Last month, in the post Y is for Yesteryear, I mentioned visiting the Museum of Texas Tech University. In that post, I went on and on about Quilts. Today, I am going to wax poetic on the Western Federation of Watercolor Societies 50th Anniversary Exhibition (which ran from February 5th to May 4th, 2025).
I make a goal of attending four Museum or Museum-like things a year. I meet this goal about half the time, but this year I blew it out of the water with heavy beginning-of-the-year group of opportunities. I caught the glass exhibit at Texas A&M when I attended AggieCon in February. Then on a trip in end-of-April/start-of-May, I swung by the previously mentioned TTU Museum, visited the Roswell International UFO Museum (no pictures, but may result in some stories), and walked through Carlsbad Caverns. There may be a few more Museums this year, but that is a good group of very different experiences.
TTU had four exhibits I explored. The first was the quilts, Treads of Tradition, second is the Watercolors (shown below), a small gallery showed the Sacagawea Dollar (closes September 2025) which isn’t full of cool pictures but did have cool information, and fourth is “Icon and Symbols of the Borderland” showing until August 17, 2025. I may drop the Borderland pictures later this year.
But today I am sharing the watercolors. I will start with my least favorite and go to my most favorite; these are the ones I took pictures of – I liked all of them enough to take pictures, download them from my camera, resize them for computer upload, write up the description and upload them. The “big” pictures should be great to expand out, even though I chopped them from 4 megs to 250 K. If you would like any of these for study, drop me a comment and I will forward them to you. It is true for pretty much all the work I post, unless copyright restrictions exist, I am willing to share.
“Moonblind” by John James is a mixed watermedia (San Diego Watercolor Society). A lot of my friends are into collage work, so this is more a picture for my friends than for me personally but moonscapes always capture my eye.
“South Fork of the Salmon at Stolle Meadows” by Renee Galligher is watercolor (Idaho Watercolor Society), and more about inspiration than just standing in awe at the creation. I think this, or something like this, is within my capabilities. I always mean to paint more, and I would love to paint river scenes.
Next on the docket are two bird paintings and one fish painting. All are beautiful and showcase the power of the watercolor medium well: “Ponderosa Raven” by Lauralee Stenzel is watercolor and gouache (Arizona Watercolor Association); “Rooftop Spies” by Lou Sosalla is watercolor on Yupo (Colorado Watercolor Society); and “Old Friends” by Annie Strack is watercolor (Arizona Watercolor Association).
“Nested” by Rene Eisenbart is watermedia (Watercolor Society of Oregon). Last of the pictures I have of the watercolors and, by far, my favorite. The raised golden sticks in the nest, the hummingbirds, the beauty of the person’s face, all of it is gorgeous.
One oil painting from the permanent exhibit also caught my eye (and the photos came out). “Autumn Landscape” by Henriette Wyeth (born 1907, died 1997) , circa 1935 (oil on canvas) falls into the same category as “South Fork” above in that … I can make that, maybe, someday.
I will close out this post with the two pictures of the cool information I found in the “Sacagawea Dollar 25th Anniversary” exhibit (and the transcripts).
Sacagawea
A Shoshone woman born in the late 1700s near present day Montana, taken captive and removed from her family at age 11, and won in a bet by a French-Canadian who made her one of his several wives, Sacagawea served as an interpreter on the U.S. expedition on the potential trade-routes led by Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in the early 1800s.
Having just given birth to her son, Jean Baptiste, the 16-year old Sacagawea accompanied her husband over 3000 miles as a vital partner in his ability to accomplish the role for which he was hired. Sacagawea spoke with her native Shoshone people and translated the Hidata(missing letters) Chabonneau, who translated in French to another member of the party, who then translated in English to Lewis and Clark.
On the journey for which Sacagawea is known, a river was named after her, and she showed fortitude, calm, and resolution. She is described in the expedition’s journal as a “slave, one of only two in the party, … the only Indian, the only mother, the only woman, [and] the only teen-aged person.” The National Park Service, musing why Sacagawea is so remembered suggest that “unlike other indigenous women, White men wrote about her, and those works lived on in print.”
Second Picture
Did you know that the Sacagawea Dollar has 17 stars on the reverse side? Typically most U.S. coins have 13 stars representing the 13 original colonies; however the 17 stars on the Sacagawean Dollar represent the number of states in the Union during the Lewis and Clark expedition in which Sacagawea took part.
Museum Visits
- Y is for Yesteryear (4/29/2025)
- Museum Visit: Watercolors and Paintings (5/29/2025)
- Museum Visit: Borderlands (7/31/2025)
- Carlsbad Caverns (10/30/2025)
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