Carvers in Cactus: The Franco Family of Tohono O'odham Folk Artists

Franco folk art at the Arizona State Museum

Image

The Arizona State Museum (ASM) has a collection of works by members of the Franco family, including seventeen figures and genre scenes, a lamp, and a painting. As best as can be determined, nine of the figures were collaborations between Chepa and Domingo Franco, five were solo works of Chepa’s, and three were from the hand of their son Thomas. Domingo painted and framed the painting, the covered wagon lamp he made alone according to the donor’s information.

A bow, arrow, and spear set Domingo Franco made around 1952 came to ASM through a gift from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (ASDM) in 1985 (1985-58-24, -25, -26).  ASDM had built a replica O’odham home (ki) filled with such cultural interpretive pieces, but under new administration the museum disassembled the ki and  transferred the contents, including the weapons, to ASM. 

ASM played a role in encouraging the Francos’ work, as was documented by ASM staff member Bernice Johnson who interviewed the family in 1967 after Domingo’s passing.  Here is an excerpt from Johnson’s notes (on file, ASM Registrar’s office, accession #1123):

Before the cactus carving started, Domingo made drums, large and small, for a curio dealer (Mr. Baucaro. This was not spelled so it is pronounced phonetically). The drums were from hollow trees and covered with cow hide. He also made toy bows and arrows and then, actual hunting arrows.

In 1924, he was supplying cactus wood for Mr. Hall, a Tucson curio dealer, who made covered-wagon lamps and other tourist objects from it.  One load was refused by him because it was not “knobby enough.” So, Domingo took it home and practiced carving his own lamps. He made the yoke for his teams of devil’s claw. Then he began to carve figures. His first was a woman carrying a burden basket. Then he made a woman making bread and one boiling saguaro syrup. Later he made some with two figures and animals.

Mrs. Franco dressed the figures and used her own hair for them. Sometimes she used that of her children. She helped her husband carve the animals for the lamps and also was permitted to paint the shades with sky and mountains but he added the people, animals, cacti, et al.  She could make the animals but not put them together. She said he did that because he wanted to wait after applying the glue and let it harden a little before he placed the parts. She said, “I always got them in the wrong place.” When nylon came into their lives, she stopped using human hair.

She has started carving herself. She is making cactus lamps for somebody and has promised to try to carve smaller versions of the scenes her husband carved – for the Arizona State Museum. She said she is having trouble getting the noses right but would keep practicing.  She paints and makes her own shades for the lamps. She showed us two small (about 5” tall) carved male dolls. They had moving arms and legs (a nail driven through the body); wore loin cloths and had the same type of heads and hair as the other carvings.

She uses a hacksaw for most of the carving, but finishes with a knife. The sahuaro [sic] is very hard to carve sometimes and one has to find certain thicknesses to make the figures in the round, allowing for angles, etc.

Marketing the Francos’s cactus carvings

There were several sources in Tucson that carried the Francos’s carvings. Elizabeth Estrada (1909-1985), was a longtime O’odham craft buyer and distributor. She provided basketry and carvings for the gift shop at Kitt Peak National Observatory, situated on Tohono O’odham land, and sold to other galleries and shops. One shop was Tom Bahti Indian Arts, founded in 1952. Tom’s son Mark assumed ownership in 1972. 

In a 1990 interview with University of Arizona student Nick Spark, Mark Bahti recalled: We used to buy a lot of these. Elizabeth Estrada would just buy whatever Chepa had and then my father usually bought whatever Elizabeth had. Sometimes we’d go out there and he’d buy from her. There were times when we’d have thirty or forty of the things backlogged in the back of the shop.[i]

Image

References to the Franco family story

Over the last fifty years, the Francos’s craftwork has been the subject of newspaper and journal articles, and a student paper. 

In 1978, authors Eloise David (Jensen) and Marcia Spark wrote an article about the Francos for The Clarion, a publication of the Museum of American Folk Art. (David and Spark 1978). 

In 1990, University of Arizona student Nick Spark (Marcia’s son) wrote a paper on the Franco family for a Southwest Literature class, drawing upon the research his mother conducted and upon his interview with Thomas Franco. (Spark 1990).

Most recently, in 2016, Border Lore, a publication of the Southwest Folklife Alliance at the University of Arizona, published an online article that provided excellent background information about the Francos. It is based in part upon an interview with Chepa and Domingo’s son, Patrick, and includes priceless family photographs that are now in the collection of the Tohono O’odham Nation museum, Himdag Ki, in Topawa, Arizona.  

Newspaper articles and other references are listed under the Acknowledgements and References tab.