2023 was the fortieth year Toh-Atin Gallery has been located in our building on Ninth Street in Durango. It seems like it was just a few years ago that we moved into our new space!

It is with great pride that we share the exciting accomplishments of two members of our extended Toh-Atin Gallery family!

On Friday, April 21, Mom was the first one at the Gallery. She usually has been for the past 40 years. She would unlock the building, get the lights on, fire up the computer, and get the Gallery ready for business.

Yes, there is a day to recognize and celebrate Native American Heritage. It is the day after Thanksgiving. The month of November is Native American Heritage Month.

One day, back in the late ’50s or early ’60s, my father was on the Navajo Reservation. He had the good luck to run into Tom and Fran Bayless, two lovely young people from Ohio who had discovered the Southwest on vacation in 1952 and kept coming back year after year.

A little over thirty years ago, I got a call from Betty Pennington, who had worked as our manager at the gallery before moving to Phoenix to take a job at the Heard Museum.

She said, “Jackson, you need to come down to Phoenix and meet Byron Hunter, the manager at the Heard Museum Shop. I’m sure he would want to buy some things from you, but I think you guys would really hit it off.”

In Santa Fe this Weekend, The Museum of Indian Art & Culture is reopening its permanent exhibit with a celebration!

One of the best friends I have made in the art business is George Walbye, a sculptor from Loveland, Colorado.

I first started to research Sally Wagner Lippincott several years ago. She was the legendary owner of the Wide Ruins Trading Post. Her sense of what made a beautiful weaving was striking. She was not impressed with many of the intricate and detailed designs that were winning ribbons at various fairs.

It’s a long way from San Francisco to the Navajo Nation, both in miles and culture.

David John was born in 1963 and raised just east of the Hopi Mesas at Keams Canyon, Arizona. As a young boy, he was a favorite of his grandfather, who was a Navajo Medicine Man and revered by the Navajo people.

Bingo Smith is a 63-year-old Navajo sand painting artist who lives with his wife in the Farmington, NM area.Unlike most sand painters, he does not work on fiberboard. He uses glass Christmas ornaments as the base for his work.