SGT, US Army, Eah-Ha-Wa, Eva Mirabal

Eah-Ha-Wa (“Fast Growing Corn” in the Tiwa language) also known as Eva Mirabal, enlisted in the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) in May of 1943. ^{1, 2} She created the comic strip “G.I. Gertie” for the military publication AIR WAC, a nationally distributed paper for women in the Army Air Force. ¹ Mirabal was the only WAAC who served as a full-time artist during World War II and is thought to be the first published Native woman cartoonist. ^{1, 3} After basic training at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, Mirabal was stationed at the Air Service Command Headquarters at Patterson Field, Ohio where she spent three years. ¹ As an artist for the Army Air Force, she helped create the 40-foot mural “A Bridge of Wings” at the Air Service Command at Wright Patterson Field in Ohio and another original mural at Buhl Planetarium in Pittsburgh in 1944. ^{1, 3, 4} After leaving Wright Patterson in October of 1945, Mirabal transferred to Fort Dix in New Jersey, making memorial plaques and original watercolor posters. ¹ She was awarded the American Service Medal, the Good Conduct Medal, the WAAC Service Ribbon, and the World War II Victory Medal. Mirabal was honorably discharged on January 7, 1946. ⁵

Mirabal was born at Taos Pueblo, New Mexico to Andrea and Pedro Beaded Shirt Mirabal. ^{4, 6} Because her father was a model for artists like Joseph Imhof and the Russian painter Nicolai Fechin, she became familiar with the world of art at an early age and began painting after receiving a paint set as a child. ⁷ After graduating from Taos Pueblo Day School where she attended through the eighth grade, Mirabal enrolled in the Santa Fe Indian School (SFIS) in 1936 where she studied with Dorothy Dunn. She later completed post-graduate work at the school through 1942 ¹ and served as an assistant art instructor and assistant to Dunn’s successor P’Otsunu (Gerónima Montoya).  Dunn said of Mirabal’s painting, “Eva Mirabal had the ability to translate everyday events into scenes of warmth and semi-naturalistic beauty.” ⁸ In her senior year, she was the associate art editor for the school paper, Teguayo. ⁹ Also in her final year at SFIS she won a national U.S. Treasury Department poster contest for Smoke Signals as part of the war bonds effort. ¹ Unfortunately, a mural that she helped to create at the Santa Fe Indian School was painted over and another was destroyed when the buildings were torn down in 2008. ^{1, 13}

Mirabal began exhibiting artwork regularly in her 20s. She was known for depictions of Pueblo life and her primary medium was gouache. ¹ In 1941 she exhibited Picking Wild Berries (1938) and Horse Tail Dance at the Art Museum in Santa Fe and exhibited “Drummer” in 1942 at the Carlen Gallery in Philadelphia. ^{10, 11, 12}.

From 1946 to 1947, Mirabal was a visiting artist-in-residence at Southern Illinois Normal University in Carbondale, studying and teaching art. Then in 1949, she returned to Taos and under the G. I. Bill and studied at Taos Valley Art School run by Beatrice Mandelman and Louis Ribak. ¹³ In 1946 Mirabal was the only woman who entered a painting in the First National Exhibition of Indian Painting at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma. ³ Dorothy Dunn included her painting Friendship Dance (1938) in her 1953 exhibition, Contemporary American Indian Painting, which opened at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. ³ In 1957 She won the Margretta S. Dietrich Award for Deer in Forest and Picking Wild Berries (1938) won three awards during her lifetime. ^{1, 15} Mirabal completed a mural at the Southern Illinois Shylock Auditorium and the mural Running Horses at the Veterans Hospital in Albuquerque in 1963 while a patient. ^{3, 16} In 1965, she exhibited The Red Buffalo, The Hunter’s Return, and Vision of Yesterday, at the National Indian Art Exhibit in Scottsdale. ¹⁷ She appeared in Bert Van Bork’s award-winning film Indian Artists of the Southwest and is featured in the Philbrook Museum book Visions and Voices and Earth, Song and Moon Dreams, Paintings by Native American Women by Patricia Janis Broder. ^{18, 19}

Mirabal had two sons with Manuel Gomez, Jonathan Warm Day Coming and Christopher. Following her death in 1968, they discovered a large pine box that had been nailed shut. Inside they found drawings, family photographs, diary entries, newspaper clippings, and letters. Jonathan Warm Day Coming was inspired to paint after his mother died and became a well-known New Mexico artist. Jonathan Day Coming said of his mother, “She had a strong spirit, and it drove and inspired her. And she worked all the time. When I think of her, I can see her painting, painting…that’s what allowed her to achieve so much in so little time.” ^{20 Lois} Rudnick and Jonathan Warm Day collaborated on the book Eva Mirabal: Three Generations of Tradition and Modernity at Taos Pueblo in 2021. ^{1, 21, 22}