by I was fortunate enough to be in New Mexico when the Allan Houser Studio and Sculpture Garden, south of Santa Fe, was welcoming visitors to an open house and sculpture garden tour, so I spent the morning there exploring the works of this important Native American artist.
Allan Houser (born Haozous) was a Chiricahua Apache sculptor and painter. Born in Oklahoma in 1914, he left for Santa Fe to study art when he was 20 years old, and remained in the area until his death in 1994.
He became one of the most renowned Native American painters and sculptors of the 20th century. His work can be found at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, National Museum of the American Indian, National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and at the Oklahoma State Capitol Building.
The sculpture garden contains more than 70 abstract and representational works, and the Walkabout includes many larger-scale works, mostly abstract and sometimes whimsical, on a winding one-mile desert path. A gallery with smaller format works for sale, gift shop, and room set up to play a documentary of Houser’s life rounded out my introduction to this talented artist.
The cover photo is Buffalo Hunt II.
