Wednesday, November 11, 2020

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:

"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.* 


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


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Wednesday, September 23, 2020

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://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. 



Some of my other blogs on women artists: 
1.  Visual Storytellers: Women Artists Document Women's Lives and Contributions,  

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

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

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

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

7. Out of the Shadows: Women Artists Discovered, 

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

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


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:



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Monday, August 17, 2020

100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment: Women's Right to Vote





This is a simple remembrance of a momentous event.  August 26, 2020, is the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, at last.  It took so long, so many years of struggle, to get that basic right, just like it's taken generations to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and to elect a woman president.  As pioneering women's historian Gerda Lerner put it, "Nobody gave us anything." Women have had to fight for every right achieved. They still do.

The right to vote was first introduced to the public in 1848 at the Seneca Falls (New York) Convention. It was the first women's rights convention held in the country, in the world.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who became the philosophical voice of the fledgling movement, added it to the Seneca Falls Declaration. Property rights, the right to their children, legal rights, were also introduced, and even awareness of the need to change social and cultural attitudes. It was an amazingly inclusive and far-sighted document.  It was the right to vote, however, that was most radical at the time and stirred the most controversy. Lucretia Mott, a Quaker and human rights advocate, thought it was too early to put the right to vote on the new women's rights agenda. But Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage got it in.

Suffrage campaign 1917 and Women's March, 
Washington, DC, 100 years later in January 2017
From 1848 to 1920, women struggled at the state and national levels to win that right. 

The work it took to convince men to give women the vote was grueling. It was made harder in 1868, when the word "male" was put into the US Constitution for the first time. The 14th Amendment, one of the post-Civil War "freedom" amendments," gave recently freed slaves the right to vote. A noble amendment. 

The framers, however, wanted to make sure that black women were NOT included in the right to vote because it would also enfranchise white women. They added the word "male" to the amendment to make themselves clear.  
 
It was all too clear to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who became the master strategist of the 19th-century women's movement. They were beside themselves.  They saw that adoption of the 14th amendment would require another constitutional amendment to give women the right to vote in federal elections.

"An appalling vista of herculean labor opened up before the women leaders," historian Eleanor Flexner pointed out in Century of Struggle.  Stanton, whose acumen was razor sharp, always ahead of her time, thought woman suffrage would be set back a century. She wasn't far wrong.  "It was the Negro's Hour," long-time abolitionists like Mott, Lucy Stone, and Angelina Grimke proclaimed. Women would have to wait. 

The women's movement split over the 14th amendment. The American Women's Rights Association focused on state-by-state changes. The National Women's Rights Association, led by Stanton and Anthony, focused on a federal amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 

The leaders of the two factions created an array of new tactics to move forward on securing the right to vote. These included public advocacy campaigns; legal challenges; grassroots organizing; women's protests and parades; pickets in front of the White House; innovative tactics to lobby elected officials at the local, state and national levels. Such tactics, pioneered by women, were later adopted by the Civil Rights movement. 

When the women's movement reunited in 1890, all tactics were on the table and a new energy infused the movement.






After the death of women's rights stalwart Susan B. Anthony, who had devoted her entire life to the cause, a young Carrie Catt became head of the reunified movement, the  National American Women's Suffrage Association. A new generation of college-educated women, women professionals and women workers came onto the scene with renewed commitment to suffrage and new arguments to make their case. Carrie Catt was one of them, a driving force into the 20th century. 

Catt developed  a five-year "Winning Plan" that she implemented like a general leading an army into battle.  She headed teams of suffrage workers in the field, organized in every state, and demanded clear focus on the shared goal of women suffrage, on the tactics and timeline, on detailed action steps. It was a monumental effort.  

After the vote was finally won and ratified by the states, an exhausted but exhilarated Carrrie Catt  recalled what it took to claim the victory. 
To get the word "male" out of the Constitution cost the women of the country fifty-two years of pauseless campaign....During that time they were forced to conduct fifty-six campaigns of referenda to male voters; 480 campaigns to get Legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters; 47 campaigns to get State constitutional conventions to write woman suffrage into their constitutions; 277 campaigns to get State party conventions to include woman suffrage planks; 30 campaigns to get presidential party conventions to adopt woman suffrage planks in party platforms, and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses. (quoted in Flexner).
In an afterword to the 1996 edition of Flexner's Century of Struggle, historian Ellen Fitzpatrick called the struggle for women's voting rights "one of the longest, most successful and in some respects the most radical challenges ever posed to the American system of electoral politics." 

The 20th amendment, she said, had helped secure political rights denied women since the dawn of the Republic. "The suffrage movement remains a vital reminder of what was achieved when those who were denied political power organized a campaign to capture the instruments of democracy. The courage, fortitude and determination of millions of participants stand as an enduring testament to the significance of the suffrage movement to modern American history."

Yes. And still. Still. There was so much more work to do, more rights to achieve. A  young Alice Paul took on the campaign for an Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, and Margaret Sanger for birth control, and it's still not over. In the realm of equality for women, 50 percent of the population, women's work is never done.It helps to remember the women pioneers, on whose shoulders we stand, on whose shoulders we persist.

Some sources:
* Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle (first published 1959; several editions thereafter).
     Flexner was one of the first researchers to delve into women's primary documents, including those         at the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College; the Spingarn Collection of African American               History, created by Dorothy Porter at Howard University, Washington, DC; and the Schomburg               Collection at the NY Public Library. I was fascinated by Flexner's footnotes. 

* Wikipedia, the 19th Amendment.

    I required the students in my Women's History classes to read the whole Seneca Falls Declaration and we would go around         and read each section out loud. It is that important, and still worth the read. The Women's Declaration of Independence is a         pioneering document modeled on Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. 

* Mary Walton, A Woman's Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot (2015). Paul got the             Equal Rights Amendment introduced into Congress in 1923. It is still not ratified. 

     Movements for change are always complicated, and race, gender, ethnicity, class compound the             complexity. There are personal histories that speak to us as individuals and there is a common                 narrative we all share. It is still being written. We need to take it all in, and strive for that common         narrative that is inclusive, universal, and transcendent. Our history is a work in progress. 
 This is a wonderful short story by Dorothy Burhman  [DC Diamondopolous] of the importance of the vote to an Irish immigrant woman who knew what the right to vote meant for working women."100 years ago, women cast their first ballot to vote in the United States. Never in my lifetime, has our vote meant so much. "1920" is now live on Project Agent Orange. "1920" is the story of so many suffragettes who fought and died for the right to vote. This flash fiction will be published in Nov. by the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library, 'So It Goes' their yearly anthology. It will be my 3rd year in a row to have a story published by the Vonnegut, a wonderful honor. - “1920” is the story of a young Irish immigrant who puts her life on the line for the right to vote. You can read this short 4 minute read now. Thank you Micheal Brownstein for publishing. Below is the link. https://projectagentorange.wordpress.com."

(I'm not sure how to make these links work in the new google blog format. You'll  have to copy the link and paste into your browser to open the link. Thanks.)  



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Friday, July 10, 2020

The Power of Black Storytelling: Carolyn Randall Williams

"I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South. If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument." Caroline Randall Williams 


Caroline Randall Williams, Wikipedia image 
Caroline Randall Williams, author, poet, Writer in Residence at Vanderbilt University, native of Nashville,Tennessee, wrote a powerful story about her legacy and identity in an op ed for the New York Times.* I am moved by her description of herself:  "I have rape-colored skin." 
That metaphor, the image, has stuck with me for days. I've never heard it put this way. But it is so right on, so correct. It holds the whole story of an America built on the free labor of slaves on land occupied by native tribes and invaded by Europeans. It's the history of America begun in 1619 when the first slaves from Africa arrived in Virginia.* 
I want to remember Williams' story. It embraces the real history of the United States. It's  a crash course in the history of racism on which this country was founded.  

Her story evokes one of my favorite historical figures, W.E.B. DuBois.  DuBois was a brilliant sociologist, the first African American to receive a PhD from Harvard, a founder of the NAACP and editor of its pioneering Crisis magazine from 1910 to 1934. Above all, he was a lifetime activist against white supremacy. His scholarly books on African- American history, the slave trade, and black contributions are legendary and should be required reading today. In his pioneering book The Souls of Black Folk (1897) and his famous Atlantic magazine article that year, DuBois introduced the concept of "double consciousness," the African American experience of "two-ness" in a white racist society. DuBois' writings have never gone out of fashion or relevance.* 
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One feels his two-ness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa; he does not wish to bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he believes—foolishly, perhaps, but fervently—that Negro blood has yet a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without losing the opportunity of self-development.
I have read this passage many times.  I used it in my American history classes. It always brings a powerful reality to the fore. Today we call it "Black Lives Matter." .  
Williams' NYT piece channels DuBois' soul. One hundred years later, she brings his honesty and truths, his pain and longing, to our contemporary times. I imagine DuBois hovering, glad to see some revival of the hope for acceptance that he had lost at the end of his long life. He became a citizen of Ghana, and died there, giving up on the U.S. 
Yes, we've come a long way since DuBois, but as Williams tells it we have a long way to go. The struggle to achieve the ideals of "equality and justice for all" continues. Even more persistent is the virulent racism that defines America, and the attitudes and actions that derive from it. The fact of slavery and unmitigated racism, and their tragic consequences, are still with us.   
The words of Caroline Randall Williams remind us of the freedom journey and its brutal path.  
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Wednesday, July 8, 2020

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

Selma Burke with her bas relief portrait of FDR

Selma Burke's sculpted portrait of FDR is on the United States dime. That's right. A coin with a story. I had no idea.

Selma Burke's story begins in Mooresville, North Carolina, where she was born in 1900.  I'm not sure if Mooresville remembers her or not, but she remembered Mooresville.  Young Selma attended a one-room segregated schoolhouse, where her curiosity was nurtured. 
Those old segregated schools, where talent was nurtured! They were the foundation of black achievement. I think African American youngsters learned more in these schools than in integrated ones later on, where racism flourished and the history taught was white history. Still is. The African American teachers in the segregated schools, many of whom lost their jobs with integration, are, indeed, the real heroes of the black experience. They shared their own history of struggle and achievement. They bolstered their students' dreams. Augusta Savage recalled that her high school principal encouraged her artistic talents by allowing her to teach a clay modeling class.  (Wikipedia)
It was the same for Selma Burke, who found her purpose in life at a young age. She played in a riverbed of clay near her home. She would later describe the feeling of squeezing the clay through her fingers as her first encounter with sculpture. "It was here in 1907 that I discovered me," she said.  Her little schoolhouse encouraged the discovery. She continued her education at Winston-Salem College and at nursing school, but art was her first love and true calling. 






















Like other African-American artists and writers of the time, Burke's dedication to her art motivated her to move to New York City in her mid-twenties. It was an exciting time, the age of the Harlem Renaissance, that iconic platform of artistic expression, community and freedom that catapulted many talented African Americans into acceptance and recognition. The Harlem Renaissance nurtured a generation of black talent that burst upon the American landscape even as segregation and racism flourished.  

This is when Burke's life intersected with sculptor Augusta Savage,10 years her senior. Burke began teaching at the Harlem Community Arts Center, then under the leadership of Savage. Selma also worked for FDR's Work Progress Administration on the Federal Art Project, another opportunity made possible by Savage, who had worked so hard to ensure black artists were included. 

Burke continued her work on trips to Europe in the late 1930s. It was a pilgrimage that many African American artists, including her mentor Augusta Savage, took at some point in their developing careers. One of Burke's significant works from this period is "Frau Keller (1937), a portrait of a German-Jewish woman in response to the rising Nazi threat. Imagine that conjun

ction. Did Frau Keller survive the holocaust?

Mother and Child, 1950
Burke returned to New York about 1939. I like to imagine that she attended the opening of Augusta Savage's brilliant Salon of Contemporary Negro Art, such an exciting event for all black artists. The importance of displaying and promoting public awareness of this art cannot be overstated, a major contribution to the building of an inclusive American culture. 

Like Savage, Burke was also committed to teaching art to others, and in 1946 she established the Selma Burke Art School in New York.  She later opened the Selma Burke Art Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Just think of the generations of African-American artists who stand on the shoulders of pioneers like Savage and Burke. 

Many of Burke's sculptures can be seen today in various museums, including the Performing Arts Center in Milwaukee, the Hill House Center in Pittsburgh, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City, and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. Maybe the Toledo Museum of Art will add a Burke sculpture to its permanent collection one day.




Discovered another African-American woman sculptor after posting this, via Rita Sjoborn, Celebration of Female Artists: Elizabeth Catlett (born in Washington, DC, 1915-1992)   Rita wrote: "In a career spanning more than 70 years, Elizabeth Catlett has created sculptures that celebrate the heroic strength and endurance of African-American and Mexican working-class women. With simple, clear shapes she evokes both the physical and spiritual essence of her subjects. Her hardy laborers and nurturing mothers radiate both power and a timeless dignity and calm. Whether working in wood, stone, bronze, or clay, Catlett reveals an extraordinary technical virtuosity, a natural ability to meld her curving female forms with the grain, whorls, color, or luster of her chosen medium. The beauty of her subjects is matched by the beauty she reveals in her sculptural materials."   This link is a good bio of Catlett. Her work is skillful and amazing. http://www.artnet.com/artists/elizabeth-catlett/
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Monday, July 6, 2020

Augusta Fells Savage: Pioneering African-American Sculptor, Art Teacher, and Promoter of Black Artists




In 1939, a new art gallery opened in Harlem in New York City. It was called the Salon of Contemporary Negro Art, and it was the brainchild of Augusta Fells Savage, a talented sculptor who had faced obstacles due to her sex and race at every turn. Savage was among the first African-American woman to open her own art gallery in America. She hoped her Salon would give black artists a place to exhibit their work, free from the prejudice that kept them — and her — out of the mainstream art world. "We do not ask any special favors as artists because of our race," she said to the 500 people who attended the gallery's opening. "We only want to present to you our works and ask you to judge them on their merits." (Wikipedia)

Augusta Fells Savage was born on February 29, 1892, in Green Cove Springs, Florida. She struggled to achieve her dreams against formidable odds to became one of the leading artists of the Harlem Renaissance, as well as an influential activist and arts educator. She was a leap-year baby, she noted, and "I've been leaping ever since!" 

"From the time I can first recall the rain falling on the red clay in Florida. I wanted to make things," she recalled. "When my brothers and sisters were making mud pies, I would be making ducks and chickens with the mud." But her father, a Methodist minister with a conservative interpretation of the Biblical prohibition against graven images, punished her for her creations: "My father licked me four or five times a week, and [he] almost whipped all the art out of me." Fortunately, she persevered, and her high school principal encouraged her artistic talents by allowing her to teach a clay modeling class. (Wikipedia)

Gamin by Augusta Savage
Savage decided to pursue her art by moving to New York City, where in 1921 she was accepted at the Cooper Union School for the Advancement of Science and Art. After completing her studies, Savage worked in steam laundries in Manhattan to support herself and her family while continuing to sculpt. She received her first commission, a bust of W.E.B. DuBois for the Harlem Library, which led to more commissions including busts of other black leaders such as Marcus Garvey and William Pickens. Her 1929 bust of a young black boy entitled Gamin, which was voted most popular in an exhibition at the time of 200 works by black artists, cemented Savage's reputation as an influential artist of the Harlem Renaissance. Today, Gamin is on permanent display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. (Regenia Perry, Free Within Ourselves.)

In 1934, Savage became the first African-American artist elected to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. She established the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts in Harlem, open to anyone who wanted to learn to paint, draw, or sculpt. Among her young students were several who went on to become nationally-known artists including abstract painter Norman Lewis, figurative painter Jacob Lawrence, and portrait artist Gwendolyn Knight.
Unfortunately, little of Savage's work survives today. Because she couldn't afford bronze, she often had to make her sculptures out of plaster, most of which have crumbled over time. Other works, like The Harp, were destroyed because they could not be moved or stored, while some of her work has simply disappeared. In 1988, the Schomburg Center in Harlem held a retrospective of her work, but could only locate 19 pieces.
Throughout her career, Savage fought to help African American artists publicize their work. "She was keen on creating an infrastructure for black artists," says Wendy NE Ikemoto, curator at the New York Historical Society. "She put a lot of thought and energy into creating these intellectual spaces and networks for the work of black artists" (Perry).  She was instrumental, for example, in getting the Works Progress Administration to include black artists in its Federal Art Project. 
In addition to the students she fostered during the Harlem Renaissance, Savage devoted much of her later life to teaching children and summer art camps, mostly in Saugerties, New York. When she died of cancer in March 26, 1962, she was almost forgotten. Ultimately, her greatest wish was to inspire young artists: "I have created nothing really beautiful, really lasting," she once said, "but if I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop the talent I know they possess, then my monument will be in their work."  
Some Sources:
* Wikipedia, "Augusta Fells Savage"

* Regenia A. Perry, Free within Ourselves: African-American Artists in the Collection of the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art in Association with Pomegranate Art Books, 1992. "Augusta Savage always knew she wanted to be an artist and moved to New York City in 1920 with a ​“burning desire” to ​“become a sculptor in six months.” She enrolled at the Cooper Union and in 1929 won a scholarship to travel to Paris and Rome. She returned to New York in the middle of the Depression and was instrumental in getting the Works Progress Administration to include black artists in its Federal Art Project. Savage was the first African American to be elected to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors and later became the director of the Harlem Community Art Center. She believed that teaching others was far more important than creating art herself, and explained her motivation in an interview: ​“If I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop the talent I know they possess, then my monument will be in their work. No one could ask for more than that.” (Davis, Contributions of Black Women to America, 1982).


* https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=29003&fbclid=IwAR2fc5XuH19J-  About Augusta Savage, an amazing sculptor and teacher. 


* https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/may/08/augusta-savage-black-artist-new-york.


* https://dos.myflorida.com/cultural/programs/florida-artists-hall-of-fame/augusta-savage/












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Friday, May 8, 2020

Rebirth and Rumi in the Time of the Coronavirus

Rumi, the 13th-century poet, Muslim mystic, Sufi.
"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there."


"When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.” 

"The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

Rumi takes me back to the
Whirling Dervishes, in Istanbul, 2011
For some reason, I often think of Rumi when spring is in the air after a long winter. Swollen buds on trees and bushes are about to burst. Tulips and daffodils push through the soil, little sprigs of  bright green bring hope. It's rebirth. It's breathtaking. The cold is holding back the flowering this year, but the light is forcing the blooms.  

 It's the Time of the Coronavirus. A deadly global pandemic. We're isolating, trying to "flatten the curve," lessen the galloping outbreaks of Covid19 ravaging communities across every state. It's the season of rebirth and thousands of people are dying daily, hourly. It's devastating.  Schools are closed, restaurants and businesses, sports events, any events that attract large crowds. Our hospitals are painfully overcrowded. Nurses, doctors and frontline workers are in harms' way, without the protective equipment they need. Not enough masks, ventilators, test kits. 

 It's a frightening time, made worse by the criminal negligence of the tRUmp crime enterprise that in 2018 got rid of the infrastructure carefully designed to deal with a pandemic, sat on the truth for too long, lied to the American people.  They are still lying nonstop. At this writing, the oligarchy wants to open everything up to save the economy, which has tanked. Over 33 million people are unemployed. More people will die from the pandemic, but so what. 

 This is how the oligarchy is manifesting itself during this crisis. It has politicized a deadly pandemic and is making money off of it. After every briefing the oligarchs have, in secret, since December/early January, the Republicans in the Cabinet, in Congress, in corporations, those billionaires in transnational networks, sell stock, buy stock, get richer. Insider trading. Criminal quid pro quos. So what.  Many of them are running for re-election, like Mitch McConnell and Kathleen Loeffner.  The oligarchs want to keep their power, and their money.  

 Here I sit, musing about what's happening, unable to hug my grandkids, to visit friends, to get out and about. I sometimes fume too much about what the tRUmp/McConnell/Barr tyranny is doing to help the rich and hurt the rest of us.They do not care. They simply do not care.

 It's a Darwinian world in America these days, survival of the richest. That's why in this season of rebirth, so many are dying. The contradiction, the pain of it, is beyond the pale. 
So I'm watching the buds swell, the tulips opening. The sun is warming up the earth; the days are getting longer. My favorite weeping cherry tree has burst into glorious bloom and a family of cardinals has snuggled in its beauty and built a nest. The father is the brightest red, like some of my tulips. I am watching. I sit on my front porch or my back deck and watch my garden grow. I watch the sunrise and the sunset. Last night I watched a glorious full moon rise, a golden full moon. That's why I am thinking of Rebirth and Rumi in the Time of the Coronavirus.    

* https://www.neh.gov/explore/the-ecstatic-faith-rumi?

* https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america?  This excellent article reviews a new book by Duke Historian Nancy MacLean, "Democracy in Chains," which reveals the influence of economist James Buchanan and the rise and takeover of our government by the far-right-wing extremist Koch networks to turn our democracy into an Oligarchy of, by, and for the rich. The actions (and lack of actions) and the consequences are manifesting in spades through this pandemic. 
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