The time is 1887. From any window in Georgia O’Keeffe’s Sun Prairie, Wisconsin birthplace home she only saw the Wisconsin prairie with its traces of roads veering around the flat marshlands and a vast sky that lifted her soul. At twelve years of age Georgia had a defining moment when she declared, “I want to be an artist.” Years later from her east-facing window in Canyon, Texas she observed the Texas Panhandle sky with its focus points on the plains and a great canyon of earth history colors streaking across the flat land. Georgia’s love of the vast, colorful prairie, plains and sky again gave definition to her life when she discovered Ghost Ranch north of Abiquiu, New Mexico. She fell prey to its charms which were not long removed from the echoes of the “Wild West.” These views of prairie, plains and sky became Georgia’s muses as she embarked on her step-by-step path with her role models—Alon Bement, Arthur Jerome Dow and Wassily Kandinsky. In this two-part biography of which this is Part I covering the period 1887–1945, Nancy Hopkins Reily “walks the Sun Prairie Land,” as if in Georgia’s day as a prologue to her family’s friendship with Georgia in the 1940s and 1950s. Reily chronicles Georgia’s defining days within the arenas of landscape, culture, people and the history surrounding each, a discourse level that Georgia would easily recognize.
She told Jerrie to drive fast in case the “honey” [state police] were looking for her.100 In 1935 and 1937, with a group of friends, Georgia had gone to Canyon de Chelly near Chinle, Arizona. Later, from 1964 to1974, Jerrie often ...
In 1907, Bell married Vanessa Stephen, the sister of Virginia Stephen, who became Virginia Woolf after her marriage to Leonard Woolf. These four formed the nucleus of the Bloomsbury Group, a collection of English writers and artists.
Often with Claudia as her companion, she descended into Palo Duro Canyon by holding onto opposite ends of a long stick for balance as they maneuvered the "narrow winding cow paths, hidden in the golden sandstone walls by banked earth ...
Mrs. Wilson is with me for a while and we often speak of you. I have wanted to ask you about the garment I gave Winfield. ... Sincerely, Georgia O'Keeffe I hope to see you while you 402 The Last Years of Our Friendship, 1967-1986.
These are just a few of the A’s. The B’s through Z’s are just as impressive.
These readings took on a life of their own as I used my years of notes, teenage diaries, and journals to form this gift to my descendants in this book. I hope you enjoy it.”
A memoir from a well-known Texas author and photographer.
... O'Keeffe and the Women of the Stieglitz Circle. Exh. cat. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007 Reily, Nancy. Georgia O'Keeffe: A Private Friendship, Part I and II. Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 2009 Rich, Daniel Catton. Georgia O' ...
A writer's search for meaning in a Georgia O'keeffe painting she saw as a young girl and what her years of research on the painting taught her about life, friendship, and the creative process.
This book was compiled from a series that appeared monthly in "The Santa Fe New Mexican" in honor of the city's 400th anniversary commemoration in 2010.