Courier photos by Priscilla Waggoner Crow Talkers Gallery features works by Frank Howell, Earl Biss, Rance Hood, Mel Millsap and other distinguished Native American and European artists

Featuring works by Native American artists Frank Howell, Earl Biss, Rance Hood and others

ALAMOSA -- Joseph Four Crows, a native of Alamosa who has been collecting fine Native American and European art for almost thirty years, is temporarily returning to his hometown in the San Luis Valley to open Crow Talkers Gallery where he will be selling a significant part of his extensive private collection.

A gallery opening will be held at 4pm on Saturday, June 5 where members of the public can preview the artwork prior to the collection going on sale. Complimentary wine and hors d’oeuvres will be served.

Included in the collection are works by renowned Native American artists such as Frank Howell, Earl Biss, Rance Hood, Kevin Stain and Traci Bird as well as other exceptionally talented artists.

While numerous galleries in Taos and elsewhere have expressed strong interest in displaying and selling the art on his behalf, Four Crows has chosen to do so himself, out of a genuine desire to both price the art at a level that makes it more feasible for people to buy and also to assure, as much as he can, that the individual works he is selling “will go to homes where they will be appreciated.” Four Crows’ personal connection to the artwork he has amassed over the years is very real and a result of the life he has led.

Joseph Four Crows was one of nine children born to his mother, who was of the Ute tribe.  His memories of life as a very young boy are sparse and scattered and told as if from a great distance, most likely due to the ongoing struggles inherent in a large family with a single mother who worked hard to provide but dealt with the ravages of addiction. “It was hard,” he says. “She tried to care for us and she was working all the time, but…the alcohol. It always got to her.”

However, his memories of his Ute grandmother are very clear. He describes a tiny woman whose old, adobe house in Alamosa was full of herbs hanging from beams overhead, herbs that – once dried – she used to treat people who came to her complaining of various ailments.

With a mother who was gone much of the time, Four Crows was vulnerable to an abusive older brother. When he was six years old and the bruises were visible to others, Four Crows was removed from his family and became a ward of the state. He was eventually placed in Clayton College for Boys in Denver.

“When they were taking me away from my family,” Four Crows says, “I remember the social worker telling me this was a good thing that was happening.” He pauses for a moment. “She was right.”

Living at the Clayton College allowed him to experience things that he would not have been exposed to otherwise, including trips to the Denver Symphony, the Denver Public Library and, most significantly, the Denver Art Museum.

At the age of twelve or so, Four Crows developed an instant fascination with art, of all kinds, and spent the next years reading and learning and going to art museums as much as he could.

Married and in his early twenties, Four Crows returned to the San Luis Valley, where he worked for five years in a gold mine, still visiting museums on his days off but, this time, with his wife and three children going along.

It was during these years that he developed a strong friendship with Russell Means, a Native American activist who broadened Four Crows’ knowledge and understanding beyond his own tribal memories to the Indian Nations, as a whole. But it was a later experience that really lit the flame and coalesced all of Four Crows’ interests into a single pursuit.

When the gold mine where Four Crows had been working was shut down by the EPA, he hired on to help dig an extensive trench for a waterline that was going to be run across what was then known as the Zapata Ranch.

One day, his boss, who had been walking the property, showed Four Crows something he had found on the ground.  It was an arrowhead, something Four Crows had never held before, and the feel of it in his hand sparked a connection that could only be compared to what he felt the first time he went to an art museum.

“I can’t explain it,” he says. “But I held that arrowhead in my hand. I looked at it. I thought about who made it and where it came from…and I just wanted to learn everything I could.” As he speaks, Four Crows holds out his arms as if gathering all the unseen things around him and bringing them in close to his heart.

Circumstances led to Four Crows and his family moving to Denver where he took a job as a “handyman” for an organization that assisted families whose elder members were no longer able to live alone. Part of the service provided by the organization included conducting estate sales, a surprising number of which contained Native American fine art, pottery and baskets. Equally surprising was how many of the families had no interest in keeping the art, preferring to sell them in the estate sale, instead.

Laws prohibited employees of the organization from buying houses and automobiles, but they were allowed to purchase items from the estates along with other members of the public. By this time, Four Crows had spent years studying art and was well equipped to recognize those pieces of both artistic and investment quality. And it was in this way that Four Crows began to acquire, piece by piece, carefully chosen individual works by well known Native American and European artists.

Joseph Four Crows has now decided that it’s time to make available for others the extraordinary works of art that he has enjoyed, himself, for so long.

Crow Talkers Gallery is located at 510 San Juan. Gallery hours are Friday and Saturday, 9:00am to 7:00pm. Sunday 9:00 to 2:00pm. By appointment only on Tuesday and Wednesday. For an appointment, please contact Lenny Martinez at (719) 588-6729.