In the mid 1990s, a group of elementary school parents in the Taos area organized a fierce campaign to get a mil-levy onto the local voting ballot to fund the construction of a new school to replace the old Arroyo Seco Elementary, which was about to fall down and so out of code that action had to be taken. Thus the ad-hoc organization “Yes For Kids” was established. An army of volunteer parents lobbied, campaigned, advertised, and worked phone banks to explain to Taos voters that a a new school was desperately needed.
One of the parents somehow got a rare private audience with Agnes Martin, to innocently ask if Agnes would donate a painting to the cause. Agnes was only too happy to do so, and gave permission to hand over one of her paintings to “Yes For Kids.”
But when Arne Glimcher (Agnes’s Pace Gallery dealer) found out about it, he hopped on a jet and flew all the way to Taos to take Agnes out to the woodshed, so to speak, and get the painting back. The volunteer parent was in Agnes’s room at her retirement home in Taos when Glimcher was there. Agnes was so ashamed and sorry that she couldn’t donate something to the school, she cried and looked down at the floor the whole time. Glimcher had to tell her she could not donate the painting because it was under contract and he did not agree to release it. Understandable, but still sad from Agnes’s pure, kindly point of view of wanting to support kids in her town.
The good news is that a few years later, the word was that somebody had bequeathed quite a lot of money to build a youth and family center with a pool and skating rink. The rumor was it was Agnes, who had said it was good for kids to get exercise.
Ron Davis really liked Agnes and related to her “on the spectrum” personality. He knew her as a gallery mate at legendary Nicholas Wilder Gallery in Los Angeles, and he and Nicholas visited her studio when she was living in Hell’s Kitchen in New York. During their visit, Agnes offered Ron and Nick a drink: “Want a drink?” Ron and Nick both answered “Sure, thanks!” So Agnes opened a cupboard, pulled out a fifth of whiskey, took a swig from the bottle, and passed it to Ron, who took a swig and passed it to Nick who did the same.
Then Agnes showed them what she did with paintings that did not work, that she felt unsure of or was unhappy with. She never destroyed them fully, and couldn’t bring herself to throw them out. Her habit was to cut them all up into little squares and put them in drawers “to bury them,” she said. She pulled open a drawer to show them to Ron and Nick, and sure enough, the buried painting fragments were stacked up in there.
Ron retold a rumor that at one time, Agnes was not allowed in to an arts ceremony in which she was to be honored. As he told it, Agnes humbly walked into the venue, very dressed-down in a plain blouse and skirt, looking very informal. The venue officials thought she was mistakenly let in, and wouldn’t allow her to proceed to the ceremony because she looked like a confused bag lady. A supervisor was called, and Agnes had to explain that no, no, she was there to receive the award. She showed them her paperwork, and when they finally understood, they apologized profusely and let her in. There is no official documentation proving this story, and no photos; but it circulated among her peers, and fits the way Agnes navigated bureaucracy and the fraught global art world.
Agnes later said she didn’t like getting awards, because it made her feel “so superior.”
The Town of Taos threw Agnes a big birthday party in the early 2000s at a local convention hall. Ron walked up to the dais where she had been ensconced to say hi, hoping she remembered him. Both artists were fish out of water at such a large celebration, where hoopla and public accolades could feel intolerable. Agnes apparently remembered him, and answered with the only meaningful words possible between two artists like Agnes Martin and Ronald Davis: “You working?” Ron had to say no and felt abashed, because at the time he was NOT working. He took her characteristically brusque question as encouragement, underlining the artists’ unspoken understanding: The whole of the art world is one artist, working alone into the night. So get to it.