A NEW LIFE
Getting Yellowhorse on board may have been the easy part for Bernard. Now it was convincing Marsh that Willard was not a threat to his artistic insecurities. The spin was a Native American artist would add a different feel to the gallery, a spiritual bent. This would bring in a new kind of clientele, one that could also get exposed to the marvelous death paintings of Fredrick Marsh.
Bernard practiced his speech on the drive in from Kennedy Airport. “Now Fredrick, even though Yellowhorse’s price structure is high compared to yours, remember he’s an Indian and will never be taken seriously by the New York art world. All we care about is that a different crowd of collectors visits our gallery that has money and will be exposed to your death series. Besides if he does sell, the extra income helps us promote you better. He’s young like Lendskip, and hanging next to your work will be such an honor for them considering your New York notoriety.”
The plan from Bernard’s view was simple. Once the money started rolling in for Willard, he would then pressure Willard to move to New York City. Bernard had already established a nice studio for Lendskip close by so he could bring potential clients over to see the latest piece in progress. Willard Yellowhorse was a fan of Craig’s, so when the timing was right he would move him in right next door in the adjoining studio already waiting for him.
Once Yellowhorse was in his new studio space, Bernard would squeeze out Bloom somehow, probably just price him out of the Yellowhorse market. Willard, as a nouveau riche, would live above his means and be forced to paint only for The Cutting Edge to bankroll his now-luxurious lifestyle. Maybe a coke habit would develop or a pretty little rich white girl who was used to spending daddy’s money would come into the picture. He would soon be trapped by the white man’s ways and boom! No more Bloom, No more Indian time.
As it happened, seeing New York City for the first time was overwhelming for the small-town boy from Toadlena, New Mexico. The only stone buildings Willard had ever seen were the trading post and some old Anasazi ruins. New York had hundred-story buildings on every block made from stone.
The city bothered Yellowhorse’s primary senses: the constant noise and the lack of stars in the night sky. On the reservation you can hear the call of the coyote a mile away. You can tell when a front is blowing in by the quality of sound slicing through the tall ponderosa pines on the nearby Chuska Mountains. Nighttime, you orientate direction by the heavens, which tell you the time of year and guide parts of your spiritual life. Willard wondered if his grandfather Hastiin Sherman would be able to function for just one night in the bilagaana’s city before becoming disoriented by what man had done to his Mother Earth.
It was impossible to see any stars, just the moon and only at its highest point in the sky. The winds swirled in all directions through the large cascade of buildings, as if they had lost their soul from the creator and were forever trying to find their way back to the mountains from which he was born.
There was only white man’s time in the city. Everyone seemed to be in such a rush for something or someone. No time for contemplation or healing of one’s soul. Yellowhorse was afraid of what the city might due to his hozho, that balance all Navajo try for, but he also recognized somehow that he was destined to take this path. Following his river of life and being true to himself were paramount concerns for Willard. He’d always felt in his art a fateful force that funneled into him, and he respected that.
The Cutting Edge Gallery was nothing like the viga ceilings and adobe white walls at Bloom’s. No squeaky wooden floors; instead, gray-scored concrete with a hint of purple at its edges. At Bloom’s, natural light streamed through the old multi-pane glass windows, New Mexico’s bright illumination everywhere. In Chelsea, the light was only on paintings, nothing in between. No light entered the building. All was controlled at the aerostat, an unnatural habitat for Willard.
He did like the energy of New York. It was as if all humankind lived in one large hogan. The gallery clientele was different than in Santa Fe. Most were well dressed in suits with expensive furs and jewelry. No turquoise, just gold, diamonds, and black clothes. Yellowhorse was used to seeing blue and green velvet calico shirts and tanned skin. These people seemed more like funeral-home directors or vampires in their dark clothes and white skin. Even the sounds of the click, click, click of the stiletto heels seemed odd compared to soft moccasins sliding on hand-hewed floors.
The questions the collectors asked were as strange as their appearances. No one seemed to care about the spirit of the piece, just ruminating among themselves, “I think he thought this,” even though the artist was nearby and could be asked if it had some special meaning. It was more entertaining for the Eastern collectors to declare their thoughts as to why something had been made, instead of asking the maker what he was thinking.
Price did not seem an issue, and it was amazing to see Bernard work his magic. He would interject just the right word or phrase, his rhythm of selling dictated by the client. Fast, slow, even pulsating until the piece was gone. Yellowhorse wondered if the same technique had been used on him. Probably, but it had worked and now the paintings were all selling at a breakneck pace, and for ever-escalating prices—$150,000, $200,000.
Willard had never planned to stay in the city. He simply meant to visit and then go home to the rez and paint. But The Cutting Edge was like a web, and Bernard the spider. Once you check in, you can never leave. Bernard had given Willard a nice little loft with a studio below for free. Craig Lendskip was next door and Willard loved his sculpture. He found himself lingering, watching for hours as Craig spun and twisted the yarn, much like his grandmother had at the Post with her own sheep’s wool. It made Willard feel as if he were back on his own pace, Indian time. Somehow Lendskip had achieved what few whites do: the ability to lose the sense of time. Artificial measures of light and dark did not control him. Craig controlled himself without concern for a manmade entity, time. Yellowhorse found without this complete lack of a conceptual time barrier, he could not paint. He needed, almost required, to be in tune with Lendskip, to ground himself and get back into his own Nativeness. The two artists developed a relationship of creativity, each feeding off the other’s energy. It seemed like fate had ushered Willard into this artistic cocoon in New York City for its own reasons, so Willard did his part.
Willard, who had in the past used stars as the basis of his paintings’ background, started to use small, round objects from Craig’s sculptures. These were the new stars of New York when none could be found. The elements of bending time and claustrophobia became recurrent themes. In New Mexico it is not uncommon to be able to see a mountain range 80 miles away, with long, open horizons of horizontal lines. In the city, the lines were all vertical: the buildings. It was if the world had been tipped on its side in a new orientation.
Embracing his alien world allowed the creative juices to flow. Yellowhorse’s work, unlike Lendskip’s sculptures, started to evolve. His painting basis was still Diné in concept. Yellowhorse’s celestial markers had become figurative interpretations of his surrounding environment: the city and its buildings and the foreign elements that flowed through its veins. Small additions from the studio’s physical space were added to the piece to give the canvas a sense of life’s transient nature. It could be a spider’s old skin casing left on the wall, or a fingernail snipping found on the floor. Small pieces of Willard’s own hair would be cut and incorporated into the piece if it seemed appropriate to the work. The painting literally became a piece of him. Those paintings that contained small elements of his own being were the most popular with Bernard‘s clients.
The irony was that these insignificant elements of Yellowhorse’s humanity that he had incorporated were not meant as some preconceived selling point. Instead, they were a way for the artist to say, “I am still alive in this city. Diné live even in a hostile environment. You cannot take my soul as I protect it within my on design.”
It was Bernard Phillips who had noticed the odd artifacts in the paintings and asked if this was done purposely. When Yellowhorse explained his need for some kind of connection with the painting, Bernard encouraged the behavior. Bernard instinctively understood from his sales background that people would be able to relate to this need for a connection and would feel their own link with the artist. The more visible the inclusion, the easier it was to sell.
Charles Bloom had been completely cut out of the art picture by the end of year one in New York. Willard flew out to talk to Bloom and explain everything he was producing was being bought by The Cutting Edge at near retail, no matter how big or small. He was free to paint what moved him and not worry about what would sell. He had hoped Charles could somehow also buy some of his paintings. He would not even charge Charles as much as Bernard, but Willard now knew it would never happen. Charles Bloom was simply too undercapitalized to handle the kind of artist Yellowhorse had become.
So Yellowhorse said his good-byes, thanked Charles for everything, and disappeared on the next plane back to New York City to return to his new life of fame and ever-increasing fortune, never to be seen by Charles Bloom again.