Episode 75– You can also listen on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google podcasts, and Amazon Music

About the Episode:

Bunny interviews Star York about her wonderful art, history, Native American culture and all the things they both love about New Mexico.  It is an honor to hear Star’s story and point of view behind her renowned sculptures.

Links
Star York Sculptures 
Cancer Foundation for New Mexico
Sweetheart Auction
I Love New Mexico blog page
Bunny’s website
I Love New Mexico Instagram
I Love New Mexico Facebook

Original Music by: Kene Terry

Featuring:

Star Liana York

Star Liana York tells the story of her own discoveries through her art. While her career as a professional sculptor began over twenty years ago, much of the recognition she has achieved comes from a body of work created after moving to the Southwest in 1985. It reflects her introduction to the native peoples of the area such as Navajo, Apache, Hopi, and Pueblo, as well as the wildlife and unique rock art. In the narrative tradition of American Art of the West, her work succeeds in capturing authentic aspects of the past and interpreting historic figures with convincing realism.

Star York’s interest in people, animals and the environment is global, although the source of inspiration for a significant part of her work continues to come from Native American cultures. Another portion of her inspiration comes from raising and training quarter horses which is manifested in her series of sculptures depicting horses. Their portrayal in her hands is spirited, articulate, and lyrical; evidence of the empathy she feels toward her subjects.  – Star York website

Episode Transcript

Bunny : (00:00)
Hi there. I’m Bunny Terry, and I’m the host of the I Love New Mexico podcast. We talk about everything here. There are no boundaries. We talk to people who are from all corners of the state, people who are chefs, who are tourists, who are artists, who are Chamber of Commerce executives, and who are from ranch families that have been here for hundreds of years. New Mexico is enchanting, and it’s interesting, and I, I can’t believe I get to do this job. New Mexico is so amazing, and I invite you to come along for the ride on the I Love New Mexico podcast. Thanks for being here. You know, as the host of this podcast and as the, um, board chair for the Cancer Foundation for New Mexico, I get to meet the coolest people in Santa Fe and, um, around the state. And, um, my guest today is no exception. I don’t know that I would’ve gotten to meet Star York in a, in a different circumstance, but what a, what a pleasure. And today we’re talking Star is, um, I, I can’t even find the words. You know, I’ve read, I, sorry. I’ve read about 20 articles about you and I should have printed them so that I could use all the, um, superlatives that everybody else Oh, uses. But you are an artist, particularly a sculptor, and you work pri I I think I, and correct me if I’m wrong, primarily in bronzes, but first I wanna say, Mm-Hmm. welcome. And thank you for agreeing to talk to me.

Star : (01:43)
My pleasure. I’m looking forward to it. We had a great conversation in our first lunch, and I know. I really enjoyed chatting with you.

Bunny : (01:52)
I know. And we found that, we met for lunch to talk about your donation to the Sweetheart auction, and we ended up talking mostly about books and writers and .

Star : (02:04)
It Was a huge treat.

Star : (02:06)
Yeah. Just art in general, which I think literature, music, all that’s our artistic expression, so, yeah.

Bunny : (02:14)
That’s good. Well, I, I could read, um, from those articles that I did my research on, but I would really like for people to hear from you. Who are you, how did you end up, um, where in New Mexico in particular? And, um, how long have you been doing art? Let’s start, let’s start there.

Star : (02:37)
. Well, it seemed like I always, always, always leaned in that direction, you know, when I first was toddling around, so my mother encouraged it. She had been a ballerina in her, uh, career, so she was very artistically inclined as well. So she, she did encourage it. And, um, my father, uh, was really good with his hands. His, though he was an engineer by trade, he had a workshop in the basement. ’cause his real love was woodworking. And so he’d make things all the time. And when I was really young, I could go down there and I, he’d let me draw, um, a picture of an animal on a thick board, and then I could cut it out with a jigsaw and then file off the edges and paint it. So, um, that was probably the, the beginnings of where I’ve come to in my career in that, um, it’s, it started in my dad’s basement, you know, sculpting and doing that sort of thing, even though, of course I did drawings like most children do.

Star : (03:51)
But, um, there was something about that making it, um, more tangible, doing the 3D that I think really stuck with me. Wow. That I love that story. And then I had, yeah, , thank you. And then I had a, um, instructor that was in our arts and crafts program, it when I was in junior high school. And he had a real love of casting. So he taught us how to do castings that were for, oh, like, um, jewelry and dentistry. The, these two methods were both used for doing jewelry or dentistry for casting teeth. Mm-Hmm. . And it was a centrifugal caster, so didn’t require any energy. It was, you wound up this arm in, in which you placed, uh, ceramic, um, mold that was investment material of a wax you might have carved, whether it was a tooth for dentistry or a piece of jewelry.

Star : (04:59)
But I, I would carve these little miniature animals, put it in a mold, create a mold. You put that in one part of the extended arm on the centrifugal castor, and you melt the metal, you’re going to have thrust into the mold with a torch. And then when it gets to the right temperature, you release the wound up arm and it throws the metal, the molten metal into the mold. And that’s a very old process. It’s been used forever. But I could do it on my own. I could do it. I, I bought a caster for a hundred dollars or something. And so that started beyond that process of doing these little miniatures. So I started doing that, casting them in silver mostly. ’cause it’s a, a much more malleable material than bronze. It flows better just like gold. It flows better. So I was doing these little miniatures and, um, wound up being in a scholastic art show and a fellow who had a gallery in Chevy Chase, Maryland, saw it and decided to start showing it. So I had my first gallery when I was like 16 years old. .

Bunny : (06:21)
Wow.

Star : (06:22)
Wow. And started, um, creating work for, uh, for galleries at that time. So I’ve been doing it for a very long time. I just got bigger and bigger and bigger. . So . But that’s where it started. Right.

Bunny : (06:39)
And you re I, I mean, you’re, you’re in Incre. I, it seems to me that you’re, um, very prolific. I mean, you are just, every, every, every time I go down to Sol Sky, which is your Santa Fe, the gallery in Santa Fe, um, I see something, something else that it’s, and you don’t, I mean, you do human figures, you do a lot of animals. Um, are you, are it seem to you like you’re creating every minute of every day? ’cause it’s what it looks like to me.

Star : (07:12)
Oh, gosh, no. I spend most of my time doing ranch stuff and riding and dealing with my animals. Oh, . Um, I, I joke about it, but it’s true. I mainly do my sculpting nights and weekends, , because between business, doing the business aspect, and that’s something I think a lot of people don’t realize. If you’re going to put a price tag on your work, you’re in business and you have to take care of business if you’re going to, because it’s been my livelihood, my only income all my adult life. So other than when I was in the university, when I had to supplement it with, um, I worked at the racetrack exercising horses, and that was every morning, six to 12, seven days a week. , if you work on the track, the horses have to be every day. So, um, I did do that.

Star : (08:05)
But then once I started selling well enough in the galleries, which I was still at the university when that happened, so, um, that started to take precedence and, uh, in terms of my time. But, uh, it’s just something I love and I can’t, even if I wasn’t selling it, I don’t think I could not do it. It’s, uh, sort of like breathing. I think for artists, whether you’re a musician or a writer, just like you and I, I bet you feel the same way. You would do it regardless. You just, it’s something you have to get out. Right. It’s, uh, my passion on the other hand are, are my animals, you know, the horses and stuff. I, it uses a different part of my brain. And I really think that when you have a passion in life that goes beyond what your art expression is, it shows up in your work. You know, no matter what it is you do, whether you’re writer a musician, or personally, I even think cooks, chefs are artists. You know, you, whatever it is you take on and you love so much that you take it to the level of artistry. It’s a self-expression. And it’s just something some of us need in our lives.

Bunny : (09:35)
Well, we did a, we did a podcast last week with Kiki Martinez. And, you know, she does these huge, um, paintings of horses because she says, I just can never get them out of my head. And that, um, when you have a separate passion, it shows up. That was very true of her. And I’m looking at you on our screen and you have, um, horses behind you, um, sculptures of horses behind you, . So,

Star : (10:04)
Well, oddly enough, I, when I started my career out here, because I moved to Santa Fe area, um, because of the foundries, I, as I was getting bigger, I needed to find more reliable foundries. And Santa Fe was definitely the place to go. But I’d never been here. I didn’t know what to expect. I hadn’t traveled much in my early life. So, um, it was amazing for me. And I just got overwhelmed with all the, the things that stimulated my interest. Like the, the cultures here. Oh my gosh. You know, I had, I was so ignorant. I had no idea that we had a Navajo nation that was completely, um, self cadet. It was a nation within a nation. I mean, I knew there were reservations, but I didn’t know that that was true out here. And, um, because my husband was a writer and was working on a book that had to do with, uh, he was a nonfiction writer.

Star : (11:06)
He was working on a, a book that had to do with an incident that occurred in Farmington, where four Navajo men were murdered and tortured. Um, we went out to the reservation quite a bit. And so to learn about the culture that way, where we were going deep into the reservation to do these interviews, he, he was, um, and we were meeting Navajo people that didn’t speak English or Spanish. Yeah. They spoke Navajo and they, you know, so it was really a country within a country and these were things I just didn’t know, uh, coming from the East coast. Um, but I, I don’t know that even a good part of the country is that aware of what is here in the southwest. Oh, I, it’s, uh, I think that’s true. Yeah. Or what is true of the Indian nation. Yeah. Anyhow, so it was real eye-opening for me and fascinating.

Star : (12:06)
So at that time, all I really wanted to do, or what I was most interested in was, um, the, uh, the culture there. I mean the, the amazing colorful culture that existed in the Pueblo, um, Indian reservations and the Navajo and Apache. So that really did, um, capture my ima imagination for quite some time. And, uh, a lot of my work wound up being, I just kind of follow what interests me the most. And as a, because I was learning about the reservations and the, the different tribes, um, I wound up researching a lot of stuff, reading books about it. So I wound up doing it, found its way into my sculpture. I wound up doing a lot of Indian subject matter and mostly women, uh, because I related to that, I suppose. And because I also felt that was underdone in the, uh, in terms of what had been created in bronze, some of the Native American women, but also the ranchers.

Star : (13:20)
That was another big thing for me. I met almost immediately when we moved out, or even before we moved out here, I met Helen Burquette, who had grew, grown up in Durango, uh, because her parents who were Austrian had purchased some land there. ’cause they said they had come to this country and they thought Durango looked the most, like the Alps that they were used to. So they bought this big ranch. Wow. And that’s where she grew up. And that was at a time, that was turn of the century. And I mean, last , you know, the last century, so the early 19 hundreds is when she grew up. And it was pretty wild west then. And her stories were amazing. And she was in her eighties when I met her. And she was amazing. And the, this colorful story she had about growing up there and, um, becoming, uh, an outfitter really for, um, people who, as she grew into herself, uh, she started taking people out on hunts and that sort of thing because that’s what you could do out there, could.

Star : (14:29)
And so as she matured and finally got married, had children, ran her husband off with a shotgun. ’cause he was an alcoholic, she had to raise the kids on her own. And I mean, it’s just a fascinating story that she had lots of stories. So all that stuff really colored my, um, perception of what I had moved to out here on so many levels. So here we are going out to the reservation, meeting these, um, Navajo women whose husbands had been murdered, and, uh, hearing their stories and their histories, and then visiting Helen Burett. I mean, we almost moved to Durango because of Helen. She was a big part of our lives at first when we first moved out here, but I needed to be closer to the foundry. So we wound up settling in Santa Fe.

Star : (15:27)
But it was just such a, uh, enlightenment in terms of, um, the rich texture of what exists in our country in terms of a lot of the, the native peoples as well as the, the peoples who came here back in the 18 hundreds and settled. And even before the Hispanics that came in the 15 hundreds and their histories. Right. And there, because you know, when I came, when I moved here, we, especially when I moved to ERO, right outside of, um, Santa Fe, we are definitely in the minority. You know, it was the Hispanics were, and you go into utilities, utility places, like to pay your electric bill or whatever, and they’re all speaking Spanish. They weren’t speaking English, you know. So this was also new to me coming from the East coast. So it, it, uh, and we captured that was really what,

Bunny : (16:28)
Yeah.

Star : (16:29)
Mm-Hmm. ,

Bunny : (16:30)
Thank you. And, and then you captured it in your work. I mean, that, that change, right?

Star : (16:38)
Well, it certainly found its way into my work. And that was what I was most interested in expressing. It just, um, the, for instance, um, we were interviewing, we, rod was interviewing one of the widows of the murder victims. And, um, she had a daughter that she had adopted because the daughter’s mother had been a prostitute and was murdered. And her father was in a knife fight and he was killed when she was very, very young. So Rena, um, wound up adopting her and she was extremely shy about 11 years old when I first met her, maybe 12. And I had to spend time doing other things while my husband was interviewing. So I wound up getting to know Althea really well. And because my own sister was extremely shy, I could identify with that. And we really got along well. So I got to know her and she wound up inviting me to her Kanada ceremony, which is a coming of age ceremony, and it’s a four day thing, and they bring in a medicine woman who oversees it. And, um, it was an amazing experience. So there were things like that that gave me, um, a more in depth understanding of what was, what that culture was. And it’s just fascinating, all of it. And it just amazed me that I could have been an American and not known that any of this existed in my own country. So it found its way into work.

Bunny : (18:29)
And the piece that you’re donating, which is amazing, is obviously from, um, can, can

Star : (18:37)
She’s a Patch.

Bunny : (18:38)
Describe it. I mean Mm-Hmm. It’s hard because people aren’t seeing it if they’re listening and, you know, they’re in their car. But I, you offered us two different a choice and I saw the Distant Thunder piece and I was like, ah, ooh, that’s the one. Um, it’s a, it’s so, oh, it’s so beautiful. And it tells a story. I wanna hear about it.

Star : (18:58)
Yeah. And, um, she’s Apache and it, there were several things that kind of came together with my idea in doing that piece. First of all, I’d gotten to know Alan Hauser because, um, he would show at different shows that I was showing in and stuff. And, and because he was here in Santa Fe, he invited me out to some of the, um, the feast days. Like the, uh, well, instead of going into all that bottom line is we got to know each other. And I was starting to appreciate and understand a little more about the Apache culture ’cause he’s Apache. And, um, so that, that was going on. And I al we also had started to develop a relationship with, uh, Forrest Fen because he was interested in getting to know us. ’cause he thought maybe Rod would write his bio, his autobiography or help him ghost his autobiography. So we got to know Forrest a little bit, and he had taken us into, we’d been to his house multiple times and he’d taken us into his big vault. And he had in his house this, it’s a room vault.

Bunny : (20:06)
I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it.

Star : (20:08)
Is that house Oh, have you? Yeah,

Bunny : (20:10)
That house is on the market now. And it’s, it’s kind of a hard sell because it’s, it’s got that huge library and that vault and, and that vault , it’s different. So, so tell me what you saw

Star : (20:24)
Different. Well, he had lots of things in there that, um, that some of the things that he couldn’t show just anyone, you know, necklaces of human fingers and stuff like that, that, um, were questionable in terms of what he could make public now that he’s passed. I can certainly mention that. But he had this collection of beautiful Apache Burden baskets. And I just had this idea started coming into my mind about the, um, a character that, um, could have like the burden basket because it had all these raw HUDs strings on it could create so much movement in a moving person that, um, I was starting to formulate an idea. And I had just, uh, read, um, Larry McMurtry’s, uh, streets of Laramie, where there’s a, a woman who was part of Apache and part, um, Mexican was the, um, the main character, especially at the beginning.

Star : (21:29)
And she was this real strong person. And, um, her character really inspired an idea about what I would like to do. She was a mother that, um, was, uh, at first, um, single mother and she eventually has a husband who comes along. But, um, that, that tenacity to, to protect her child and to get on with life in a really, really tough town. ’cause she lived in a, a Texas, a real rough Texas town. Um, so that was coming together. Um, and with McMurtry’s stories, it was always influential because I thought his work was so well researched and he was such an amazing writer. I always felt he could, he could draw, um, his women characters. So honestly, and with such empathy, and I don’t think you see that often in male writers. You know, it’s, um, I really appreciated Larry McMurtry and his characters.

Star : (22:41)
So it, it was a coming together of all these different things that made me decide I wanted to do a sculpture of a woman who, um, was, uh, Apache so she could be carrying the Apache burden basket. And that maybe she was out picking, collecting food. And here’s, um, either thunder, the thunder of the sky or thunder of hooves danger is coming. And I wanted to be able to create this woman that showed this real strength and determination that she was going to, um, she was gonna meet this challenge and she wasn’t going to just accept whatever came, she was going to fight it. And, uh, I was working on the piece and I had started getting the face and the expression, but it just seemed to need something. And my sister came to visit and she, uh, my older sister had, had, had raised like six children at that time.

Star : (23:42)
And she started really early. So she came in and as soon as she saw the face in the, um, position, she said, well, sure looks like a mother to me. . So I said, a mother, of course. So she needed to have a baby that she was protecting like a lions, you know, which makes the idea of, uh, meeting a challenge that much more ferocious and fierce. And I wanted her to have that sense, like she was gonna meet this challenge. And so I added a baby to her arms. And that’s how it became this burden basket. And the story being that she’s out collecting food with the burden basket in her baby, and she sees danger coming again, whether it’s the thunder and lightning or whether it’s the thunder of hooves. She knew it was danger and she needed to protect her child and herself. So that’s, that’s kind of how it evolved. That with the, the Beautiful Burden Baskets that impressed me at Forest to, um, the stories by Larry McMurtry to a lot of the influence of seeing the Apache culture with Alan Houser. It was a combination of things.

Bunny : (24:57)
Wow. And, and she is, um, a, a larger than life version of that piece is at, at the UNM Cancer Center, right?

Star : (25:10)
Yes. Uhhuh and I, that was, uh, another reason why I thought it would be so appropriate, um, for this piece to go to your auction.

Bunny : (25:21)
So I, I’m gonna go down. So that’s, uh, it’s the University of New Mexico Cancer Center. And where does Distant, where does the Distant Thunder sculpture

Star : (25:31)
Sit Right out front? When you drive up front, it’s the, yeah. In the circle that you go around. So that was quite an honor too that they there. So,

Bunny : (25:42)
So you’ve donated a piece that is not obviously as large as what they have at the cancer center, but, um, we’re going to put that in the live auction. And I, I, she’s about 36 inches, am I right? It seems like 30

Star : (25:59)
Yes. About that. On, on the base. I think she’s 34 inch bronze, and then it’s got a base. So, yeah.

Bunny : (26:06)
And, and why the Cancer Foundation? You’re always so generous. I’m, I’d just love to hear what your personal connection to the organization means to you.

Star : (26:18)
Well, I, I guess it, it probably started with that, um, with going down to the Cancer Institute and seeing what they were doing there. Uh, so, so that was important to me. And also, um, I’ve always been very interested in supporting, um, animal, uh, rescues, you know, the shelters, the, uh, dog and cat shelters. And now for the past, uh, decade, it’s been the horse shelter too. But, um, that’s always been important to me. And I wound up meeting, um, Allie McGrath through that, who I think is an amazing person, the Mount she’s given, um, in terms of her time and her celebrity ship and all that to different causes. And she did with a lot of the animal shelters. But the, the cancer, um, foundation was also something that was dear to her heart.

Bunny : (27:16)
I mean, for people who are listening, if you wanna meet Ally, she’ll be hanging around, you know, help. She helps. She comes and she’s a volunteer at our event and yeah, you know, she’ll, she’ll, she can’t carry your sculpture around during the live auction. , you know, she carries things around. She draws the winner of our dream raffle. So she is so,

Star : (27:38)
And she, she’s just so giving on all levels. It’s, she’s amazing. She’s, yeah. And I got to know her a little bit better because she got involved, um, uh, my ex-husband and I started the Trail of Painted Ponies and um, that was a big thing here. And when it got to the point where we were painting life-size ones, we had asked Allie if she would do one too. So she and I worked in the same studio space for a while, painting our life-size horses, right. For Thelen auction. And so we got to know each other a little bit then too. And I don’t remember if that’s when she asked me if I’d be interested in something like that. I, I just don’t remember how that all evolved. But, um, I, I just know that, um, I respected her so much. It’s like, Hey, anything, anything I can do to help a cause you’re interested in, I’m, I’m there . So

Bunny : (28:41)
She’s, she’s amazing. And so are you. I’m, thank you. Thank you. I mean this, it’s, I just can’t say thank you enough for the, for everything you’ve done to help support us, but this year especially, um, that’s a piece that I’d like to own. We’ll see how the bidding goes. It’s, um, rather valuable, but, um, I’m so excited about it. So,

Star : (29:02)
Well, I have to say, because I’ve been involved in a couple of fundraisers that we’ve had out here at the ranch, um, to raise money for different things. Um, I know what goes into pulling these things off, and to me, being able to donate something like that is a whole lot easier than committing to, to pulling these big events off. Uh, that is an astounding, um, uh, donation when people volunteer to pull these things off. ’cause I know how much work it is,

Bunny : (29:40)
Well, it’s, but it’s

Star : (29:41)
Hard. This is a way I can help without having to, um, cut into my work time, which I Right. Need to do . So. Well, I’m glad to help it out in the way I can.

Bunny : (29:56)
Thank you so much, and I hope I get, I hope we see each other at the event. I don’t know if you’re planning to come or not, but I certainly

Star : (30:03)
Hope I certainly plan to be there.

Bunny : (30:06)
Good, good. Then I’ll see you there. And, um, and everybody else who’s listening, we invite you to show up. You can, you can find tickets at um, CFF and fnm.org and you, um, the minute you get there, go to the live auction table and take a look at Star’s, um, sculpture of Distant Thunder. You’re gonna want it. I’m telling you. . Thank you, star.

Star : (30:34)
You’re welcome. Thank you.

Bunny : (30:36)
Thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to the I Love New Mexico podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please feel free to share it with your friends on social media or by texting or messaging or emailing them a copy of the podcast. If you have a New Mexico story that you’d like to share with us, don’t hesitate to reach out. Our email address is I love New Mexico blog@gmail.com and we are always, always looking for interesting stories about New Mexico. Subscribe, share, and write a review so that we can continue to bring you these stories about the Land of Enchantment. Thank you so much.