My glamorous Uncle Win. Oldest of my father’s seven siblings. Master sculptor. Dedicated to preserving the culture and faces of Southwest Indians. Created 41 busts in his Santa Fe, New Mexico studio in the 1930s.

Tan. Trim. Friend of the Navajos, Pueblos, Acomas and Tewas. Here are three bronze castings that greet me every morning—Albert Lujan, José Nacio Herrara, and an unnamed old Indian man who walked 100 miles to sit stolidly for his clay portrait in spite of warnings from his shaman that he was risking death. Winslow’s friends. My friends.

Deeply tanned, handsome figure, highly respected in the art colony of Santa Fe and driven by his goal to create 50 bronze heads of real native Americans. Dropped dead at 70 short of his goal.

Piercing, brown eyes, baldheaded. White sweatshirt, white flannel slacks, white tennis shoes, white custom-built Lincoln roadster. A dashing, exciting, inspirational figure worshiped by dozens of nieces and nephews.

If you are ever in the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art, you may see the Buddha-like bust of Albert Lujan, Tewa from Taos. Famed art critic Ina Sizer Cassidy wrote these words about this magnificent bronze in the New Mexico magazine: “Winslow’s work is simplified in the last degree, his planes being only those needed to delineate the significant form and inner spirit of his model, giving strength and dignity to his portraits. It is amazing to observe the individual expressions he gets in the eyes of his sitters, as clearly individualized as is gotten by painters and accomplished by lines and planes alone.”

In Creative Art magazine, noted psychologist David Seabury paid this tribute: “It is so rare to find a man who senses meaning and yet does not try to evade reality, who seeks meaning in the form and lets that meaning so empower his vision and strengthen his touch that he renders the life before him with true power and perception.”

After World War II, he became Executive Director of the World Federalist organization for New Mexico and worked tirelessly for peace but never gave up his dream of creating a national gallery for the preservation of American Indian Art—a dream that came true after his death in 1958.

When I gaze intently into the eyes of Albert and José Nacio as they sit on our dining room buffet, I feel the warmth and kinship they shared with Winslow, my favorite artist and beloved friend.