Perched on the corner of Chautauqua Avenue and Boyd Street near the University of Oklahoma (OU) in Norman, OK, the Oscar B. Jacobson House sends out all the right signals. Manicured, trim and stylish, it marks an era when Indian art began its own orbit.

As a student at OU, I once sat in a class that expounded and lovingly examined Indian artwork from surviving textiles to paintings to wooden masks. In amongst these were the works of  Spencer Asah, James Auchiah, Jack Hokeah, Stephen Mopope, Lois Smoky, and Monroe Tsatoke. I was familiar with them since similarly named kinfolk of these phenoms hailed from my hometown.

But the Kiowa Five/Six and I were unacquainted up until that point. It was in this class that I learned that the group was discovered by a field matron at the Kiowa Agency, Susie Peters, in the 1920s. The keen-eyed public servant arranged for the Kiowa art club to get painting lessons.  They all stayed in a small rent house near the OU campus. Turns out, this was the perfect soil to germinate renown.

Once again, I was able rely on my chance upbringing in Southwest OK to buttress my formal education. I had grown up checking the family mailbox inside the U.S. Post Office in Anadarko, OK under 16 watchful Kiowa Five murals perched along the top of a vaulted ceiling. I accepted them as colorful, neat and precise, albeit passé’ (in my childish eyes). Later, I walked under them with new insight.

Marked by their flat two-dimensional and platinum-rich content, a way of life had been frozen for posterity years after settlement came to the Southern Plains.  And yet, in the works compiled by the group, dancers swayed, priests parlayed and elders exclaimed. Murals by the same artists decorated the walls of the old Redskin Theater in Anadarko where I  spent years overlooking the extraordinary while munching popcorn and sipping soda in the dimly lit theater.

In the lives of any great artists, there are two versions: The official and the unofficial versions. In the official version, the director of OU’s art department, Jacobson, laid the cobblestones for the group’s commercial path. After persuading them to attend OU,  he later arranged for their work to be shown at the Denver Museum of Art . Then in 1928 he entered their work in the First International Art Exposition in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where the traditional Kiowa painters rocked the house.

The unofficial version emphasizes a group of students who had come from exceedingly humble backgrounds.  Either orphaned, raised by grandparents or hailing from Kiowa strongholds of Saddle Mountain and Medicine Park, they were the descendants of ledger artists, bundle keepers or medicine men.  They had grown up in a society run by an omnipotent Indian agency that had objected to the depiction of Indian customs and religion as late as 1926.

With great encouragement, they managed to preserve the legacy with which they became synonymous. They were still Kiowa boys (Smoky had left circa 1920) from Southwest OK. I read that at times they were homesick and sang and danced the old way to soothe themselves. I liked that; it puts a recognizable slant on a group so revered as to seem removed.

Last month was Kiowa Five/Six month at the Jacobson House. The non-profit group was abuzz with Kiowa storytelling, gourd dance, Indian taco sales (delivered campus-wide), basket weaving classes and their Spring Art Market. All of the events were designed to keep the doors open and to build up programming, I heard.  As a 501 (c) 3, all is fair in love and art.

Applause goes to these efforts by the Jacobson House director and staff. Their director, Kricket Rhoads-Connywerdy, told me the group’s goal is to draw more attention to what the Jacobson House represents. She points out that the House brings art, culture, and cohesiveness to Oklahoma through diversity rather than divisiveness.

Putting out a banner for this landmark reminds me how easy it is to take things for granted.  Ignoring a priceless piece of artistic memorabilia is something that I admit.  And I once stood in line to see a Vincent Van Gogh painting at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Much of the original charm has been preserved at the Jacobson House with its hardwood floors, rustic landscaping and original woodwork. The place was subsequently named for Jacobson by the University in 1951. Then the building was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 after surviving a move to demolish it for University parking spaces.

A picture of the Kiowa Five with Oscar Jacobson is viewable on its website, www.jacobsonhouse.com. I’d love to see more photos of them. The public has no way of knowing how it was to be young, Indian, and talented at a major university in the 1920s. But with a drive to OU, they can still see where it all unfolded.