Life and Times of Jo Mora

Iconic Artist of the American West

Peter Hiller

• Publisher: Gibbs Smith
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781423657361
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Artist Biographies

An essential addition to any collection of Western art and Americana, The Life and Times of Jo Mora provides an in-depth biography of this gifted illustrator, painter, writer, cartographer, and sculptor.

Jo Mora (1876–1947) lived the Western life he depicted in his prolific body of visual art, comprising sculpture, paintings, architectural adornments, dioramas, and maps. He explored California Missions, the natural glories of Yosemite, California's ranch life, and eventually the culture of the Hopi and Navajo in Arizona. During his travels, Mora documented observations that became the source material and inspiration for much of his later artwork.

The magnitude of Mora's insights into his life and work, as described in his own words—many presented here in this book—cannot be underestimated. Jo Mora's many diaries, journals, and literary efforts reveal an intellectual discernment, originality, and humor that enhance our appreciation of his work.

Remarkably, throughout his life Mora supported his family solely through a series of art commissions that ranged from restaurant murals to heroic-scale sculpture. He welcomed risks and challenges, was unafraid of hard work, and did nearly everything well, from writing children's stories to commanding an army battalion-in-training to shooting mountain lions. Ever modest, he seemed to think that this versatility was nothing extraordinary. Peter Hiller's thoughtful presentation of Jo Mora's life is seen here in all of its creative glory.

Chapter 10

Jo Mora as Writer and Illustrator

To understand the full scope of Jo Mora’s accomplishments, one must consider his written work. Mora wrote many stories and essays and was a prolific diarist and correspondent. Due to his deep focus on visual art—his primary route to financial stability—few of Mora’s literary endeavors were ever published. About half of his writings that were published were done so after his death. The bulk of his body of work is today out of print and in the collectibles market, with one notable exception: his children’s book Budgee Budgee Cottontail, printed for the first time in 1995 and still available. Most of his writings remain in the Mora family’s private collection, and the public has had few opportunities to glean a complete understanding of his creative abilities. When asked, “Do you think artists are born?” Mora responded, “There is a certain spark to express originality which only a born artist has. No one can tell who possesses it and who lacks it. Time can only tell.”

From his earliest known biographical statement, Mora thought of himself as a writer as well as a visual artist. “When I get wound up writing I’m a bad article to squelch,” he commented in a 1904 letter to Linda Sterling, a New York City acquaintance. Certainly those familiar with Mora’s work tend to identify him with his captivating visual art, however, Mora had a great facility with words and wrote fiction and nonfiction for children and adults in an impressive variety of literary styles. Writing was an important creative outlet for Mora, allowing him to entertain and educate his readers with his depth of knowledge about a wide range of subjects. Like the work of D. H. Lawrence and Henry Miller, Mora’s compositions often exist side by side with his visual art and seem inseparable from it; they amplify and explicate the visual material, encouraging the viewer to dwell a bit longer on the experience of his art.

An example of Mora’s Zip comic strip, ca. 1930.

In the field of Western history, two of Mora’s books—Trail Dust and Saddle Leather (1946) and Californios (1949)—have become classics, serving as definitive descriptions of a nearly vanished cowboy way of life. They also provide us with a rare opportunity to view the process involved in creating visual and written expression.

The dual nature of the artistic process means it is simultaneously inspiring to others and intensely personal. Each artist’s work stems from a need and interest to interpret reality, to express a perspective of life, but other goals also come into play: the personal satisfaction of the artist, communication with others, and income generation. Since many artists work alone and usually show only their finished work, the public rarely has a chance to witness the artistic process. For Mora, creative art in written or visual form began with sketching out ideas and making final decisions based on instinct, intention, and interests.

Mora was a natural communicator and wrote quickly and effortlessly. His down-to-earth, colorful writing style is accessible and entertaining to the reader, while his command of subject adds credibility. He loved to tell stories; it is easy to imagine him sitting around a campfire spinning yarns that had their beginnings in his written work. Having grown up in a family of diverse ethnicities, Mora also clearly valued the intimacy of communication afforded by his fluency in numerous languages.

In his 1952 introduction to Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest, J. Frank Dobie writes: “To an extent, any writer anywhere must make his own world, no matter whether in fiction or nonfiction, prose or poetry. He must make something out of his subject. What he makes depends upon his creative power, integrated with a sense of form.” Mora’s ability to creatively “make his own world” is reflected in his writing as clearly as in his visual work. His countless drawings of anthropomorphic animals are significantly enhanced by the amusing jingles that accompany them. Mora’s sense of humor, evident in all his art, adds immensely to the enjoyment of his work.

Mora began writing and drawing at a very young age. In the Jo Mora Archive is a small, thin booklet with illustrations and text titled Young Mora’s Paper (see p. 12), created when he was nine years old and labeled “December 20, 1885 by Jacinto.” Another story, dated 1887, features watercolors by Jo and his brother, Luis, who occasionally added elaborate illustrations to Jo’s stories; Luis was two years older and his artistic maturity is evident in his work.

Watercolors by Mora (top) and his older brother, Luis (bottom), 1887.

Even as a youth, Mora was a careful and conscientious journal keeper. As we have seen in his 1894 journal, he was passionate about describing in detail the daily events of his life—a discipline of observing and recording that may have contributed to his later productivity as an artist. At age seventeen, he made the following diary entry for Tuesday, February 6, 1894: “Got up at 5:30. Sneaked downstairs—studied hard. Had breakfast. Went to school on 8:08. Lessons quite good. Took mat with names of football team on it to school. Went home on 3:20. Went down stairs played bottle pool. Didn’t get stuck but one game. Went home had supper. After supper went down to library returned and got book. Went down stairs. Smoked cigar. Staid down a little while. Stopped in John’s a minute. Went home studied. Went to bed.”

Another page in the same journal reveals the eighteen-year-old Mora as a budding poet. It foreshadows one of his favorite adult pastimes: creating ditties to commemorate family events such as birthdays and holidays, efforts he fondly called “bolognas.” The last entry from his daily diary of 1894 is the following poem:

To Old ’94

Fare thee well, old ninety four

All thy reign has ended

Mingled with forgotten days

Are joys and sorrows blended.

Looking back upon thy past

Me thinks I see thee bring

To me again your happy days

With joy and laughter ringing.

Although I see in dusky line,

Not pleasant thoughts unveiling

The days with discord wrath or grief

Our fickle souls assailing.

Yet sleep in peace, old 94,

Your rest we will not harrow

For pleasant thoughts of happy days

Obliterate the sorrow.

In his teens and early twenties, Mora wrote numerous stories, typically composing several chapters and then moving on to the next piece. While a few seem to be finished, it is often difficult, given his youth and inexperience, to distinguish between a draft and a final copy. Some of the stories have accompanying illustrations. We can only speculate about the unfinished standing of so many pieces; he may have attem...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Introduction
• Growing into the Arts
• Wanderlust, Vaqueros, and the Missions of California
• Off to the Sierra
• Yosemite and the Trail to Arizona
• Hopiland: A Dream Come True
• Settling and Working in California
• Training for the Great War
• The Lure to the Monterey Peninsula
• Mapping History: the Cartes
• Jo Mora as Writer and Illustrator
• Abounding Talent: Etchings and Dioramas
• The End of the Trail: Putting Away the Sculpting Tools
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography and Sources