In 1981, Ila Mae McAfee (Turner), at the age of 83, won Taos Artist of the Year. Awarded for her over fifty years of artistic practice which were foundational to the evolution of Taos Art Colony. Nevertheless, her artistic career began in isolated valley just north of Taos where a son of the Taos Pueblo attained the power to join the negotiations for peace between the Núuchi and United States Government. At the heart of the ꞌAkaꞌ-páa-gharʉrʉ Núuchi (Uncompahgre Ute) traditional homelands, where two rivers converged, the Los Pinos Indian Agency set up a cow camp to meet the changing treaty agreements. In those humble cabins, Ouray and Chipeta furthered their friendship with cow camp hand, Alonzo Hartman before the Agency was further removed west. However, the cabins and two cow camp hands stayed, opening a store and post office in the cabins to serve the new wave of migrants seeking their fortunes in the remote high mountain valleys. As the world rapidly converged on the Gunnison Country, multiple artists came to teach and practice their disciplines and to organize the women and men of the boom and busting communities into political, social, and cultural action; thus, creating an art colony, which directly influenced the artistic career of Ila McAfee and Taos Art Colony. While researching the provenance of a painting at the Gunnison Pioneer Museum labeled “Cow Camp Circa 1880s, Artist, Miss Monroe”, which illustrates that historic cow camp scene, an internationally transformative art colony, yet to be examined and contextualized in the historic record came to light.
This Poster will present four artists who started art classes in Gunnison County during the 1880s, Sophronia L. Monroe, Clara Treadway (Weir), Mary Elizabeth Craig (Johnson), and Myra H. Davis, and how they transformed the community into an art colony which added the passage and continuation of Women Suffrage in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. The remnants of the colony laid the foundations which supported Ila McAfee’s early development as an artist in Gunnison. The poster will also illustrate the transformative far reach the four artists had beyond Gunnison which connected them to four “queens”: Lucy Stone, Chipeta, Pura Villanueva, and Liliʻuokalani between the 1870s and 1920s. From producing the silver nail and poem for the Woman’s Pavilion at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair to rallying Utah to reinstate Woman Suffrage upon statehood to navigating Boxer Rebellion, Spanish American War, and Philippine-American War to being a matron at Queen Lili’uokalani’ female seminary, the transformative lives of these four women artists tell a fascinating history tracing the nation’s Manifest Destiny.
The poster presentation will also provide a discussion into my research process into the provenance of a painting with only a vague lead to identify its painter, “Miss Monroe”, as well as the learning experiences I had navigating the museums, archives, and historic preservation societies and art organizations related to the telling of these four art teachers and their award winning students and influential patrons who transformed multiple communities across the world.
