Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Mesa, AZ - Eddie & The Cowboys Redux

Why do I think that Bashas is such an exquisite collection? Why have I gone back several times? I’m not an art aficionado, I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your attention and probably you’ve noticed that we haven’t gone to many art museums in our travels. We’ve hit history museums, firefighter museums, police museums, Wells Fargo museums, historic homes and buildings, Federal buildings but seldom an art museum. Hmmm.

Well, then, why we are visiting the Basha’s Western Art museum for the second time in about a month? Yeah, why do I think this museum is so special? What does it have that other art museums don’t have? Why does it deserve a second visit?

Firstly the size of collection: the walls are covered with paintings, the shelving lined with sculpture, the basket room is filled to the brim with baskets and ollas and trays. The jewelry cases are filled with sterling silver, jade, beadwork and other pieces. There’s not much room for more in this collection. In fact, lots of the art is lining the walls of the corporate offices behind the museum. We were told that the Basha family still has lots of pieces of the collection at their homes and brings some pieces in for special shows. Other museums borrow from this one when they have shows on Western art.
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Secondly, there is a variety of genres. You can see paintings in all mediums: oil acrylic, pen and ink, pencil etc. Pottery is represented, sculpture in bronze, wood, ivory, jade and other stones. Kachinas in many forms are here. The basket room is filled with baskets of different designs and materials. There are lots of decorated guns. There are several sections devoted to letters and cards sent by artists to Eddie Basha with small paintings, sketches, etc on them. There are several cases with jewelry.
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One of my favorite reasons for liking this museum is that it is so intimate. There are no guards and only a few locked cases. You can actually put your nose and eyes right up to each piece to see each twist of each blade of grass in the baskets,
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every stroke and daub in the paintings,
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each knife stroke in the wood sculptures, every line in the painted pottery.
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It’s so intimate: just you and the art. No guards, very few locked cases and no motion detectors. I remember once when I was walking through the skywalk in Des Moines and wanted to walk around a particular work of sculpture to see the back. Oh crap. The alarms went off. I’ve learned my lesson. I keep my distance now. But here, you can get as close as you want - just don’t touch.

I appreciate that this is a private collection built painstakingly piece by piece by a discriminating individual who was buying what she or he liked and wanted to have around them. Cool.
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Hey, it’s free. But, you know, I’d pay for this one. In fact, we do pay: we’ve left donations each time we’ve visited since the money is used to support trips to the museum for local school kids.

Finally this museum is such a surprise. Who would have thought that in the middle of Chandler, AZ in a grocery store corporate office would be such a spectacular collection of art. I remember another museum, another private collection on the OR coast. Out front were shows featuring trained bears and a mammoth statue of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. What most people see is that Babe’s privates are not only huge but very public and there must be thousands of pictures online with people obviously using them as a prop in their pictures. However, leaving the bears and the privates way behind, there is another amazing museum in the building behind them. Another private collection just overflowing in a small museum at the back of a gift shop. Can’t wait to see it again this trip.

But breakfast too. Paradise Cafe with bagels and coffee. Good way to start.

OK, let’s see what we saw at Bashas this time. Here’s a cool one - a Native American tracking the wagons across the prairie spots something on the ground, reaches down to pick it up and its’s a doll that some little girl lost on the journey.
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We’ve all heard of Sacajawea and the son that she had on the journey with Lewis and Clark but not everyone knows about how her son turned out. Well, he was quite successful. Named Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, he was educated in St Louis under the guardianship of William Clark and at the age of 18 or 19 was taken to Europe by Prince Paul of Wurttemberg where he remained for 5 or 6 years during which he traveled throughout Europe and Africa, meeting with royalty and commoners both. He became fluent in several languages and was quite a hit in Europe before he returned to the US. In this picture he is on the right leading employees of Fort St. Vrain in 1842, carrying furs and robes from the fort to St. Louis. The water was quite low in the river this trip and many times they had to portage or get out of the canoes and drag them through the river mud. A grueling, tiresome trip.
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Here’s another picture of men starting out in very early spring heading to St Louis with some furs. They are making their own path and have only their memories and experiences to guide them - no GPS needed.
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Here’s a basket with a maze.
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And, here’s another one with 3 colors not the usual 2.
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I liked the small wooden sculptures.
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Marvelous museum.

After we left Bashas we headed onto Costco - for Combat Costco. Were we cut off by a cart? Did someone reach in and take the pineapple I was going for? And, what about the lady who picked up her pace to beat us to the checkout line. Ooh, I didn’t know that shopping at Costco was a competitive activity. But that must be part of the adventure.

Ah, time to head home.

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