Baltimore Masters Exhibition Catalog

Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Museum February 8-March 31, 2016

CURATOR STATEMENT

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lthough the routine of organizing events for Black History Month can sometimes seem redundant, this national observation is most appropriate when we talk about the exhibition Baltimore“MASTERS” Art of the Ancestors.

We are honored to partner with The Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park Museum and the Herbert Bearman Community Art Gallery to host Baltimore “MASTERS” Art of the Ancestors, a salute to historical Baltimore African-American visual artists. Baltimore has a rich legacy of visual artists whose contributions are the very fabric of the city’s culture. Many of these noteworthy artists acquired national and international acclaim, and ironically, have gone unrecognized in their art communities. There are few local galleries or museums that have acknowledged their contributions, and most of the local institutions have yet to validate their historical merits.

This historic exhibition is a rare gathering of visionary and dynamic image makers who utilize art to heal, uplift, and empower. Baltimore “MASTERS” Art of the Ancestors feature visual artists that actively represent the Baltimore African American art scene; featuring a comprehensive retrospective of twenty six works by fifteen artists including painters, printmakers, graphic designers, illustrators, sculptors

and photographers, displaying over fifty years of imagery from the 1960’s through 2000. The Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park Museum expresses its gratitude to the many private collectors throughout Baltimore for the generous loan of original artworks in this exhibition, most originals, never viewed by the public.

This exhibition begs the question, “How do we document and protect the legacies of these artists?” Whether employed by The Afro American Newspaper, attending Carver Vocational Technical High School or The Maryland Institute of Art, or teaching in the Baltimore City School System, many of these artists share Baltimore as a common thread. Some artists have endured segregation, the civil rights movement, and many other historic milestones, while expressing themselves in unique ways, capturing life in their interpretations oftentimes during tumultuous times. It’s hopeful, that this inaugural exhibition will set the stage for future recognition of these and other African American artists via Baltimore City, State of Maryland and areas abroad. It celebrates our legacy and we are honored to share it with the Baltimore community. Our history, Baltimore’s history, therefore America’s history.

Larry Poncho Brown Artist Curator

Chenal Alford Chenal Alford II (1941-2016) At 9 years of age, he displayed a passion for drawing and knew he wanted to become an artist. He spent so much time drawing, that his 4th grade teacher alerted his mother to his two notebooks. One notebook had a portrait of his mother that he had drawn, another portrait of the student sitting in front of him and chairs in the room from various perspectives. The other notebook had no math, science, spelling, social studies or reading. His mother would change that for the next several years. When he got to high school, he was allowed to pursue Commercial Art. He graduated from Carver VocationalTechnical high school in Baltimore, MD. At Carver Vocational-Technical High school, Chenal studied commercial art, a mecca and infrastructure for sign painters, designers, illustrators, cartoonists, display men and painters. He received his high school diploma and later graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts degree from The Maryland Institute College of Art. He also completed coursework toward a Master’s equivalent degree.

A few years later, he would return to his alma mater, Carver High, where he became an instructor of commercial art after his mentor, the late Linwood “Lynde” H. Jordon retired (Mr. Jordan started the Commercial Art program at Carver High School). Through Lynde Jordon’s guidance, the legacy of excellence in teaching art was passed on. Chenal taught Commercial Art there for over 30 years where he met and taught many talented and dynamic students, some of whom reached national and international acclaim. In 1989, to help offset the cost of college for his art students, Chenal was instrumental in establishing the Linwood H. Jordon Commercial Art Achievement Award Scholarship Fund. He saw establishment of the scholarship fund as a way to not only assist his students, but to also honor his high school teacher, mentor and friend. Through a variety of fundraising efforts, the scholarship fund reached its $100,000 goal. In the years that followed, like his mentor Mr. Jordon, Chenal would later come to take on the role of teacher, mentor and friend.

He spent over thirty years teaching Commercial Art at Carver and these years were the highlight of his life. Before his retirement, Chenal Alford II was inducted into Carver Vocational-Technical High School’s Hall of Fame. His legacy lives on.

“Buster” Oil on Canvas, In the collection of Linda Gray

Cornell Everett Barnes Cornell Everett Barnes (1946 – 2010), gifted fine art painter. Graduate of Frederick Douglas High School, where he received many rewards and medals for basketball. Barnes was a student of art since his early childhood. He would later attend the Maryland Institute, College of Art, Otis Parson’s School of Art in Los Angeles, California and the Art Center of Design in Pasadena, California. He was selected by the infamous Society of Illustrators of New York to attend their Illustrator’s Workshops.

A famous African-American art print by Cornell Barnes features an interpretation of the Last Supper unique in its depiction of a Black Jesus Christ with the following famous African-American legends sitting at the table instead of the twelve disciples: Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Mary McLeod Bethune, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, Paul Robeson, Nat Turner, Noble Drew Ali, Kwame Nkrumah, Elijah Muhammad, and Judas.

“Untitled” Oil Pastel on Board, In the collection of Carol Morgan

“Marley” Oil Pastel on Board, In the collection of Kinya Kiongozi

“Thurgood Marshall” Oil Pastel on Board In the collection of Gwendolyn Morgan

Larry O’Neill Brown, Sr. Larry O’Neill Brown, Sr. (1945-2011) Born and educated in Baltimore, Maryland, was a self-taught artist, who drew and painted over a span of four decades. He worked for 13 years in the printing industry at the Afro American Newspaper as a linotype operator, and pressman then reinvented himself and pursued a career in education in 1976, obtained a master’s degree in career and technology with certification as a printing instructor with the Baltimore City Public Schools.

Brown was an accomplished track and field coach in high schools and colleges. He taught and coached wrestling at Lake Clifton-Eastern High School; He was a teacher of graphic arts for over 30 years.

Brown realized many African American artists were not given the respect and appreciation for their creations in the 1960’s and 1970’s, “With the advent of Black pride, the civil rights movement and socioeconomic gains, African Americans now embrace images that are reflective of who they are.”

His images depict the strength and beauty of African American life. Brown’s subjects range from figurative renderings to simple abstracts. Acrylics on various materials, as a preferred choice of medium, although he often used pen and ink, oil pastel, and collage in his images. “I am perpetuating the gifts that God gave me to delight the eyes of others.”

“Come Home My People,” Mixed Media on Paper 1998 In the collection of Larry Poncho Brown

“The Crucifixion,” Oil on Canvas 1969 In the collection of Larry Poncho Brown

“Giant Leap” Acrylic on Paper 2003 In the collection of Larry Poncho Brown

Carlton L. “Carl” Clark Carlton L. “Carl” Clark (1933-2015) A muchpraised and widely exhibited photographer, Clark came to Baltimore in the early 1970s and established a Reservoir Hill studio. He photographed scenes of everyday life — women leaving church, men standing on a corner and people riding a subway.

A 2000 article in the Baltimore Sun said, “He is a visual historian, a social documentarian and a wry teller of tales that otherwise almost surely would go unrecorded.” After attending schools in Massachusetts, Clark joined the Army and had three combat tours, the first in Korea and later in Vietnam.

He left the Army as a Major and earned a Bronze Star, among other decorations. “He could never reconcile the death and destruction he witnessed,” said his wife, Linda Day Clark. “He had serious post-traumatic stress. He became a Buddhist in Vietnam, and that allowed him to work through his issues. His art, in its pursuit of beauty, also helped him.” During his time in Southeast Asia, Clark became fluent in Thai and Vietnamese. In the 1970s, he was stationed at Fort Meade. By that time, after nearly 20 years of military service, he had obtained a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Nebraska. A crafts instructor at the military base entered some of Clark’s photographs in a contest, and Clark won a prize. The teacher suggested he attend the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). “I recall that I was the first person he spoke with,” said Jack Wilgus, the former MICA photography chair who now lives in Dallas. “We bonded right there. ... Carl impressed me right away. He turned out to be one of the best students I ever had. He

was older than the other students. The younger students looked up to him.” Clark earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts at MICA. Clark exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland Art Place and School 33 Art Center. He also befriended local artists and arranged shows of the works of Tom Miller and Joseph Kohl after their deaths. “Carl Clark’s work was on view at the BMA soon after my arrival. ... I remember visiting the gallery where it hung and being struck by how profound his images were. They captured feelings and relationships, conflicts and affection — each black-and-white photograph telling a rich story about the Baltimore community that he loved and that clearly loved and admired him in return,” said Doreen Bolger, the former BMA director. “Carl will be remembered by his contemporaries and by history.” “Clark’s pictures are a celebration of the commonplace in a culture in which black skin is always fraught with the troublesome baggage of the past,” said The Sun’s 2000 article. “The power of Clark’s photographs perhaps lies in the fact that they are peopled by men, women and children who seem so sublimely unaware their images could inspire such passions.” In the 2000 Sun profile, Clark said his work was “a personal journey toward self-understanding and self-acceptance, as well as the product of a sustained and well-honed critical vision.”

“My photographs are me talking to me, me emoting,” he said in the article. “I’m convinced that emotions inform the intellect, not the other way around. So I want my images to evoke emotions of some kind, to not just reflect the culture but to force the viewer to experience it in some new, intense way — to make you contemplate, to give you pause, to stimulate. And to the extent that they do that, I think they are art.” Mr. Clark’s works have been displayed at the Royal Photographic Society of England, Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Boston, among other places.

“Image No. 2” from the Nigerian Series, Gelatin Silver Print 1994, In the collection of Linda Day Clark

Cary Beth Cryor Cary Beth Cryor (1947-1997) Baltimorean, Photographer, Instructor, and Storyteller (year of birth – year of death). The pictures Cary Beth Cryor snapped were of pain, glory, family and self. They told silent stories of aging relatives, endless happiness and souls bared. A resident of Northeast Baltimore, Cryor was an associate professor of fine arts at Coppin State College, where she taught visual arts and photography courses, and served as an archivist for the Afro-American newspaper in Baltimore. She captured stunning images of life at its best and worst. Her passion for photography led her to Morgan State University where she earned a bachelor’s in art education in 1969 and later to the Pratt Institute of Art in New York where she received a master’s in photography in 1971, while studying under renowned photographer, Gordon Parks. Cryor received a second master’s degree from the University of Maryland in 1986 in archival and “Tools of Time” The hands of Carrie Bryant Tillman, Gelatin Silver Print 1991 special collections.

Thirteen years after her death, the Coppin State University dedicated the Cary Beth Cryor Art Gallery at its James Weldon Johnson Building. The program, “From the Hands of Our Elders, followed with a reception and celebration of local senior citizens. Her passion was photography. She shot thousands of pictures, not necessarily for publication but for her own gratification. Her photography has been on a number of exhibitions at various galleries in Baltimore in the past decade. “She saw photography in everything. She thought of it as a way of documenting life,” said Pat Hester of Baltimore, a longtime friend. “Everything to her was a photographic series. She was innovative. She created documentaries with objects as well as people.”

Some of her more notable photography exhibits were “Visual Griot: Works By Four African American Women” in 1996; “Birth, Death and Some Life In Between” in 1996; “Her Hands: Evidence Of A Woman’s Work” in 1994; “Proof Positive: Photographs Of People Who Are HIV+” in 1994; and “States Of Art” in 1993. Her photo essays were published frequently, including in Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe’s “Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers” and in “Black Photographers: An Illustrated Biography. 1940-1987” by Willis Thomas. Another one of her exhibits, titled “100-Year-Old Hands,” a project that in 1976 led her to move in with her 103-year-old grandmother in Minden, La., for two years.

O’Neill T. Hammond

O’Neill T. Hammond, a.k.a. “O’Ney” (19431993) educator and artist, born and reared on Madison Avenue, near Druid Hill Park in Baltimore, Maryland.

He attended various city schools and was a 1963 graduate of Edmondson High School. He earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1969 and subsequently received his master’s degree in fine arts in 1975. He continued his relationship with the institute as a part-time instructor in the “Growing Through Art” classes. He created mixedmedium collages and in 1977 exhibited some of these works displayed in the “Faculty Show ‘77, Part 2” at the Institute’s Decker Gallery. He was a collector of tin toys, antique toy automobiles and vintage cars.

O’Neill Troy Hammond had been an education specialist in the Baltimore Public School System’s Office of Early Childhood Education since 1981. His career “Woman Reading” Acrylic on Canvas 1974, In the collection of Rassaan J. Hammond began in 1967 as an art resource teacher while he held administrative positions in the Gifted and Talented Education Program. “He was a very caring and highly knowledgeable person in early childhood education. He had a passion for excellence and was highly respected for his wit and very fertile mind. His death leaves a gaping void in the school district and to those who are committed to excellence,” said Dr. Samuel Banks, executive director of compensatory education and funded programs for the school system.” He was very kind, sensitive and had an intuitiveness that went beneath the surface. He had a way of relaxing individuals so they could be themselves -- especially with art -- to get people to express themselves artistically,” said friend Martin Campbell.

Leroy R. Jones Jr. Leroy R. Jones Jr., a.k.a. “Miki” (19492006) graphic artist, native Baltimorean, born and reared in the nowdemolished Flag House.

Jones began drawing at the age of four, primarily a self-taught artist, he never envisioned doing anything other than art. 1967 graduate of Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, drafted into the Army in 1970, served in Vietnam, then studied at the Maryland Institute, College of Art. He began employment as an artist in the advertising department of the Sunpapers. He retired from the newspapers in the early 1990s and for the next 14 years would be a distribution manager at Melanin Graphics, Inc. many Baltimoreans may have seen Miki displaying his art under the trees on the grass at Gwynns Falls Parkway near Garrison Boulevardover the summer months. Jones’s creations have become some of Baltimore/Washington area’s most widely recognized works and his notoriety quickly spread across the nation. A highly skilled artist, who evolved from a cartoonist to a fine art portrait artist and to abstractionist. Never quite the musician, he appeased his love of jazz by drawing photo realistic graphite drawings of musicians.

His works are simply signed “Miki”, and he was primarily known for his use of graphite. He loved the stark contrast in, and the beauty of black and white imagery. He began a new era in his artistic development in 1994, while experimenting with color pencil. These intricate, time consuming yet illuminating works capture the simplicity and harmony of his subjects with a brilliance of color and vibrancy.

“Now and Forever” Acrylic on Canvas 2007, In the collection of Larry Poncho Brown

William Eugene Joyner, Jr.

“Root Music No. 1” Serigraphy 1972 In the collection of Evelyn & Jerry Prettyman

“Egyptian Nobleman” Prismacolor Pencil on Board 1970, In the collection of Kinya Kiongozi

William Eugene Joyner Jr., a.k.a. Osei Kwadwo Owusu (1947- 2011) Educated in Baltimore City Public Schools and graduated from Frederick Douglas High School. As a teen, Joyner developed an avid interest in African, Native American, and other indigenous cultures and art forms, which he explored through his own writing and painting. He studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Graphic Design.

Joyner’s love of music and the art of world cultures complemented his artistic vision.

In 1973 he traveled to Ghana, West Africa; an experience that deeply affected his personal and artistic identity. While on that trip, Bill stayed in Kumasi, the capital city of the Ashanti region, and was given the name Osei Kwadwo Owusu by the Asantehene, the leader of the Ashanti. He developed a love for Highlife, the signature music of Ghana, and also learned to speak Twi while there. Many of Joyner’s visual works feature African themes and depict the cultural unity of people of African descent around the world. He was also particularly fond of Afro-Brazilian music and culture and enjoyed learning and speaking Portuguese.

Joyner worked as a graphic designer for Maryland Public Television for 25 years. While employed there, he continued to pursue his own personal endeavors. Following years of cross-cultural study and research, in 1994, he published his Origins: Timechart of World Civilizations, a fold-out timeline documenting African people’s contributions to civilization throughout human history. The chart was one of his most notable achievements and went on to be used as an educational reference by various scholars throughout the U.S. and beyond.

Pontella Mason Pontella Mason (1948 – 2013), Rocky Mount, North Carolina, internationally renowned American artist of African American heritage. Pontella was an extraordinarily creative artist with varied talents and interests. An historian, teacher, mentor, musician, curator, and one of the most skilled and recognized creative artists of our time, Mason’s work was largely influenced by history and music. An influence that was credited to his vicarious and personal life experiences. His passion for music and playing the tenor saxophone is clearly depicted in his jazz paintings. He was always deeply impassioned by people, places, literature, music and ideas that shape the world. Mason painted in oils as well as acrylics, equally mastering each mediums.

Immediately following graduation from the New York City School of Visual Arts, Mason was a mural painter with the “Beautiful Walls” program in Baltimore City. It was through this program, he received a full fellowship to attend the Maryland Institute, Hoffberger School of Painting. Well known for heading up community youth projects, Mason was known for “taking murals to a higher level,” as stated in the Smithsonian Book of African American Muralist: Walls of Heritage/ Walls of Pride.

Mason’s work represent private and public murals, exterior and interior, throughout Baltimore City. He would receive numerous government and private commissions through the mid-1970s. One of the most prominent and memorable was “The Baltimore Wall of Pride-Africa East to West, which was dedicated to the community by President Jimmy Carter, along with a number of state and local politicians. A number of Mason’s works can be found in publications and exhibitions, including Fortune Magazine, Baltimore’ Best Magazine, Smithsonian Institute Museum, and a host of others.

“Got My Rubilata Workin” Oil on Canvas1982 In the collection of Deborah Mason “Saqqara” Oil on Canvas 2000 In the collection of Deborah Mason

Tom Miller

“4 o’clock” Mixed Media Collage 1983 In the collection of Joyce J. Scott

“Pisces” Mixed Media Assemblage 1983 In the collection of Marsha Reeves-Jews

Tom Miller, a.k.a. Thomas Patton Miller (1945 - 2000), internationally renowned artist received countless awards, and prestigious commissions. He exhibited in some of the nation’s finest galleries and museums, was lauded by the most formidable critics and historians, celebrated by major media, and his work remains in hundreds of private collections and public venues. Miller studied art at Carver Vocational Technical High School (1963), won scholarship to attend the Maryland Institute, College of Art, received both a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree (1967) and later, a Master of Fine Arts degree (1987).

Artist and Art Teacher, Tom served the Baltimore City School System from 1967 to 1987. Throughout that time, he expanded the creative horizons of children.

For the next thirteen years, until the day he died following a courageous ten-year battle with HIV and AIDS, he continued to make art. Miller said, “Humor is a strong element in my work. It often helps me confront serious issues.” He made art that defied existing categories. Tom called his style Afro Deco. In his artistic universe Miller combines Aunt Jemimas with pink flamingos, wildly grinning red lips and white teeth, with birds, palm trees and fruits (most particularly the ubiquitous watermelon) “These elements afford a sly, satirical quality to the furniture, a presence that would do any stout hearted surrealist proud.” stated Lowery Simms Director of the Studio Museum of Harlem and former Associate Curator of 20th Century Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “I couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8,” Miller recalled. “I remember the man -- he was black and he had processed hair. None of the men in our neighborhood had processed hair. He drove an MG, which was unheard of in the early Fifties. Late at night sometimes I could see him at his easel when the light was on. He was just different, his whole lifestyle. ... For some strange reason it appealed to me, even as a child. I said to myself, `Yeah, I think I want to be an artist.”

Tom Miller, arguably one of the most renowned contemporary artists from Baltimore, MD. He is known for creating a self-described style of “Afro-Deco” painted furniture pieces. He was a skilled painter, muralist and screen printer, creating artwork for the public, museums, corporate and private collectors. Through the use of iconic images, such as watermelons juxtaposed with black faces, Miller cleverly fought against racial stereotypes aimed towards African Americans. He became one of the first African-American artists from Baltimore to be given a one-man show at the BMA in 1995. Miller’s work became so popular that collectors were waitlisted up to 2 years for his furniture pieces.

“Miss Marsha” Mixed Media Assemblage-Painted Furniture 1983 In the collection of Marsha Reeves-Jews

Elizabeth Talford Scott Elizabeth Talford Scott (1916 – 2011), was an American folk artist, known for her quilts. Elizabeth Caldwell was born on a plantation near Chester, South Carolina, where her family were sharecroppers, and her grandparents had been born into slavery. Both her parents made quilts, and Elizabeth learned from them. Her father was a railroad worker who collected fabric scraps in his travels. In 1940, Elizabeth moved to Baltimore, Maryland.

In Baltimore, Elizabeth Scott was a domestic servant, a nanny, and a cook. She retired from that work in 1970 and made art quilts, often incorporating embroidery, beadwork, and found objects such as buttons and shells. Her quilts are dense compositions, often abstract and asymmetrical, with references to family rituals and stories. Her quilts were exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Walters Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Anacostia Museum, and the Museum of Biblical Art. In 1987, Scott received the Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1998, the Maryland Institute College of Art held a retrospective of Scott’s work, titled “Eyewinker, Tumbleturds and Candlebugs,” curated by George Ciscle. That show toured to the Smithsonian and to the New England Quilt Museum.Elizabeth Caldwell married Charlie Scott Jr. They had one daughter, artist Joyce J. Scott (b. 1948). Charlie Scott Jr. died in 2005, and Elizabeth Talford Scott died in 2011, age 95. In 2014, Elizabeth Talford Scott was one of three artists featured in a show titled “The Ins and Outsiders” at the Galerie Myrtis in Baltimore.

“Abstract #4” Mixed Media Lap Quilt 1993 In the collection of Joyce J. Scott

Larry Scott Larry Scott (1957- 2007) Artistic expression has always been a vital part of Larry Scott’s way of life. Born in Columbia, South Carolina and raised in Newark, New Jersey, as a child Larry was taught the value and skill of the drawn line by his father, the late Walter Scott. That skill remains at the forefront of his ever-evolving work. Larry’s first canvases were deconstructed paper bags, his first easel, the kitchen floor of the family home.

That ethos of enthusiasm and easy joy also remains with him.

As a young teenager Scott discovered and developed a second passion in the martial arts. During the next two decades, Shotokan (the way of the sword) took him extensively throughout North America, and internationally to Japan, Holland, Australia and Puerto Rico. Like Rocky Marciano, Larry Scott won the championship of every tournament he ever entered. In training to perfect his skills he developed the focus, prescience, and ineluctable vitality that he continues to bring to the canvas.

After retiring from athletics Scott pursued his passionate appreciation for jazz music. As a practitioner of the saxophone, he was influenced deeply by Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Dexter Gordon, and John Coltrane. For the past “Cee” Acrylic on Paper 2005, In the collection of Julia & Kylis Winborne decade, he has returned fulltime and with unmatched dedication to his first love, the visual arts. He engages in an eclectic mix of inks, watercolors, oils, acrylics and mixed media. His works are deeply emotional and political without being overtly so. A significant element of his sensibility emerges from jazz music and the written word-composing with a Baldwinian fire in a mood indigo, as the invisible man, live from beneath the underdog.

As he continues to explore the body, the psyche, urban space, and relationships of color, Scott’s uncompromising but humanist life philosophy and virtuosity of expression has earned him no small degree of renown and has placed him in the center of a growing, vital artistic movement in Baltimore, Maryland.

“Untitled” Acrylic on Paper 2005, In the collection of Julia & Kylis Winborne

Luke A. Shaw

Luke A. Shaw, (1928-1997) a nationally known artist, longtime professor and former chairman of the art department at Coppin State College (CSC).

A native of Wilson, N.C., Shaw graduated from high school in Illinois and moved to Baltimore to attend the former Morgan State College, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music in 1950.

He attended the Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and received a master’s degree from the Maryland Institute, College of Art in the late 1950s. He received his doctorate from Illinois State University in 1978.

His teaching career began in the early 1960s, when he taught art at the old Bates High School in Anne Arundel County and at Glen Burnie High.

Shaw, lived in West Baltimore, taught at the CSC since 1966 and exhibited paintings in shows throughout the country since the early 1950s. CSC President Calvin W. Burnett called Shaw one of the school’s “outstanding” faculty members and commented that he owns two of Shaw’s paintings.

“He was very talented but also tremendously “King Solomon” Ceramic 2003, In the collection of Cynthia K. Shaw interested in his students,” Shaw experimented with various approaches to enhance his paintings. One of his favorite methods was tonal layering, in which several surface layers of acrylic paint were applied with a syringe on top of other images. Many of his paintings were said to contain hints of van Gogh, Picasso and Mondrian works. “I guess you’d say I’ve run the gamut in my work, but I love modern painting. I’m into that,” Shaw said in a 1980 interview with The Sun. “But on the other hand, I guess I’ll paint anything to get attention. While lots of artists feel they have to please themselves, I realize I like to please the public.”

One of his fondest memories was one in which he and his son, wood sculptor Luke Shaw Jr., had an exhibition together at CSC in 1980. He beamed as he walked through the exhibit where his paintings and his son’s carvings lined the walls.

Thomas Stocket Thomas Stockett, a.k.a. Tommy and T. Stockett (1924-2007). Stockett was an awardwinning editorial cartoonist. He started his art career at four years old and began painting as a teenager. He received his art education at Carver High School, and worked for a local sign shop where he designed movie billboards for various theaters in Baltimore. He joined the AfroAmerican Newspapers in 1955 as the political cartoonist, and was given the assignment of using his drawings to illustrate an editorial point and help readers envision a particular topic from a black perspective. Stockett was a multiple award winner from the Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association and the National Newspaper Publishers Association, and worked for Baltimore’s Afro-American Newspaper for 53 years.

“Untitled” Graphite on Board 1991 In the collection of Larry Poncho Brown

“Mama Brown” Oil on Canvas 1991 In the collection of Kevin Brown

Robert O. Torrence III Robert O. Torrence III (1933-1998), painter, photographer, trumpet-saxophone-flute musician, prize-winning filmmaker. Torrence defied all opinions and discouragements from his high school instructors that he would not be successful as a black artist, and while there he continued with instruction in commercial art and, subsequently, won an art scholarship to New York. He would later work 30 years at the University of Maryland Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland as a medical illustrator. He would be the only black one for 20 of those years. In his earlier years, Torrence was privileged to be taught by sculpture, Reuben Cramer. He subsequently would attend the Maryland Academy of Art in, a school especially created to accommodate returning black war veterans who were denied admittance to the then segregated Maryland Institute of Art. He learned to sketch and paint live models and still life.

A stint in the Air Force furthered his artistic development during the Korean War when Torrence attended photography school in Colorado and was part of an aerial reconnaissance outfit. A transfer to Japan enabled him to complete photography school and attend university courses in Japanese culture and art. Hi most recent works are primarily of voluptuous black women. Although the women are usually nude and well-endowed, their sensuality and spirituality are the focus of the unforgettable images he captures on canvas. “It’s up to black artists to get rid of those myths of the Anglo-Saxon concept of what is good. Like snowflakes, everyone is different.” “I want to venerate my people. We’ve had enough downtrodden concepts heaped on us without having a talented black person help whites impose more downtrodden concepts.”

“Rio” Oil on Canvas 1981 In the collection of Marian Jones

“Roland Kirk” Gelatin Silver Print 1968 In the collection of Larry Poncho Brown

Concept: Larry Poncho Brown Art Direction: Joe Ford Graphic Design: Ed Towles