A Free Spirited Man: Doroteo Samora turns 100

Doroteo "Frank" Samora, 100, sits with his 2 year old great-great-grandson Preston on his knee Saturday, Feb. 4, 2006. Photograph by Rick Romancito



“Age is not a particularly interesting subject,” comic genius Groucho Marx once said. “Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.”

Yes, Groucho, but how long is enough?

If it’s 100 years old, that’s certainly enough time to look out upon the vast plain of existence with a better fix on what everything is supposed to mean, but it’s also a time when your body filters that knowledge through aches, pains, bad hearing, failing eyesight and fog rolling through your reason. If you make it that far with humor, wit and intelligence, there must be a key.

At Taos Pueblo last Saturday (Feb. 4), elder Doroteo “Frank” Samora was surrounded by friends, family and leaders to celebrate a life that began in 1906. Still blessed with those attributes, Samora radiantly expressed how a life lived simply and with great purpose has its rewards.

“I feel good,” Samora said in Tiwa (interpreted by his grandson, Pat Lujan). “It is an honor to see all my grandchildren here and I am happy that all my friends came by to see me, as well as people from the community. I am happy to see my grandkids, from the oldest to the youngest. It was a day for everyone to celebrate my life. I’m very happy.”

It is stunning to think about the events that have occurred to this community over that time: The unjust assignment of Blue Lake to the United States Forest Service, two world wars, the first electrical lines to the Pueblo, paved roads, a school, health clinic, and all amid a people who continue an ancient cycle of rituals and ceremonials that help maintain harmony in the universe. “Everyone remembers Blue Lake,” he said. “A lot of people went out of their ways to help the tribe. I am very grateful that we were able to win that legal battle.”

Samora was witness to all that, and along the way became noted as the inspiration for Martiniano, the protagonist of Taos author Frank Waters’ timeless novel of Pueblo Indian life, “The Man Who Killed the Deer.” This recognition, by the way, remains in dispute among the family of fellow tribal member and contemporary, Jim Suazo, who swear it was he who “killed the deer.” The story is about a Pueblo man whose life is changed personally and spiritually after being arrested for killing a deer out of season. It is considered one of Waters’ greatest books, even though its publishing sparked the ire of some tribal members who objected to the amount of detail he included about doings inside the kiva.

It might be surprising to learn that much of that paled in comparison to other momentous events that no one outside the Pueblo realm will ever know. These are events only tribal members, Tiwa speakers, will understand because they were there too. It is strange how the outside world seems to place Indians in their own context, which often has no relation, nor respect to the reality of their existence. But then, if they did, life amid the adobe walls and mountain trails might look entirely different.

Samora has seen many changes in his lifetime, some of which he sees as a threat to the Indian way.

“There have been many changes from the time I was very young,” he said, again through his interpreter. “There was a lot of respect, when I was growing up. Today, this is one of the things I wish the parents of today would teach.”

As one would expect, there is a degree of loneliness for having come this far and finding himself alone, his friends, tribal brothers and sisters, gone. But he feels the greatest loss is “our native language (Tiwa). A lot of our elders are gone. My goal for all the tribal members, as a spiritual leader of the tribe, I wish that we continue on with our traditions. It’s very hard to live nowadays. Not too many believe in the things that we do. A lot of influences from the outside world. This is our land and I hope all tribal members, as well as local people, take care of the land because if we do not take care of it, the land that we used a long time ago, we’re not going to see the same things that we see today.”

He said that when he was a little boy, “everybody lived by grandpa’s and uncle’s rules, religious leader’s rules. Now, we’re all governed by law and there’s not too much of a difference from the time that I was a little boy. I just wish everybody would honor their elders and our traditions.”

Part of the strength the Pueblo people will need to face their future may lie in their ability to act as a unified group, with strong leadership. “Today, we should strengthen our tribal government,” Samora said. “That’s the foremost authority here at the Pueblo. Without the governorship, the tribal council, we cannot survive. There always has to be some kind of leadership, and everyone needs to respect them and the land, and the outside people to recognize our sovereign nation. We do things differently than the outside world.”

Samora has served as lieutenant governor, head councilman and as a spiritual leader for the tribe. His influence has also been felt way beyond Pueblo boundaries as well. There are many non-Indians in the community who continue to regard him as “good friend, a father figure as well as an advisor.” He calls himself a “free spirited man,” who has gotten to the century mark by “enjoying the mountains and nature. What keeps me going are my tribal brothers and sisters, my relatives, the younger generation.”

During this birthday party, Samora was given a proclamation by Taos Mayor Bobby Durán, along with special recognition from the White House. On the wall there was a family tree that relatives put together for the occasion, below was a small humble display with a copy of his birth certificate and important family photos.

“Continue with our native language, our traditions, respect our elders, respect our tribal government and our kiva leaders,” he said might be the advice he’d give to young people. “I would like for our younger people to participate more in our doings, so things won’t die out.”

His eyes took on a far way gaze as he looked out to his friends and family who were putting away all the food and tables and chairs for the celebration. “I pray that everybody also has a long life without sickness, not just for my people but everyone in the community and the world. I pray every day for that.”

Tony Magar: Energized

Tony Magar in his Taos studio. Photograph by Rick Romancito





No, your kid can’t do better.

Not unless they’ve become immersed in the world and creation of serious art and worked for years understanding its complexities. In short, making art is not an easy process. It is work, just as hard and torturous as digging a ditch, peeling latillas or sitting through legislative budget committees.

And being a serious artist doesn’t necessarily mean making beaucoup bucks through online marketing or corporate sponsorship. The yardstick for success isn’t straight line level in the art biz. It’s more like a tumbleweed, branching out sharp all which-way, only to get stuck under a Lexus zooming like a bat out of Vegas, with the driver wondering aloud “What’s burning?”

Which is one of the reasons an artist like Tony Magar might still be considered slightly eccentric. He is serious about art. And that’s why he lives in Taos.

Magar is back from New York City, where he was feted with an exhibition titled “The Absentee Universe” (Oct. 20-Nov. 26, 2005) at the Mike Weiss Gallery. It was a blast, he said, being back in that tilt-a-whirl madness and high end thrill-a-minute cool.

“It was right in Chelsea,” he said in his studio off Gusdorf Road in Taos, “and it was a good time to show there. It was a very active time to go there. I lucked out. In terms of the time and the kind of reaction from the people. I was happy to see a lot of old art comrades.”

He said all his peers from back in the day came to the opening, “which was nice.” Through the door there were folks like sculptor Mark Di Suvero who came, “and (painter) Ed Moses came and (sculptor) John Chamberlain was around the block having his show at the same time. So, I got to see him. A lot of artists I know came to the show. It was wonderful. I couldn’t have wished for anything better. To get that input, you know, from what they were doing and what I was doing, so there was a wonderful kind of exchange going on there. So, I really liked that a lot and it was worth going just for that.”

Part of the reason for going was to kind of feel out the possibility of moving back, he said, “but a week there was enough to convince me that I didn’t want to be there. Just so much action all the time, constantly, in terms of living, just surviving, getting through the day. There’s so much stuff. I mean, we crammed a lot of stuff in ... All these events are constantly happening every day, it seems like. A lot of interesting theater stuff, and, of course, you’ve got your restaurants. People to meet. It goes on and on. I would imagine that if I lived there it would settle down a bit. You know, one toys with the idea of moving back, but then after a week I was so happy to get back here, so I could reach some level of sanity.”

The show was a success and Magar got some high profile notice in The Village Voice and a possible upcoming piece in Art in America. But it was back in Taos, where you can hear yourself think, that some of that energy was transformed into creativity. “In terms of the work,” he said, “it took a leap forward. So, I was relating to that more than anything else. It got seen, and that was the jackpot. It got seen by people there and they all were very favorable towards it ... So, I came back full of energy and got to work again. The whole thing got energized.”

In an exhibit catalog put together for the Mike Weiss show, critic Michaël Amy wrote: “One drifts effortlessly into Tony Magar’s new abstract paintings, for these works suggest fluid, open spaces — ethers where things are in a state of perpetual flux. The nature of these fictive spaces is not instantly apparent however, for cursive looking discloses surfaces that at first seem opaque. Prolonged contemplation is infinitely more rewarding, for only then do the top glazes of oil reveal themselves to be translucent, disclosing layer after layer of paint — often of a different tone or color — buried underneath them. What results, is immeasurable pictorial depth.”

And there is a tactile sense of the work, that physical evidence of a constant series of decisions, ideas pushing and pulling across the surface that is only glimpsed when seen from afar. Up close, it becomes more dense and layered. You wonder: What was he thinking?

“I think one needs a certain amount of peace to create,” Magar said, “to have one’s own thoughts about your relationship to nature is totally changed immediately. You’re not wandering along looking at the beautiful blue sky and the mountains anymore. You’re trying to avoid people all day long.”

But somebody like Magar needs that fix every once in a while. “It opens you up to where your work could go, could develop and move on a little bit from where I was. But, that’s a process you have to work through.”

In a sense, he also needs that input here in Taos, where the comrades are fast disappearing over the horizon. London-born Magar used to rely on major dudes like the late great Bill Gersh and that whole posse of artists who made the 70s and 80s here a fury of activity to just talk and put the pedal to the metal.

Magar put down his thoughts on the subject to paper, calling it “Search and Destroy”:

“My friend Bill Gersh was having problems with his painting. So, I went to visit him. I could tell he was having conflicting thoughts about the paintings he was working on. We were sitting there in the studio, both eyeing what was left in the jug of wine, then, Bam!, he jumps up and grabs a coffee can of paint and hurls it at the canvas. At that moment, the destruction of the old had broken the stalemate. So, I left him with the rest of the wine. Now, he could move on and work with it.

“On the way back to town, I realized there’s a thin line between the ego and what the painting demands — to become a painting again demands passion to move on. This thought stayed with me a long time. What stops us from getting to the next layer? Fear. Or maybe the ego. The ego craves gratification. The ego demands satisfaction. The ego wants a safety net. The ego usually will settle for less. Like a bubble we’re stuck in. It stops us from moving on. I think it’s important for us as artists to watch and observe for breakthroughs in art and ourselves.

“The most exciting part of making art, for me, now, is the process of making and re-making. By that I mean not settling for the first draft.”

It may be somewhat dangerous to say so, even at this point in time (he’ll be 70 this year), but Magar said he doesn’t possess as much fear anymore. “It takes fearlessness to create — the see the new,” Magar continues in his statement, “for Gersh, for Pollack, for Basquiat. That’s the nature of the beast.”

The universe is constantly in a process of creation and destruction, integrated, he said, toward “becoming.” And, at the end of the day, “ we are all just stardust.”

Magar is still moving on and is not about to settle for anything less.