Tina Mion: The Inside Scoop

By Allan Affeldt

Tina was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up all over the east coast. Her first art award (a fire hat) was for a Smokey the Bear fire-prevention poster in the fourth grade. Tina is an art school drop-out and largely self-taught. When she decided art school wasn’t for her, she headed toward New York, assuming she might attend the Art Student’s League. She wound up moving to Sri Lanka instead, tugging along 90 pounds of paint and canvas. She left for India months later by boat, carrying a roll of toilet paper and a sketch book. From India she moved to an unheated barn in the Maine woods, and from there to an island in Casco Bay where she slept on the floor and used a card table as an easel while struggling to start “Tina and Taylor” — a fashion business. Read More @ tina@tinamion.com

We had purchased La Posada, the last great Fred Harvey hotel and architect Mary Colter’s masterpiece: an 80,000-square-foot Spanish hacienda in the small desert town of Winslow, Arizona. La Posada had closed in 1957, so we had a lot of work to do, but there were lots of LARGE blank walls and Tina sensed an opportunity. Today, La Posada is restored and one of Arizona’s most famous sites. The hotel / museum has visitors from all over the world. It has been Tina’s home and studio since 1997, and the hotel walls are full of Tina’s paintings. At La Posada, she completed Ladies First, a large series of Object paintings and pastels, and the great 18-foot triptychs: Red, White and Blue, and A New

Year’s Party in Purgatory for Suicides.

We recently found another huge abandoned building, this time in the California desert town of Needles on the Colorado River, so studio number three is in the works. I tell Tina it has lots of large walls. She doesn’t seem to need much else. Studio number two is on a mountain top and Tina won’t tell anyone where it is.