| Malone, Hazel |
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(b. 1912)
Place of Birth: Capitan, New Mexico History: “Hazel Malone, born in Capitan, New Mexico, in 1912, is now ninety-five years old. She was the only child of Willis Hightower, born in Reserve, New Mexico, and Agnes Pfingston Hightower, born in Lincoln, New Mexico. The family moved to Alamogordo when Hazel was a small child and then settled in EI Paso around 1921. She attended Bailey School for a short while before going to the old Morehead School located on Montana Ave. Hazel attended EI Paso High School and graduated in 1929; she traveled by streetcar to take classes at Texas College of Mines and to work at several part-time jobs (at Grant's, at the Popular) in downtown EI Paso. She was also being courted by Robert Malone. Malone, although born in Tennessee, had moved to Kenna, New Mexico, as a small boy and lived on a homestead with his large family (he had four sisters and eight brothers). He had left home to attend high school and two years of college at Hardin Simmons before moving to EI Paso where he found a job at the Texas Company (later Texaco). The couple married in Las Cruces in 1932, and then settled into a house on Douglas Street near Five Points. Their only child, Judy, was born in 1939. In 1948, they moved to the Upper Valley and began working on the house that grew from a small two-room chicken house into a home that reflected their talents and hard work. Mr. Malone died in 1997, but Hazel continued to live in their home on Emory Road until the floods of August, 2006. She now resides in Horizon City with her daughter and son-in-law, Judy and Bill Mohrhauser. Hazel's interest in art began when she was a child, and her talent was encouraged in high school by her teacher Mrs. Harlaker. While attending college, she received further encouragement and instruction from Vera Wise and Robert Massey; she resumed taking art classes there in the forties and fifties. She also began taking art workshops from various artists both in EI Paso and in New Mexico; she participated in several at the Carrizo Lodge in Ruidoso. She studied under many different artists, including Dr. Emilio Caballero, Fredric Taubes, Jan Herring, and Tom Lynch, and worked in a variety of media--oil, watercolor, acrylic, pastels, and guache. Over the many years she drew and painted, she experimented with a wide range of subject matter as well. Mrs. Malone was a member of the EI Paso Art Association for many years and participated in various art shows in which she won several awards. In 1967, she had a two-man show with her friend Lillian Corbin. In an El Paso Herald Post article dated October 7, 1967, she and Mrs. Corbin are shown, each holding a painting. Mrs. Malone is quoted as saying, "I like to sketch old, dilapidated buildings and weather-beaten trees. 1 often do paintings 'on the spot.'" She contributed to the KCOS Art Auction in its early days, and she gave generously to her many friends and family members. There are Hazel Malone paintings hanging in homes throughout the area. Although she sketched and painted practically everywhere she went, her work is connected to the EI Paso-New Mexico area. Mr. Malone was a fisherman, and Hazel took her sketchbook and art materials on their many shared trips to the outdoors. Many of these expeditions were to various parts of New Mexico. She also enjoyed sketching with her friends, and her daughter recalls the numerous times her mother and various companions went sketching in the environs of EI Paso, "I grew up watching my mother draw and paint, and I remember going to art museums from the time I was small. Once when we were in Santa Fe, my mom bought me paper dolls to keep me entertained in the patio of the museum there so that she could devote her full attention to the art she loved." Hazel Malone's art reveals a sensibility rooted in an awareness of the beauty to be found in old buildings, barren landscapes, ordinary objects, pastoral scenes, city and village streets, the people we see, and in the colors and shapes that surround us.” (Source: Judy Mohrhauser; El Paso, Texas, 2007) |