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5 : Toward an Intuitive Geometry T hroughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, Hogue rarely exhibited, and he produced few paintings . Rather, he worked diligently to establish and build up his department at Tulsa. During this same period, however, Hogue became good friends with Thomas Gilcrease and Gilcrease Museum director Martin Wiesendanger, who was responsible for a major expansion program at the museum. “I hung around out there every free moment while Mr. and Mrs. Wiesendanger worked in the library,” Hogue wrote. “I was allowed to pore over library material which most people have never seen.”1 In the years that followed, Hogue frequently visited Gilcrease at his home where they would engage in discussions about modern art and the direction of the museum. At the time, the collection was housed in an old stone barn; another building down the hill was used as an office, and an upstairs space housed a group of Native American orphans.2 When Gilcrease was ready to connect the haphazard buildings under one roof, Hogue drew up a design that would maintain Gilcrease’s view of Signal Hill and provide a focal point for the entrance. Hogue wrote: “The use of Quonset hut beams to span the space between two carriage wings which formed a ‘u’ where they joined onto the barn was accepted by Mr. Gilcrease because it suggested the Indian long-house, a motif he had tried to get from several architects without success. Since I was familiar with the historical longhouse , the Quonset form came to mind instantly and I could foresee it as a focal point for an entrance area. . . . The Quonset extends on over the barn forming a hipped ceiling on each side. The arched door leading into the next gallery repeats the lunette formed by the end of the Quonset above.”3 In addition to his duties at the University of Tulsa and work with Thomas Gilcrease, Hogue purchased a 240-acre farm, on which he would spend all his available time designing the studio and toward an intuitive geometry 101 main house, and planting gardens and orchards. Hogue loved the farm and found it “soothingly quiet except for the singing of birds and the occasional bawling of cattle.” He wrote about his excitement with the new life away from the city to his friend, J. Frank Dobie: This delayed letter is the result of being deeply involved in my farm . . . about 37 miles from here in Rogers County. It is near Oolagah—Will Rogers’ birth place and only 6 miles from the Rogers ranch. This farm was within my reach because it was run down and eroded. I have had Soil Conservation Service contouring and terracing and have planted $300 worth of Fescue 31 for permanent winter pasture (30 acres)—so dry it isn’t up yet. When it does come up I will broadcast Ladino (a legume) into it. In the terraced portion I will plant Serecia Lespedeza (20 acres) in June. This is a perennial legume equal to alfalfa in protein content but it will grow on anything and by the second year will be so thick you can’t walk thru it without lifting each foot up above the stuff. It is grazed, cut for hay and combined for seed—40 cents per pound. “Triple a” contractor will be back in about 2 weeks to dig a big pond which will be located in a blue stem meadow of 40 acres. Just now I am trying to get the house remodeled and fit to live in.4 In another letter to Dobie, he wrote: “I wish you could see our farm. It is our own Paisano although we haven’t named the place—it is now reclaimed from tenant farmer ruin and is in fine shape. It required 7 terraces to reclaim the ‘canyons’ in one 30 acre area, where down hill plowing was customary. Long diversion terraces around the brow of two hills have stopped erosion down the slopes. I put in a 3 acre pond 13 feet deep and a smaller one ten feet deep just outside the yard fence. I can almost cast from the porch. My bass are 8 pounders. . . . I built the house myself. It is a [quarter] mile back from the road and so it is completely private . . . Bedichek’s and Webb’s scattering seeds on neglected ground appealed directly to my heart. This becomes a basic urge and a must when a man is close to the...

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