Mildred Tolbert

Mildred Tolbert was born in 1919 and brought up on a Panhandle ranch near Pampa, Texas. She and her two sisters, Burton and Frances, graduated from high school in Pampa (Mildred graduated in 1936). In 1947, Mildred married Judson Crews, a poet and printer from Waco, Texas (now residing in Albuquerque) and they lived for many years in Taos where they subsequently brought up their two daughters, Carole and Anna Bush. After separation from her husband in 1972, and eventual divorce in 1979, she resumed the use of her family name. During the 1950s she worked as a freelance photographer in Taos. Until the death of her father, Weimar S. Tolbert in 1985, she resided again in Pampa, yet maintained her home in Taos and made frequent visits to her northern New Mexico home. She has four grandchildren, Ariana, Edwina, and Iris McLoughlin, and Sohrab Wilson.

Mildred Tolbert, who since the 1970s devoted much of her time to writing, was exposed to various artistic and literary influences. Judson Crews, Wendell Anderson, and Robert Creeley, in different ways, furthered her artistic abilities in the earlier years, while Harvena Richter, daughter of Conrad Richter, was supportive and helpful in later years. Traveling in Europe and Africa certainly influenced her creative style as did living in Taos in the early 1950s which acquainted her with many artists such as Dorothy Brett, Andrew Dasburg, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and others.

The immediate value of the collection based on the completeness of Tolbert's correspondence and art work (photographs and manuscripts) is the insight in to the artist's life. No less important though is the collection's high merit as a supplementary source to the understanding of the Taos and Santa Fe art colonies and the metropolitan Albuquerque writers circle, due to her marriage to and friendship with Judson Crews. Both Tolbert and Crews are very prolific in putting thoughts and events on art and artists in general, and writing in particular, onto paper.

Writing and publishing was of major importance to Tolbert. In her own words, her main interest was "the psychology or artistic creativity, the artistic personality." Tolbert published in many non-fiction essays in various journals about art and artists with whom she had associated in Taos, New York, and other places.

In 1969, at age 50, she received a B.A. in English from the University of Houston, where she studied literary criticism with James V. Baker. At 90 years of age, Mildred Tolbert passed away peacefully in her home in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico. She is missed every day by all who knew her.

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