Frank X. Tolbert 2 — he so preferred that to “II” — reveled in being a popular Texas artist, beloved by friends and fans and celebrated by gallery owners and nature lovers alike. Tolbert died July 13 at his home in Houston. He was 77. Friends say he grew up blessed “with a legendary wit and gentlemanly manners who could find humor in any situation,” according to a passionate written statement sent to The Dallas Morning News in memory of a man they cherished.
He was part of a legendary Texas family and took pride in being so. The name Tolbert has long been synonymous with Texas. And chili. And Texana. And a Texas that is rapidly disappearing, in the rush from wilderness to pavement. Frank X. Tolbert — his dad — was a legend, a journalist, a true Texas historian and a one-of-a-kind chili enthusiast. He was, in essence, an institution, who wrote a column for The News from 1946 until he died in 1984.
But his son carved out his own identity.
Susan Chadwick, former art critic for the Houston Post, is among those now mourning the loss of the younger Tolbert, whose “family believes he was born,” in her words, “with a pencil in his hand. His distinctive narrative work is in major museums across Texas and elsewhere,” including the Dallas Museum of Art and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. His most recent North Texas exhibition occurred at the William Campbell Gallery in Fort Worth in 2022.
Chadwick’s seasoned eye deems Tolbert’s work “witty and imaginative” and blessed with an undercurrent that focused on “mortality and self,” on birds and nature, Texas and Mexican culture — and legend, which his family understood so well. Frank 2 and his wife, fellow artist Ann Stautberg, adored each other, Chadwick says, sharing decades of travel in which they crisscrossed the globe. In addition to that, they were passionate about the tango.
“In his early autobiographical work,” Chadwick says, “he portrayed himself as a coyote and his wife as a cat.”
“My work is an emotional dream reality documentation of how I see life on the Planet Earth,” Tolbert once wrote in an artist statement, noting that if his drawings were music, “they would be the blues.”
In the past decade, he had focused his passions more directly on the “Texas Bird Project,” which consisted of colorful, stylized renderings of native Texas birds, which captured his fancy long ago.
Born in Washington, D.C., the younger Tolbert once teamed up with his legendary dad on a road trip that covered the 4,137-mile perimeter of the state of Texas, which the elder Tolbert then documented, in his own inimitable way, in The News.
The Tolbert legend went into overdrive in 1967, when Big Frank founded the Terlingua Chili Cookoff in Terlingua, Texas, and then punctuated his culinary obsession by founding Tolbert’s Chili Parlor in downtown Dallas. The restaurant still exists, albeit in Grapevine, where the owner-operator is Kathleen Tolbert Ryan, Frank 2′s younger sister. Frank 2 graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Dallas before moving on to Texas Tech University, where he studied art.
He is survived by his wife and sister. For those wishing to remember him, the Tolbert family asks that donations be made in Frank 2′s memory to the non-profit Texas visual art magazine, Glasstire.
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July 19, 2023 at 06:01PM
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Frank X. Tolbert 2, artist and son of a Texas legend, dies at 77 - The Dallas Morning News
"artist" - Google News
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