had thought [perhaps] this 100-year anniversary [would] be privately noted and marked. I was interested, of course, in doing what I could to honor our father and his contribution to the world in whatever way that I could, and very appreciative of the interests and opportunity that Dr. Blackburn brought forward. I produced a lot of things from our collection and made them 57:00gallery-ready and worked with their wonderful establishment [and staff]. The show opened [with rotating exhibitions] in January of 2012, which is our father's birthday, and it [was] up for a year and a half.

Little Thunder: Great.

Crumbo-Halsey: The exhibitions are going to [rotate] quarterly [for] not all of [the work] can be shown at [one time]. They asked that it be a family show, so there's some of my father's work (most of the bulk of it is his), some of my brother's jewelry work, and up to thirty of my pieces--

Little Thunder: Oh, great.

Crumbo-Halsey: --some of it from the black-and-white images from Alive in a Living World, which is relevant to the traditional women's ways teachings, which 58:00are actually illustrations for the book that I'm working on now, entitled [Spirit Talk].

Little Thunder: Do you feel like talking about that a little bit, the book that you're working on now?

Crumbo-Halsey: I can talk about it. The development areas are tender and sensitive and in development. I really can't tell you what they're about now [as] they're in development. (Laughter) I've been working on the book a number of years. I'm in the selection process now. It's something of a blood mysteries 59:00manual, if you will.

It's a sensational way to put it, but in a way we're all seeking the sensation of linkage with our deepest selves and the Creator. We all [desire] to die and be reborn to Spirit in ceremony and in a sacred way. Ceremony allows a person to do that without having to get into risky social behavior.

60:00

[As women] our biology and the fact that we have a moon-time event once a month when in our childbearing years offers us the opportunity to meet the sacred charge as [understood by] me, to meet it and to experience [the charge], live it out, and satisfy it to the larger community, ourselves and the larger community, the larger community meaning all of us [now on the Mother Earth].

A powerful Spirit action that a person undertakes, when satisfied, is actually in service to and a gift to all of Creation. Who knows where it stops? What 61:00happens for the one happens for the all. As women, we have a sacred charge to move through and live with our moon time in a particular way, going [in]to retreat, [a personal sacred ceremony].

[There is] a lot of information, and it's not something that we have to go out of our home to do. It's a way that is non-competitive with the larger society in that the larger society in this case being the fact that most of us as women have to interface with a lot of men in our world. That's fine, but we have a women's way, too, which isn't identified or brought forward very often.

[The women's moon time practice removes] us [from the] competitive arena, and the men love it. They love it when we find our power and our beauty and come 62:00forward [to] bring something of our own forward. They've been waiting for us to do it. We got sideways with it so many years ago, so long ago, to our detriment, and now we're crying around about it because we don't have our way and we're trying to make it in the men's world.

It's two steps forward and one step back. Some people might say, "Well, how am I going to continue to function in the world?" Do it, and you'll find out because it's different for each person [for] these gifts come from the Creator, not from us. We have to put ourselves in the way of the Creator's energetic path that was provided for us.

63:00

Little Thunder: Sometimes there's an attitude of, "We have these ways of knowing, and they're really ours, and we don't need to [share]." There's that attitude, and then there's, "Well, these ways aren't pertinent to you anymore, so you all don't need to know about them." There's different attitudes towards teaching, I guess, of traditional ways.

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, what are we talking about when we say "ways"? What's that mean? What's the word there when the word "ways" is? Do you know what you're talking about to me when you say those ways? Do you know what ways you're even referring to? [Personal ceremonies of the moon time allow us to create a time and space to conduct medicine inquiries into personal, cultural and collective ways--but, mostly to delve deeply into our own true path.]

Little Thunder: Right.

Crumbo-Halsey: They don't know. I call that the Tampax mentality. "Oh, you don't need to do that anymore." That doesn't go very deep. We'll stop right there! (Laughter)

64:00

Little Thunder: I guess just another question real quickly, but you don't go into this--this is your political commitment, too, is to the spiritual. Are you interested in activist politics at all or not?

Crumbo-Halsey: Totally not. [I] have [my] hands full, and [I am] not doing that. If [I participate in 'politics' my] political profile [would] be different. Men don't have [the same] ceremonies [as ours]. We're so fortunate we carry our 65:00biology. We carry our ceremony within us. The women go in; the men go out. Men have always been the ones to carry the ceremony in the [larger/outer] world, into the world of competition, and the speed of [this world] has been [deeply] penalizing for all of us.

Little Thunder: I read a quote of your father's about how important stories are, and you read us that wonderful piece of writing that you've done for the catalogue. I'm wondering if at this point in your life your father's story is even more central to you now than it was in the past.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes, definitely it is. Yes, I would say that honoring him in his 66:00centennial year is no small thing for all of us. That's one of the things that has been my pleasure to participate in, is bringing that out for everyone and finding out it was for me, too, because he [speaks to me] from the other side. His works are about our beautiful, physical world of duality as we know it that is infused and suffused with the mind of the Creator, and to remember that and to see that, to rest there and to know that, draw some peace, some wisdom, some quiet, some love.

67:00

Little Thunder: Besides painting, have you tried your hand at any of the, well, what they call the traditional arts? I'm thinking of sewing or weaving or--

Crumbo-Halsey: I'm a quilter. I'm a potter, a basket maker, a pie maker, a gardener--

Little Thunder: And a bit of a silversmith. (Laughter) In terms of Native art, where do you see that moving today? I don't know how much you're out at the shows these days, but where do you see that going?

Crumbo-Halsey: It's not so much where it's going as where it comes from, and then I don't have an overview on that. I would just say it depends so much on 68:00where [I am] and who [I am] looking at and enjoy that. Almost any artist will have something to say about a piece, but they won't say very much because we recognize that the person's experience with the artwork is unique and belongs to them. They can be told a story or hear a story about it, but their experience is the valid one [for them. The viewer has their unique perception and experience of another's art].

Little Thunder: I'd like to talk just a little bit about the process and techniques of painting. I know you've been spending quite a bit of your time, as you explained, in just getting to your painting periodically, but was there a 69:00process for you with your signature? Sometimes that's something artists wrestle with: the placement of it, how big it is, how to sign.

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, you don't want to draw too much attention to the signature, so I bring it down to a name, probably. It's more professional to not draw that much attention to it, size-wise, color-wise, length-wise, placement. All that comes with instruction because, at the beginning, we're all like kids. The teacher will come by and say, "All I see is your name!" (Laughter) "Tone it down!"

70:00

Little Thunder: Good point. When you do get to painting, are you working in oils sometimes, or is it mostly water media?

Crumbo-Halsey: Oil.

Little Thunder: Oil.

Crumbo-Halsey: I like oil a lot. I'm working in watercolor [off and on] because oil is a demanding mistress, especially if you work large. It takes an enormous amount of [physical] energy. I like to work the size large enough that I can walk into. I'm finding that I'm enjoying working smaller, [and in] watercolor, which is very immediate. I like the transparency [and] qualities of watercolor. [However,] my first love is draftsmanship and then oil and then watercolor.

71:00

Little Thunder: So do you keep a sketchbook?

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes.

Little Thunder: You've probably had a couple over the years. (Laughter)

Crumbo-Halsey: I took one to Egypt.

Little Thunder: Oh! I was wondering if you'd just talk briefly about one or two trips that were highlights for you, besides the trip to Russia.

Crumbo-Halsey: Egypt was big. I elected not to take a camera on that trip. I forced myself. An eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sketchbook, bound hardcover, all my pencils and razorblades, (good drawing pencils, you don't put in a sharpener; you have to use a razorblade to sharpen them) and the erasers. I had all that with me. I regretted it almost every day that I had to work instead of get the camera out and snap. On a trip like that, it's happening every day, and you have 72:00to see so much and then have to work very fast because it's passing scenes for the most part.

After a while I stopped regretting it when I realized I was polishing a skill through necessity and [accomplishing a lot]. I did tomb rubbings and [drew] the pyramids, [making] notes and drawings of people that I met along the way. It was a wonderful experience.

Now when I look back through [the sketchbook], it's with awe. I'm so happy that I listened and forced myself not to take a camera, [to] work through that resistance, early resistance to working. It's a fine line between taking time off and just going and doing work, but I made a decision to make it a working trip.

73:00

Little Thunder: Was this in the '90s?

Crumbo-Halsey: No, it was in the '70s.

Little Thunder: Okay. Wow.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes, when Jim went to Russia with Roy Clark, my brother [Woody, Jr.] and daughter [Cris] and I [traveled to Italy]. We spent the winter in Rome and [traveled] to Egypt.

Little Thunder: How wonderful.

Crumbo-Halsey: Then we met back up when we got back. We'd only met once before we made that trip, and then we both just had wildly divergent [paths]. Our lives took us in wildly divergent directions for a while, a couple of months.

Little Thunder: Yes, wow. (Laughs) What's your creative process when you are engaged in painting? What's your creative process starting from the time you get 74:00your idea?

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, it depends. It depends [largely] on the medium in part. I've been a serious student of the energetics of stones, so that was part of my silversmithing. It depends on whether I need instruction first, then making the dedicated time and disciplining my mind toward being aware of what's coming into my interest field and noting it and filing it in a place where I begin to notice 75:00if things accumulate.

I may have a lot of fields around me, but if something comes up I'm very interested in, actually, I don't file it. I put it into an area around me somewhere not too far away. If three things accumulate that are connected and something else comes in, "Oh, this is about that too," I'll put it over there if I don't have anything more to do with it. Then when a third thing comes in, I pull the other two out, and I say, "Okay, let's look. We have three things that have come here together. [Why?]"

When that happens, I need to be ready to start right then, whether it's a poem or a story or a painting or a sketchbook or a thought. I need to be writing because inspiration and creative energy has revealed itself and come together. 76:00Then. No more than twenty minutes. If I am driving or something and I have to put it off, I pull over to the side of the road in twenty minutes, and I do some writing, [notes or drawing]. That's the way it often goes. Can't put it off. It's not going to be there tomorrow in the same way. It's here now.

[I] can put it [an inspiration or concept] off until tomorrow, but [will] have evolved and become something else. [I] have to [then] do [some] work toward the original point, picking up that energy.

Little Thunder: Right.

Crumbo-Halsey: --and not do the back work [to] go back and say, 'Stop everything.' I like to do that now, actually. I used to be aware that I didn't want to look back and connect with that point and bring it forward. It was way 77:00too exciting when I finally got to it. Let me get out my paints, and I'm going to paint something right now! (Laughter) It's a little farther down the road, and it catches up with you.

Little Thunder: That's a good description. Well, looking back on your teaching, your art, the many things you've been doing over the years so far, what was a fork in the road that seems really meaningful to you now, that you could've sort of taken one path and you took this different path?

Crumbo-Halsey: Anything a little more specifically that you're asking about?

Little Thunder: Just sort of where you went with your art and your teaching, do you remember any forks in the road that seemed like you were making a leap or committing yourself to one thing as opposed to the other? It can be about either 78:00one of those.

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, I suppose they're all that way to some degree or another because working with Spirit, it's always evolving, and it's always a prayer, and it's always [an] emerging story, always risky because [I] don't know from one moment to the next when one thought comes and [I] move into that. One thing that artists often know is that we're not in very much, if any, control. It's all risky, and we have to be prepared to love, [manage, and organize] that excitement.

79:00

If [I've] got a brush and [I'm] drawing a string of watercolor across [my] paper, every centimeter is a risk. [I] don't know where it's going to go, what it's going to look like, what's coming forward for [me] to see and become aware of, what [I] are endeavoring to put in and want to be in it and it won't behave. Or [I] can tighten it way down into a real tight drawing and get in there and make it just exactly the way [I] want to and so forth. [I've] got this perfect little thing when you finish, but it's not real vibrant. Or it is.

[I] may find out that it's not very vibrant, or [I] may find out that it is very vibrant and say, "Hey, I'm going to work small and tight from this. I just found out that I was working real big and loose, and what I need to do is just bear down with it, fine drawing, and get in there with my little brushes and do it 80:00just all perfect like that." Or vice versa, working real tight. We all tend to work tight when we start, so [our teachers are] always trying to get [us] to loosen up.

That really doesn't work for me because of my relationship with draftsmanship. I've got to have the drawing. Part of that must be in my DNA or from my father's example because he made finished pencil drawings of everything. He made finished pencil drawings on parchment. They're exquisite, all of the etchings, all of the silk screens, all of the oils, full-size. Depending if it was etching, could be that size, and silk screens, like this. (Gestures) I study them. They're exquisite.

Little Thunder: So unusual.

81:00

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes. I know where my love of draftsmanship came from.

Little Thunder: So looking back on your life so far, is there a highlight that you'd like to talk about? We've talked about some, but is there another one we haven't mentioned?

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, no. No. It's still unfolding. It's still exciting and a wonderful journey.

Little Thunder: How about has there been a low point in your career or your teaching or art?

Crumbo-Halsey: Well, all of the risks [are] made of highs and lows. The highs 82:00and lows are not unlike duality, though, and the seasons, all of that. It's just another facet of reality as [I] see it and as it is momentarily because the moment something is seen and recognized, it has the opportunity to move and to dynamic change, and then it's over. It's down the road. So [I] don't have the highs without the lows. When [I] draw the line and that risk is being taken, success and failure is in that draw. Highs and lows, artists know about highs and lows. It's all about--we don't walk a middle path. No one does, really. [We aspire to the sweet spot of unity in Spirit, and the journey is an interesting one.]

Little Thunder: Is there anything else you'd like to talk about before we take a 83:00look at your artwork?

Crumbo-Halsey: No.

Little Thunder: Okay.

Crumbo-Halsey: I think we've covered it very well. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Great. Well, I'm excited to look at these images for a minute here. All right, we're looking at one of your early oils. Is that right?

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes, this one took the Philbrook award in '75 at the Indian Invitational.

Little Thunder: Indian Annual.

Crumbo-Halsey: Indian Annual, yes. The original then was purchased by the Heard Museum in Phoenix, and it's in their collection.

Little Thunder: Oh, how wonderful. And you talked about your model for that.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes.

Little Thunder: Okay. How about this piece?

84:00

Crumbo-Halsey: Okay, this one is entitled The Little People. Do you want me to read this?

Little Thunder: Yes.

Crumbo-Halsey: Okay. This is entitled The Little People. This was the cover of art for a show at Carnegie Hall in 1976 that Jim Halsey took to New York, [the] first country music presentation in Carnegie Hall. The poem goes like this:

The brotherhood of all spirits, the wisdom of the land, the blossoming of each spirit, the search for the recognition of and the expression of the beauty and truth in each of these things.

Let each one of us radiate our love, each in our own way, and may our path be 85:00richer for each one's gift. The gift of sound, the gift of song, the gift of touch, the gift of labor, of children and dreams and warm rays of sun, of trees in the wind and blue shadows on the snow, sunset skies and innocence.

Little Thunder: That's very nice. Thank you. And this was--is that gauche?

Crumbo-Halsey: That's watercolor.

Little Thunder: Watercolor.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes, it's just opaque watercolor. That was [the] playbill cover.

Little Thunder: Yes, how wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your time today.

Crumbo-Halsey: You're welcome. Did you know that I recently completed a documentary on our father?

Little Thunder: No.

Crumbo-Halsey: I have one here for you if you weren't aware of that.

Little Thunder: Wonderful. Thank you so much.

Crumbo-Halsey: It's good. [It will be screened] at the Gilcrease. RSU [Rogers State University] is interested in having me edit it down a little bit so they can run it too. [Editing down Woody Crumbo's work is hard. It will be much easier to add material--or re-do the entire project.]

Little Thunder: Oh, that would be wonderful.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes. Have you ever put music behind your--

Little Thunder: We don't.

Crumbo-Halsey: This has music behind it.

Little Thunder: It does?

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes.

Little Thunder: Oh, how cool.

Crumbo-Halsey: My son [Woody Carter, Woody Crumbo's grandson] composed [and performed] most of it. There's a few pieces in there that are from other places. There are two Hank Thompson snippets and some other things. My son carries his grandfather's flute and composes and plays on it.

Little Thunder: Oh, wow. Thank you so much for that. I'm going to enjoy that.

Crumbo-Halsey: Yes.

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