10 Years into the Southern Portrait Project

Many wonderful things have happened in the last year.  I have been continuing to work on paintings and drawings associated with the Southern Portrait Project as well as other new work. 

The painting above, "Playing Ghostbusters in the Woods" was part of a group exhibition at the Pensacola Museum of Art.

I am working on a series of paintings inspired by antique textiles and patterns from multiple cultures and eras, such as the 40 x 40" oil painting below.

I have started on some handpainted wallpaper projects that are very exciting.  More to come about those in the near future.  They are inspired by the Findings drawings and paintings from the SPP.  Below "Pink Nest" in 60" motif half-brick repeat. 

Nine Year Anniversary

Hydrangea from Oven Park, Tallahassee, FL.  A non-invasive non-native that performs beautifully in the South.

It has been nine years since I ended my self-propelled residency in Monroe, LA.  I spent every two weeks in Monroe, LA and driving through Louisiana and back and forth to Texas. During that time, I saw parts of Louisiana I had never seen as a child growing up in Baton Rouge.  It was exciting and very illuminating.  I met some amazing people and saw the results of the different cultures - Native American, African American, French, Spanish and English in people and the marks that they made on the land.

Spanish and French created land allotments differently.  That is still apparent in the way that neighborhoods, shopping centers and private lots are shaped and named.  The influence from the different cultures is very strong.  Things that I had not anticipated, the effects from the Great Flood of 1927 are still talked about as are the centuries old struggle between Catholics and Protestants that started in Europe.  Many people in Louisiana still talk about the seperation between Catholics and Protestants and how that had effected their families and communities.  

During the last seven years I have not only explored Louisiana but parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.  

I am still creating artwork about the South and drawing and painting portraits.  I have started a teaching blog, partially for young family members but also because I found Art Education in southern rural and even urban areas to be so limited.  

Some art centers and museums work very hard to engage a lot of people in their communities - young, old, different incomes and different races.  Other institutions focus mainly on one group of people and are not inclusive.  I am hoping to share information about art all over the world from different eras and different cultures and to create lessons for young students from PreK to adults who want to continue to learn and try new projects.  

My work is changing and becoming more about color, patterns, nature - all things that were fascinating to me growing up near the very rural city limits of Baton Rouge in the 1960's and 1970's.  

I am studying native plants from the Big Bend area in Florida.  Most of them are also found across the South and some into Texas and Mexico.  I am experimenting with a lot of plants in my own garden,  planting, photographing and drawing or painting them.  Gardens and agriculture are some of the things prevalent across the South that bring people together.  Working farms and garden clubs are common everywhere.  You can see the remains of 100 year old or older gardens around abandoned houses.  Groves of trees on farms and leading up to little wood frame houses in the country planted over 100 years ago continue to thrive.  The food, shade and enjoyment that these plants gave to people hundreds of years ago is still enjoyed and appreciated today.  

Invasive non-natives have threatened a lot of native plants.  I am trying to do my part to preserve the native plants by planting as many natives in my yard as possible.  

 

Art Education Blog

This summer I taught Youth Art classes at a wonderful venue in Tallahassee, FL, Lafayette Arts and Crafts Center.  The Center is run by the city of Tallahassee and includes both an art studio and ceramic studio.  Youth through Adult classes are available there.  

Starting to teach art again inspired me to create an art project blog.  Six people in my family Ryan, Josh, Henry, George, Francie and Esti have also been an inspiration for the blog which is dedicated to them.   I will continue adding art projects to my teaching blog at sparkleberrystudio.blogspot.com.  Check back there often and send images of the artwork that you make from the projects.  

Beginning a Second Series of Southern Portraits

This summer I started a second series of Southern Portraits in oil on paper.  I have started photographing people for the series in Texas, Louisiana, Florida and Georgia.  

Most of the paintings will be 18 x 14" like the graphite drawings on claybord.  A few will be much larger.

I am looking forward to seeing the first 10 portraits together.

Above is a detail from "Toni, Leon County, FL" work in progress.

Ron Adams, Master Printer and Artist

I am quite happy to have finished this pencil and acrylic study of our friend Ron Adams and started on a larger oil on canvas painting of him.  We met Ron in Houston through a former colleague of his from Hand Graphics, Kathy Gurwell. We exhibited his work at our gallery in Houston, TX, Gallery Jatad.

Ron was quite a character and loved to tell stories about his life.  He was born in Detroit, MI.  He talked about being a technical draftsman in California.  His style as an artist is certainly influenced by his drawing of mechanics.  The structural anatomy can be seen in the bodies of his figures.  

Ron loved to tell stories about spending time in Mexico and working on the 1968 graphic design team for the Mexican Olympics.  He also purchased and transported lithography stones from Mexico to California enabling a couple of fine art presses there to offer a variety of sizes of lithography prints.  Gemini G.E.L. was one of those presses.  He trained as a printmaker at Gemini where he quickly progressed from assistant printer to Master Printer.  At Gemini he worked with Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly and many other artists.  

In 1973 he moved to San Francisco to work as Master Printer for Editions Press.  

Shortly after that he opened Hand Graphics in Sante Fe, New Mexico.  Some of the notable artists that he worked with were Judy Chicago, Luis Jimenez, John Biggers and Charles White.  After running Hand Graphics for thirteen years he sold the business to focus on his own work, later moving to Atlanta, GA and then Houston, TX.  

He moved from Houston to California to live with his daughter and her family until his death in 2020.  

As gallerists we were able to exhibit his work although were never able to create the large exhibition that we wanted to.  Some of his original paintings and prints were stolen from a house and studio that he lived in.  He subsequently moved to a different neighborhood and lived in his studio where the reference photo for this portrait was taken on his sofa.  While there he became good friends and colleagues with Darin Forehand at Forehand Press. 

I regret that Ron was no longer printing at that time.  He talked about wanting to produce a suite of prints of my work and how he would do it but he was not physically able to create prints at the time. Working with him would have been an incredible experience.

We have donated three of his prints to two museums in Louisiana, the Masur Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art. His imagery is very familiar to Southerners.  A Blues musician, a man rafting down a river, a woman in pin curls and a printmaker illuminated by light from a window.  His subject matter is universal and about the human existence. 

Fat Sam is one of my favorite images by Adams.  We donated an impression of this image to the Masur Museum of Art in Monroe, LA as well as a version of Mr. Blue.  We donated Blackburn, a portrait of his friend Robert Blackburn, to the New Orleans Museum of Art.  Ron Adams and Robert Blackburn were two of very few African-American Master Printmakers during their lifetime.  Master Printers such as Darin Forehand continue their legacy. 

You can find more details about Ron's life at the Historymakers and view some of his prints at Hand Graphics. 
 

Fat Sam, 2005

Engraving on Arches paper
23-3/4 x 17-1/2 inches (image)
30 x 22-1/2 inches (sheet)

Study for Mural of Alice May Webb

Study for a mural of Alice May Webb, a founding resident of St Andrews, FL, which is now a neighborhood in Panama city.  Alice and her husband owned a grocery, stocked a pond with fish for customers and ran a snow cone hut  in the summers. Alice was an avid gardener and quilter.

One of Alice's granddaughters, Elaine, gave me the reference photo for this painting.  The photograph shows her in the garden in front of her house wearing a large brooch.  She represents a quintessential American grandmother in her element in the first part of the 20th Century. 

The study was part of a grouping of portraits, quilt designs and textile samples that I created for

These People Are My People at Gadsden Art Center on the fall of 2019.

Alice May Boynton was born on January 17, 1886.  Her father was Stephen Creech Boynton.

She married Leslie Everett Webb and they had a daughter Audrey in 1911. Audrey was born in St. Andrews, FL.  Alice died in St. Andrews at age 61 in 1947.

What amazing years to have lived through, especially in Florida which was not heavily populated and frontier like during that time.  After the Civil War, Florida was restored to the Union on June 25, 1868.  St. Andrews was not incorporated until 1908.  For a long time it was a small beach town with few full-time residents.  Alice and her family were part of the small community of full-time residents.  Panama City annexed St. Andrews and three other small towns in 1927.

Native peoples inhabited the Panama City area from at least 13,000 years ago.  The Spanish arrived in 1500.  St. Andrews being a port and Confederate stronghold was attacked repeatedly by Federal troops and destroyed in 1863.  

The town was described by the St. Andrews Bay Railroad and Mining Company which was selling real estate there as:

“The loveliest location in all Florida. In a land where the genial climate of a winterless round of years will reward your every effort with the most bountiful harvests; where the summers are joyous seasons of refreshing breezes and invigorating nights of cool and healthful slumber; and where the winters are but bewitching contrasts to the summers in heightening and intensifying the delicious pleasure of a life in the fairest land the sun ever blessed with it’s genial kiss. There is but one Florida, and St. Andrews Bay is it’s brightest jewel.”

St. Andrews neighborhood was designated as a redevelopment area in 1989 by the Panama City.

Read more about the history of St. Andrews here.

Alice May Webb, Latex on wood, 24 x 24", 2019
 

Photographic Findings

Photographic Finding #1 (Nicholas Biddle)

The drawings above and below are two of the directions for new work.  The first Photographic Findings #1 (Nicholas Biddle) was the result of images found during research of related subjects.  I found these images captivating and wanted to used them in a drawing.  The goal is to create a grouping with images that are related visually or thematically or both and create a conversation with the people or objects in the grouping.

The figure on the left is Nicholas Biddle who was the first person injured in the Civil War.  The woman and girls are from different eras - mid 19th C, Victorian era and the 1960's.  One of the things that struck me about the reference photographs was the beautiful patterns and forms of the clothing and the expressions on the faces.  While some of the faces had less focus and detail than others, personality and expression still reads very clearly.

Photographic Findings #1 (Nicholas Biddle) will be included in the juried Members Exhibition at the Pensacola Museum of Art opening March 11, 2022.  Juried by Carrie Ann Bade.  

The Dance (Homage to a Pugilist, Louis R. Goodwin)

This grouping of boxers from the 1930's and 1940's is in honor of my grandfather who was a semi-professional boxer in West Texas and Mexico in the 1930's before he joined the Air Force during WWII.  He later coached boxing at Cisco High School in Cisco, TX.  

I do have a good photograph of him boxing so choose peer professional fighters, one of whom is Max Baer, who was World Heavyweight Champion from 1934-35 and the son of Jewish immigrants from Alsace-Lorraine and Bohemia.  Max Baer will be a main figure in Photographic Findings #2.

I used to sit on my grandfather's lap and watch boxing matches on TV.  I remember him talking about how important movement and strategy was.  How boxing was similar to choreography.  The placement of the figures was inspired by Matisse's The Dancers.