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.