Remembering Stanley Cowell and Other Toledo Jazz Memories

 

Stanley Cowell, 1941-2020
 thanks to Toledo Jazz Newsletter 

"2020 has been a tough year for many, and now we are faced with more sad news.  Toledo's own jazz piano great, Stanley Cowell, passed away on Thursday, December 17, 2020. Cowell, born in Toledo in 1941, became a world-renowned jazz pianist, composer, and force in the development of jazz.  As a youngster in Toledo he played piano for Art Tatum and that seemed to point the way for his pathway in life."  Doug Swiatecki, Toledo Jazz Newsletter 

I was sad to get this news. I didn't know Stanley Cowell personally but through his music and the fabulous sound of the Piano Choir. I'll never forget hearing those 7 pianos in DC. The news brought back a flood of memories. Personal, quiet, the memories of a single fan among millions of jazz aficionados, the anonymous folks who love jazz. We listen to magnificent jazz albums in the privacy of our homes. We listened to Marian McPartland on NPR every Saturday night, and had our car radios tuned in. We are among the unknown faces in an enraptured audience listening to live jazz whenever and wherever we could. Pure joy.

Clifford Murphy on his
big bass.

I remember certain Toledo-born Jazz musicians from the 1970s and early 1980s who performed at Rusty's, Murphy's Place, Hines Farm and other area venues. Some names elude me now. One of my best memories was getting to know jazz bassist Cliff Murphy through his partner Joan Russell.  Joan and I met at a group called Lutherans for Human Dignity. I doubt many folks have ever heard of it. It was an ecumenical group of people united in fighting for civil rights and increased racial understanding. It was founded by an African-American doctor, an optometrist, whose name I'm sorry to say I can't remember. Joan was faithful, dedicated, determined, and I loved that about her. 

One of the important issues that group worked on was adding Black history to the public schools curriculum. It included a protest in front of the Toledo Public Schools Administration building. It was in the early '70s. Joan joined our motley crew of about 30 protestors with some good signs and lots of enthusiasm. It was a pioneering effort at the time. Learning about Black history was as critical then as it is now. We're still fighting that battle. It reminds me that every advance in American political and social life begins with these kind of grassroots protests against racism and injustice, the troops behind leaders like Martin Luther King. It's how Fannie Lou Hammer got her start in Mississippi, fighting for voting rights. A rising from the ground up. 

I loved going downtown to hear Cliff and other wonderful musicians, with the brilliant Claude Black on piano, at Murphy's Place. Glenda was often the lead singer. I thought she was a fantastic talent, with a powerful voice. Joan made all her outfits, glamorous, colorful, dramatic. Joan in my mind could do anything, and she was the kindest person any friend could have. So was Cliff. That's how far back we go.  

I left Toledo for Washington, DC in 1985, where I lived and worked for almost 20 years. It had a great jazz scene, from Blues Alley to smaller clubs to art and education nonprofits like that powered by Charles and Linda Cassells. They organized important jazz education programs and brought in some great musicians, like Wynton Marsalis, that served to spread the amazing history of jazz and led lucky participants to embrace the music.  The DC humanities council supported many of the Cassells' projects. 

While I was away from Toledo lots changed, of course. Rusty closed, dear Joan died, Murphy's closed, and a few years after returning to Toledo in 2011 from living in Florida and in Ukraine as a Peace Corps Volunteer, Cliff died. Claude Black died. It was 2013, the same year that Marion McPartland died. I'd go with friends to listen to an aging but still elegant Cliff play at that corner pub downtown, on the corner of Huron and Monroe. For me now, with Cliff's death, then Cowell's, it feels like the end of an era. 

The music, of course, lives on. The tradition is solid, enshrined and as sacred as the American jazz canon that our Toledo Musicians were part of and that they enlivened and enriched. I imagine that heavenly chorus of jazz greats playing together from on high, filling up the heavens with a glorious sound.  

Some Sources: 

* Doug Swiatecki, Toledo Jazz Newsletter, link to a WBGO article about Cowell's life and achievements: https://www.wbgo.org/post/stanley-cowell-pianist-composer-and-educator-kaleidoscopic-view-jazz-dead-79#stream/0.  Great article. 

"His output in that decade was both prolific and far-ranging; among his signature ensembles was The Piano Choir, which consisted of no fewer than seven pianists, including Harold Mabern and Hugh Lawson./ Handscapes and Handscapes 2 the first albums by The Piano Choir, were released on Strata-East, a pioneering label that Cowell founded with Tolliver in 1971. Inspired by Strata Records, a collective entity in Detroit, Strata-East was an independent affair in every sense, from the production to the distribution."

Swiatecki's memory about Cowell's visit to Cliff Murphy when he was very sick especially moved me. "The visit with Murphy was particularly touching as Cowell used an electronic keyboard to play for the ailing Murphy." Now we can imagine these jazz greats playing their music in heaven. 

*  https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/toledoblade/obituary.aspx?pid=194581877

"Mr. Murphy was a bassist who impressed people by how effortlessly his unusually large, bear-like hands glided across his instrument's strings. But to hundreds of musicians - many of whom went on to play professionally across America - Mr. Murphy was the more calming, gentle, and reassuring half of a duo [with Claude Black] that for several decades took it upon themselves to teach young people how to play jazz through real-life nightclub experience."  Murphy and Claude Black played together from the late 1940s until Mr. Black died in 2013. 

"Clifford was a kind and gentle big bear of a man who left a huge legacy of jazz in our community. He was a mentor for so many young jazz players, offering support and encouragement, a big smile and a warm hug," Ms. Lefevre Johnson said. "I was blessed to sing with Clifford [Murphy] and Claude Black at Murphy's Place where I learned so much about jazz, about performing, and about love and support for your fellow musicians. Clifford was a musical giant full of love for the music and for all who were lucky enough to share the stage with him. He could play any jazz standard in any key and play it right."

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handscapes

One of my all-time favorites. I took piano lessons for many years
and loved the sound of 7 pianos playing together!  .Awesome.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_McPartland.  It was amazing to be reminded of how long her NPR program ran, from 1978 to 2011, a few years before she died. She was a jazz pianist and composer, married to a jazz musician, and her knowledge was incredible. 

https://www.toledoblade.com/local/2011/06/01/Toledo-jazz-enthusiasts-lament-the-closing-of-Murphys/stories/20110531070

Joan 

* https://toledocitypaper.com/music/claude-black/

Claude Black on piano. He was fantastic.

"Lauded jazz pianist and legendary Toledo musician Claude Black succumbed to his year-long battle with cancer and passed away on Saturday, January 19th at the age of 80. Claude was a staple on the Toledo jazz scene who started his career in Detroit at age 16 playing with the likes of Aretha Franklin, Charlie Parker and Wes Montgomery. He was the house pianist at Murphy’s for over two decades where he regularly performed as well as mentored young Toledo jazz musicians, passing along his vast knowledge of music to several generations of players. A true artist and gentleman, Claude was known for his friendly demeanor and desire to hear other people’s stories rather than tell his own. He will be dearly missed by Toledo’s citizens and music scene." —GMK

Alice Lok Cahana, Holocaust Survivor, Channeled her Experiences and Spirit through her Art

" None of us can hear six million voices at the same time. None of us can imagine the landscape of Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen and the many other concentration and death camps. None of us can describe the odor of Auschwitz or the pain of a parent whose child was torn away. No words are adequate for this task. The art cannot express it. And still, all of us who survived took a silent oath, made a promise to tell a glimpse of the story.

Not to let the world forget. My art and my writing are my Kaddish for those who did not survive."   ALICE LOK CAHANA

Alice Lok Cahana, Whirlwind, 54 × 62 inches, acrylic and watercolor on canvas, ca 1980. Courtesy Cahana family archives #WomenArtusts, thanks to Peter Stebbins and the Lily and Earle M. Pilgrim Foundation. Peter has introduced me to so many forgotten and wonderful artists.

Alice Lok Cahana (1929-2017) was a Hungarian Jew from Sarvar, Hungary, who survived four different concentration camps in the last year of WWII, losing every member of her extended family except for her father and beloved older sister, Edith, who survived only to perish from illness immediately after liberation. She entered a hospital, and Alice never saw her again. Loss is an enduring pain that informed Alice's life and her art.  How could it not be?

Concert in Auschwitz, 1979. Cahana painted this amazing and well-known piece a year after she had decided to return to Hungary, only to discover that the once-vibrant Jewish community in which she was born and raised no longer existed. I remember that entry gate into Auschwitz, an indelible trip into evil. 

Alice was just a teenager, in the formative years of her life. Just think of all she suffered, all she saw, all she lost. Alice swore an oath to herself while in the camps, that if she survived she would become an artist and "draw rainbows out of the ashes" of her experience. That experience included the horrors,  starvation and death, and the unbearable struggle for survival, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Guben, and Bergen-Belsen camps. It is impossible to imagine.  

Her first artwork emerged at the Guben concentration camp. She remembers.

"At Guben, the Nazis challenged the children to decorate the barracks for Christmas. "Can you imagine what it was like?" Cahana said in an interview with art historian Barbara Rose. "There were no paper or pencils to make decorations; we practically had nothing except one broom to sweep the floor with. We were about 24 children in our barrack. I decided we should choreograph ourselves into a living candelabra and hold the pieces of the broom as a part of this sculpture. We won a prize - each of us a little can of snails."   https://cla.purdue.edu/Ressler/artists/cahanabio.

She was liberated from Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945. Her memories of that camp, documented in testimony preserved at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, DC, is heartbreaking.

"Bergen-Belsen was hell on earth. Nothing ever in literature could compare to anything what Bergen-Belsen was. When we arrived, the dead were not carried away any more, you stepped over them, you fell over them if you couldn't walk. There were agonizing...people begging for water. They were felling...falling into planks that they were not pulled together in the barracks. They were crying, they were begging. It was, it was hell. It was hell. Day and night. You couldn't escape the crying, you couldn't have escaped the praying, you couldn't escape the [cries of] "Mercy," the, it was a chant, the chant of the dead. It was hell."

The Cahana transcript at the Holocaust Museum also records one of the most harrowing tales any one could have, a horror survival story. At one point, Alice was selected for the gas chamber. Yes, "selected for the gas chamber." This was at Auschwitz. I shudder to even try to imagine it. Crowded into a small, dark, cold "shower" room with a group of naked, terrorized, horrified, traumatized women. Nothing but terror. Sheer terror. Moans of anquish. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting for the end. The women are dazed, but nothing happens. Nothing happens. The women are let out, into the light of day, and marched back to their barracks. The terror is indescribable. Saved, they later learn, because of a malfunction. A malfunction! A malfunction in a Nazi death "shower" saved Alice and the women she was with.  

The war was ending, Allied forces were approaching the camps, Nazis were fleeing. Things were falling apart. Things were being destroyed, evidence of evil. Things were malfunctioning. As Allied forces came closer, in shock at what they were seeing, witnesses to the death camps, Alice and her other inmates were evacuated to the Guben labor camp.  Alice, her sister, and another girl escaped during a forced march from the camp but were found and sent on to Bergen-Belsen, the hell on earth.

Alice's courage is almost beyond understanding. Here she was, a teenager defying Hitler's evil, with her sister Edith, trying to run away. And this after suffering the most haunting experiences any human can endure, the same teenager whose art project at the Guban concentration camp was a human menorah, a Jewish symbol of light and hope. 

That Alice Lok lived to tell her story is a miracle. It's a miracle she channeled with care, so that the world would never forget.  

Arrival, at Auschwitz

After the war, wounded emotionally, exhausted from work, hunger, fear, but determined to make a life, she lived in Sweden for a while, the home of Raoul Wallenberg, an ambasador who had saved many Jews on their way to the camps, including Lok Cahana's father. 

A few years later, in 1959, she emigrated to the US, where she settled in Houston, Texas, with her husband Moshe Cahana, a Rabbi she had met in Israel right after liberation, and their first-born son. 

Her years in  Houston were filled with family life and with art classes and painting. This is when her art studies, which had begun in Sarvar at her Jewish high school (Jews were not allowed in public schools), took off in earnest. At the University of Houston and at Rice University she was introduced to the art of Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland and the "color field painters," a dominant style at the time. She painted colorful American canvases, honing her skills and voice. 

In 1978 she decided to return to Hungary and visit her birthplace. That visit shifted the content and direction of her art.  Nothing remained of the Jewish community she had known. There were no memorials to the vast number of Jews who had once played such a dominate social and cultural role in Hungarian society, who had been dragged from their homes and sent to Nazi death camps. It was as if Jewish religion and culture had been erased. 

"The same railroad tracks that took me to Auschwitz took me back. It seemed like nothing had changed - the town was still mute and silent - no memorial, no remembrance, no one missed us or cared. It was one of the most shocking events I experienced after the Holocaust."  It's a shock that many Holocaust survivors experienced.* (See story of artist Edith Hoffman Birkin, another Holocaust survivor, below). 

Fascinating figures embedded in
this incredible painting, in the artist's collection.

After this traumatic visit, Cahana's artwork changed.  

"The lyrical abstractions she had made in Houston became the ground for a new kind of mark-making, employing collage, along with an abstract visual language, that could more directly express her memorial to the dead." Moreover, she created a series of works dedicated to Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who handed out fake Swedish passports to Jews targeted for the death camps. These schutzpassen, some of which are pasted as collage elements in Raoul Wallenberg - Schutz Pass,  were passes to life. Wallenberg's daring efforts saved more than 20,000 people, including Cahana's father."   https://cla.purdue.edu/Ressler/artists/cahanabio.   

 

As she told art historian Barbara Rose in an interview for the catalog of her exhibit From Ashes to the Rainbow, "I started to paint only about the Holocaust as a tribute and memorial to those who did not return, and I am still not finished." 

She believed that her work had to be about 'the transcendence of the human spirit, the triumph of human spirituality over inhuman evil.' Her art was a record and a witness to persistance, survival, the power of the human spirit to survive the most unbearable horrors, the killing fields of the Holocaust. 

Alice Cahana painted until her death a few years ago, in 2017. I didn't know about her then, but I'm glad I've discovered her work, her art, her passion. There are many ways to remember. Cahana's art is one of them. We can never forget. 

"No Names." So sad, foreboding, entering the furnaces of death. In 2006, this piece was added to the Vatican Museum's Collection of Modern Religious Art, and since then is on permanent display at the museum in Rome. It was the Vatican Museum's first piece of art by a Holocaust survivor.

  

Cahana in front of a collage/painting that included
portraits of Holocaust victims, In Memorium. 

"In an effort to make certain that no one could explain her imagery as simply fantasies of an artistic imagination she used literal photographs and documents: factual evidence that could not be disputed. It was during this period that she created a series dedicated to Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who handed out fake passports to Jews targeted for the death camps....Some of these faded passports were incorporated into the series as collage elements. Additional works include newspaper clippings, photographs, pages from her mother's prayer book, and  yellow stars. The "surface of her carefully structured compositions are subject to various processes: burned, scratched, stained with blood red pigment; the images are grafted, buried, partially eaten away." Wikipedia and www.RaoulWallenberg

 Remembering, a collage/painting including photographs.

Just as her "living candelabra" at Guben defied the Nazis by honoring a Jewish symbol, the Chanukka  menorah, her later artwork celebrated Judaism and those who perished in the Holocaust.  She transformed the horror of their deaths into a testament to their lives. 

Sabbath in Auschwitz 

 Lok Cahaha's work appears in multiple prestigious museum collections around the world including Yad Vashem, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Skirball Museum at Los Angeles: Hebrew Union College, and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. (Wikipedia)

Some sources:

https://www.en.wikipedia. org/Alice Lok Cahana

https://www.raoulwallenberg.net/news/holocaust-survivor-makes-art/

Baigell, Matthew, Jewish-American Artists and the Holocaust, Rutgers University Press, 1997.

https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/rueffschool/waaw/Ressler/artists/cahanabio.html About an exhibition of her work and a brief biography. Informative.

https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/personal-history/media_oi.php?MediaId=1081&th=camps The US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Cahana transcript. Like other testimonies of survivors, Cahana's memories are tragic, beyond sadness, the stench of evil pervading, the horror staggering, sickening. And she was just a teenager. A child.

"Several days later we arrived to Bergen-Belsen. And Bergen-Belsen was hell on earth. Nothing ever in literature could compare to anything what Bergen-Belsen was. When we arrived, the dead were not carried away a'ny more, you stepped over them, you fell over them if you couldn't walk. There were agonizing...people begging for water. They were felling...falling into planks that they were not pulled together in the barracks. They were crying, they were begging. It was, it was hell. It was hell. Day and night. You couldn't escape the crying, you couldn't have escaped the praying, you couldn't escape the [cries of] "Mercy," the, it was a chant, the chant of the dead. It was hell."

The Museum notes: Alice was deported to Auschwitz in 1944, the year Hitler invaded Hungary. At one time she was selected for the gas chamber, but survived because of a malfunction. Imagine.  As Allied forces approached the camp, Alice and other inmates were evacuated to the Guben labor camp. Alice, her sister, and another girl escaped during a forced march from the camp but were found and sent on to Bergen-Belsen. Alice's sister was taken to a Red Cross hospital, but Alice never saw her again. 

https://fritzaschersociety.org/flight-or-fight-stories-of-artists-under-repression/ An interesting site.

Thirty years ago, I was introduced to the artwork of Fritz Ascher. I had never heard about him before and not many other people had at that time./The more I saw of his work, the more I realized that he was an extraordinaire artist, who was not alone, but suffered a fate that befell a rather large group of artists, whose careers were interrupted or destroyed by the Nazi terror regime.Many of these artist, like Fritz Ascher, never received the recognition and acknowledgement which they deserved, after 1945.The strength and artistic integrity of Fritz Ascher’s work, has driven me to try changing that./ In 2014, I founded the Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art, Inc., which re-discovers such forgotten artists and introduces their unique artistic voices to a larger public.We present these artists in their historical context, the context of European and Modern art, through international research initiatives and collaborations with institutions on exhibitions and publications.We hope to initiate interest and dialogue in contemporary society about these artists, and the inherent questions their life poses about individuality, artistic and human integrity in the face of conditions of extreme duress and tyranny. . . ./ We celebrate those who withstood these powers and believe that by showing their work, we can inspire reflection about authenticity, creativity and resilience in the face of adversity, today./We believe that, by exhibiting the work of artists, who, under great personal danger, refused to give up their integrity, we can provide today’s audience and society at large with valuable examples of how humanity can overcome the powers of darkness. . . .Rachel Stern, Founding Director/CEO

https://www.yadvashem.org/education/educational-materials/film-reviews/last-days.html About Steven Spielburg's movie The Last Days, which features the lives of five Holocaust survivors from Hungary. One of the five is Alice Lok Cahana. "The film is not just another documentary about the Holocaust; it is a documentary about a specific period and a specific place during the Holocaust – a period of less than four months beginning in March, 1944 when the Nazis' genocidal fury was unleashed against the Jews of Hungary. Through the testimonies of five survivors of that last, intense period of the “Final Solution,” the uniqueness of the plight of the Hungarian Jews is brought into sharp focus. Additional testimonies add depth to the stories shared by these survivors. The movie presents an excellent synopsis of the Shoah in Hungary."

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-deaths/article/Alice-Lok-Cahana-artist-and-Holocaust-survivor-12417040.php Houston Chronicle obituary

I noted another artist who was a Holocaust survivor, Edith Hoffman Birkin, who also painted scenes of her Holocaust experiences, sad, tragic, in https://francurrocaryblog.blogspot.com/2020/01/visual-storytellers-women-artist.html

 

In honor of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, 
a haunting painting by Edith Hoffman Birkin, a Holocaust surviver.

Edith Hoffman Birkin, 1927-2018,  "The Last Goodbye."
How she ever survived the concentration camps is unimaginable.  

Like Alice Lok Cahana, Birkin tells about discovering some harsh truths after "liberation." No one cared. There were no memorials. Everyone was gone. No one was coming back.

"It was really I think the worst time of the war. Although we were free and liberated, it was the very worst time because we realised, or I realised that nobody was going to come back, and that life is never going to be the same, and what I hoped for would happen after the war is never going to happen. The hope was gone."   

 

Book cover of my brother Loren's memoirs,
 printed three months after he died suddenly. 

There is a lot of public awareness of and lots of services in the Toledo area,and across the US, for people of all ages with Asperger's Syndrome and Autism. This wasn't so when my brother Loren was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. How different it would have been if he had had early diagnosis and intervention in his life. Instead, he coped with it on his own until he found his own way. I write this blog in memory of my brother, and for all the Aspies out there who should never give up.

It's my beloved brother Loren's birthday.  It's been 10 years, a decade, since he took his last hike on the Aucilla River with the Florida Trail Association.  It's hard to believe. It feels like yesterday. I was serving in Ukraine with the Peace Corps when I got the early morning call from my sister Andy, a million miles away in Tallahassee, Florida.  I still reel from the news when I think about it.  

I lost my soulmate, the person who taught me about facing obstacles with courage and hope.  Loren faced his challenges head on, searching ceaselessly for meaning and purpose in his life.  He accepted his Asperger diagnosis, at age 55, with relief, relief that there was a name for the social challenges he had faced since birth.  Loren was an Aspie with purpose. That's how he described himself. 


I was the historian but he was the genius. He held a myriad of knowledge in his head, and shared it openly, freely; some said too openly and too freely.  Sometimes Loren would get so enthusiastic it was hard to stop him.  He didn't catch those subtle verbal cues and unspoken hints.  It was hard for him, and people got impatient, dismissed him, left him on the margins.  He knew it. He fought it.  

  
But what knowledge he had, about every subject imaginable!  Sports, history, the natural world, the solar system and the planets, social ecology, women's history and the goddess, you name it. Encyclopedic, with an awesome cosmic perspective.  Sure he went over the top sometimes. But he came to recognize it, deal with it, gain in those common social skills that most ordinary mortals learn early on.

But he wouldn't have been Loren if he had been ordinary.  Loren was extraordinary.  He was passionate about life. And the kindest person I ever met. He taught me how to see life from a different angle. He took me to places I had never been before, to new ways of seeing the world, the transcendent, eternity.

It's what I loved about him. It's what I can never replace, what I miss.  How I wish I could believe he's in a better place. "There are no ends in nature, only beginnings," he would say.  My friend Doris believes it.  She said, when I visited her in California a few years ago, "I feel his ongoing spirit from another dimension.  He's cheering you on, Fran, as you continue your life's work."  I believe I see Loren whenever I look at the moon. I see him whenever a red cardinal flies by my angle of vision, sitting on my front porch, walking in Wildwood with my daughters Elissa and Michelle, on walks around our neighborhood. I feel his presence, feel his love, and return it with all the energy I have. Happy birthday dearest Loren, from all of us who love you dearly, forever.. 



Loren's memorial bench, in northern Florida.

Andy is remembeing our trip to Amsteram today. 

                She misses you every day. 

This is what Loren believed and lived.  

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."

Ode to Kinsasha

Available through Amazon.

                            

An Update on the Ongoing Discovery of Women Artists

Rosa Bonheur, French, "Horse Fair" 1892

Women artists have lived in the shadow of male artists from time immemorial, in darkness, out of view. This is slowly changing. Women artists overtime are being discovered, studied, celebrated. That's why I can't get enough of the women artists I never heard of before.  I'm in awe at the talent, skill, diversity, brilliance of their paintings and art. I hope one day to see them on the walls of the Toledo Museum of Art and, indeed, in art museums around the world. Here is a brief update on the continuing effort to recover the work of women artists from the past up to the pressent.

This past summer The Court Gallery in London had an exhibit of several 20th century women artists. I wish I could have gone, but the good news is that it is possible to see some of this art by clicking on this link. It's a feast for the eyes and the spirit in these tough times:  https://www.courtgallery.com/exhibitions/86/works/?

There has also been renewed interest in women artists of the 19th century. This is the century of Picasso, Monet, Matisse, Renoir, and hundreds of other male artists whose art fills Museum walls. It's also the century when women artists, although talented, schooled, plentiful, bountiful, were so hidden they didn't exist for future generations. This is the century of women artists who are being discovered today, whose art was every bit as accomplished and brilliant as any of their famous male contemporaries. See  https://www.thefamouspeople.com/19th-century-painters.php

Whenever our art museum, The Toledo Museum of Art, prints and exhibits art from its collections, and they are world famous, and mostly male giants from the 19th century, I can't help but think of female artists of the same era whose works are at last being brought out of the shadows and into the light. Here for example are some wonderful 19th-century women artists that could surely grace the walls of any art museum anywhere. Click on this link, and see for yourself.  https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/women-artists-in-paris-1850-1900-clark-1329851

In the last few years, online sites devoted to recovering and publicizing women's art has made the task of discovery easier. I like to think that museums in our diverse world are researching the nature, extent and diversity of women's art from around the world overtime. They would do well to examine the efforts of Christa Zaat, the curator of  Female Artists in History, for example.  Zaat wants "to lift the veil of silence on our collective culture by sharing and celebrating female artists of the past." She focuses on artists from around the world whose work has been out of sight, out of mind. She especially wants to resurrect deceased woman artists, to give them a public arena to showcase their works. Zaat is illuminating their artwork through visibility on the Internet. She's doing great work in organizing and cataloguing the art to make it accessible. For a visual feast, join her site and check out  https://www.facebook.com/female.artists.in.history/  and https://www.facebook.com/notes/female-artists-in-history/shortcut-to-the-indexes-of-female-artists-in-history/2286591328292410/.

I also love seeing daily posts from Rita M Sjorborn's Celebrating Women Artists in History at  https://www.facebook.com/groups/864751373634163.  Here are some examples of the artists that have been posted online that I want to remember. 

Totems, Emily Carr, 1912

Emily Carr (December 13, 1871 – March 2, 1945) was a Canadian artist and writer who was inspired by the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. One of the first painters in Canada to adopt a Modernist and Post-Impressionist painting style, Carr did not receive widespread recognition for her work until the subject matter of her painting shifted from Aboriginal themes to landscapes—forest scenes in particular. Wikipedia

Paule Vezelay, Self-portrait, 1923
British, 1892-1984

"Born Marjorie Watson-Williams, Vézelay trained in London and, from 1920, spent much time in Paris. She settled there in 1926, when she adopted the name Paule Vézelay to obscure both her nationality and her gender. From 1930 she made abstract painting which became progressively simple in form. In 1934 she joined the international group Abstraction-Creation along with such artists as Jean (Hans) Arp, Jean Hélion, Alexander Calder, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth. Wikipedia

Harriet Backer, Norwegian, b. 1845, Woman Sewing

Zinaida Serebriakova, Khargiv, Ukraine, b.1884 

Some recent articles with good information about what's happening today in the world of rediscovering and supporting women artists:

*  https://blog.phillipscollection.org/2020/09/16/susan-unterbergs-activist-philanthropy/?utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-phillips-collection&utm_content

*  https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/art-books-music/g7916/best-female-artists/

* https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/19th-century-women-artists-rosa-bonheur-elizabeth-bouguereau-virginie-demont-breton-female-triumphant. I love that Sothebys and other auction houses are finally beginning to sell the art of women and report that sales are brisk. That is a significant measure of change in the art world. 

* https://news.artnet.com/womens-place-in-the-art-world/case-studies-how-four-museums-are-taking-radical-measures-to-admit-more-women-artists-into-the-art-historical-canon-1654717

* https://nmwa.org/support/advocacy/get-facts/ Some interesting facts.

Some of my other blogs on women artists: 

1.  Visual Storytellers: Women Artists Document Women's Lives and Contributions,  

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4676298606647372212/4703796132033524186

2.   More Women Artists for Art Museums' Permanent Collection: https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4676298606647372212/9211235889688948557

3.  https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4676298606647372212/4703796132033524186

 

4.  August Fells Savage: African American Sculptot, Painter, and Art Teacher,

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4676298606647372212/1579376705100246619

5.  A Coin with a Story: Selma Burke, African American Sculptor and Educator,

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4676298606647372212/1787533270405561563  

6. Inclusive Art: Women Artists are Finally gaining the Recognition they Deserve, 

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4676298606647372212/8817496748479260782 

7. Out of the Shadows: Women Artists Discovered, 

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4676298606647372212/5223562993185027611 

8. Walking Into a Painting: Rebecca Louise Laws' Art Installation of Flowers at Toledo Museum of Art (TMA),

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4676298606647372212/1459860464481865669

9. Fired Up: Glass by Women Artists at TMA,  

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4676298606647372212/1903488988662719335

10.Unique Art Experiences: Yayoi Kusama's Fireflies on the Water and Anila Quayyum Agha's Between Light and Shadow, at TMA https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4676298606647372212/1621321898298507356

Anila Quayyum Agha: Between Light and Shadow.  
The brightly lit triangles rotate slowly, slowly
and shift the patterned shadows on the walls. 

Art installations encompass viewers in up close immersion in the art itself. It's a sensory experience. I'm reminded of Rebecca Louise Law's exhibit "Community," which was a blooming regalia of flowers and plants, garden flowers and Ohio wild flowers, leaf petals, cones and seeds strung in long garlands and magical strands from floor to ceiling. It was like walking into a beautiful painting.

Immersed in Yayoi Kusama's Fireflies on the Water.

Added artists:

https://www.tuttartpitturasculturapoesiamusica.com/2014/02/Jane-Peterson.html?fbclid=IwAR1SlA4VSCy-qq8zJxyLkkASVBt-fRz4eXsWaxLGzx0nNZsrBLOyDY_DYIg#more