Life After All : Lois Mailou Jones: Exuberant Artist, Teacher, Cultural Icon

Lois Mailou Jones, Self-portrait

I had the great pleasure of knowing Lois Mailou Jones when I lived and worked in Washington, DC. She was in her 80s, and still a force to be reckoned with. She had retired from teaching at Howard University, but she continued to paint every day. She was lively, articulate, accessible, a friend to everyone who loved art and travel, and Paris. She loved Paris. She said as a young women artist she felt accepted there. I cried when I learned of her death in 1998. Lois left a powerful legacy. Her art continues to be exhibited and sold, and is housed in the permanent collections of several museums. I wish the Toledo Museum of Art was one of them.

Lois was born in Boston in 1905 and died in her home in Washington, DC in 1998. She is buried on Martha's Vineyard in the Oak Bluffs Cemetery. Her Martha's Vineyard experience is a story in itself, a story of the Black experience on that small island.*(see notes below) The fact that Michelle and Barack Obama bought a house there recently is part of this fascinating history, which begins in the 1600s when African American slaves were manumitted early, became important Island workers, and built communities overtime that have changed, grown and lasted to the present day.*

Like so many other African-American artists, jazz musicians, photograhers, intellectuals and writers, Lois spent some time in New York during the Harlem Renaissance. She mentored many a budding artist and made her mark. She was one of the rare African-American female painters of the 1930s and 1940s to achieve fame abroad as well.*(see notes below) The national and transnational networks of talented African-American artists and intellectuals in all genres from across the country who supported each other and triumphed against the odds is an amazing American story. We all should know more about it and honor their contributions.

Lois moved to Washington in the 1930s to establish a career in painting and to teach at Howard University. She taught there for 50 years, mentoring and encouraging several generations of artists. I met Lois through friends who taught at Howard. This Historically Black College has nurtured incredible talent and genius since the end of the Civil War, including Thurgood Marshall, Toni Morrison, and Elijah Cummings among many others. Our new vice president, Kamala Harris, is a proud graduate of Howard.

I especially remember Lois' memories of Haiti, the birthplace of her husband Louis Pierre-Noel, an artist she had met when both were students at Columbia University. Lois absorbed knowlege and new experiences like a sponge, with enthusiasm and curiosity. After they got married in 1953, they lived in Washington and Haiti and continued their frequent trips to Paris. Lois, world traveler, world citizen, absorbed it all. Haiti's bright colors, bold patterns and designs inspired many of her paintings and are among her best-known works, and some of my favorites.

Ascent of Ethiopia

Her many travels to Africa also influenced her art, especially from the 1970s and 1980s. In her prolific work during this period she incorporated a unique and extraordinary "synthesis of African, Caribbean, American and African-American iconography."* (Mint Museum catalogue). The African paintings made her a legend in her lifetime.

Ode to Kinsasha

How lucky I was to have crossed paths with her in her later years, years of reflection and wisdom. I remember a conversation we had after a public humanities program at Howard. I had just returned from a trip to India, which fascinated her. I told her how much I loved her work and casually mentioned that I didn't have any artistic talent but I was a great appreciator. She responded wth a twinkle in her eye. "Just keep traveling," she said. I took her up on that!

The Lois I knew in DC in her studio, in her late 80s
and still painting. Such lovely memories. (Wiki photo)

Some sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_Mailou_Jones

https://repeatingislands.com/2011/09/05/lois-mailou-jones-painter-overcame-racial-gender-prejudices/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Bluffs,_Massachusetts

"Affluent African Americans from New York, Boston, and Washington came to Oak Bluffs, the only Martha's Vineyard town that welcomed black tourists as other towns on the island did not allow black guests to stay in inns and hotels until the 1960s. Many bought houses in an area they called the Oval or the Highlands, which Lois' friend novelist Dorothy West wrote about in her 1995 novel, The Wedding (edited by Doubleday editor Jacuqeline Kennedy Onassis, a Vineyard resident who visited West for two summers). By the 1930s, local black landowners were transforming the town into the country's best-known and most exclusive African American vacation spot. Down the road from West, Adam layton Powell, Jr. owned a cottage in the Oval where Artic explorer Matthrew Henson was a guest. Further down the road is Shearer Cottage, the first inn for African Americans vacationers. It was built by Charles Shearer, the son of a slave and a slave owner, when Shearer saw that black visitors were not able to stay at othe homes due to segregation. Guests at the inn included the first self-made American millionairess Madame CJ Walker, singers Paul Robeson, Ethel Waters and Lillian Evanti; and composer Harry T. Burleigh ."

* "Lois Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color," is a 144 page catalogue produced by the Mint Museum of African American Artists, with essays by Dr. Edmund Barry Gaither, for an exhibition of her work. The exhibiton was held at the beautiful National Museum of American Art in Washington DC and featured "more than 70 paintings, drawings, and textile designs that spans the artist’s career from the late Harlem Renaissance to her contemporary synthesis of African, Caribbean, American, and African American iconography. Despite formidable racial and gender prejudices, Loïs Mailou Jones (1905–1998) achieved success as a designer and painter, and her influence as a teacher extended beyond her native country, impacting several generations of artists."

Lois Mailou Jones, Moon Mask
is at the Smithsonian Institution,
which has a fabulous collection
of African-American Art.*

* https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/african-american-2016

Lois Mailou Jones,"We Shall Overcome"

Lois Mailou Jones, Les Fetiches

*https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1992/11/5/lois-mailou-jones-60-years-of/ about a 1992 exhibit of her work at the Schlesenger Library at Harvard. Lois was 87 years old. "Jones conveys the love of people, respect for other cultures and deep sense of her on heritage through her art as powerfully as she does in person. The pieces in the exhibition at the Schlesinger trace the development of a remarkable body of work over an equally remarkable life."