CIVIL RIGHTS ERA AFRICAN AMERICAN ART: AFRICOBRA

The Wall of Respect:
In 1967 Birmingham native William Walker, who had studied art but was working as a mail sorter in Chicago, got the idea to paint a Black achievement mural on the facade of a grocery and liquor store building located at 43rd Street and Langley Avenue on the city's southside. Under the auspices of The Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), Walker and a number of other artists affiliated with the organization (including Wadsworth Jarrell and Barbara Jones-Hogu) created a wall of portraits of 50 notable African Americans in music, athletics, politics, etc. Called The Wall of Respect, it triggered a national mural art movement and inspired the formation of the artist group AfriCobra.


AfriCobra


(Initial members of AfriCobra)






Jeff Donaldson, Jam Pact Jelly Tite for Jamila





The History, Philosophy and Aesthetics of AFRICOBRA
Published in 68/08 on Dec. 6, 2008
by Barbara Jones-Hogu
From the Archives
Originally published in Afri-Cobra HI (Amherst: University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1973). Revised by the author, Chicago 2008.
Barbara Jones-Hogu

In 1968, a group of artists came together at the request of Jeff Donaldson in the studio of Wadsworth Jarrell to discuss the premise that Black visual art has innate and intrinsic creative components which are characteristic of our ethnic group. The artists who were present at the meeting consisted of painters, printmakers, textile designers, dress designers, photographers and sculptors who felt that their visual expression was definitely affected by the fact that they were Black and that their Blackness contributed a specific quality to their visual expression. Many of the artists at the first meeting were members of a visual art group which was then defunct, the Visual Workshop of OBAC (Organization of Black American Culture)—who created the Wall of Respect in Chicago in 1967. This mural became a visual symbol of Black nationalism and liberation.

Once the artists concluded that we had specific visual qualities intrinsic to our ethnic group, a future meeting was set for each person to bring in their work for analysis by the group. At that meeting the following visual elements were selected: bright colors, the human figure, lost and found line, lettering and images which identified the social, economical and political conditions of our ethnic group. When we had found our common denominators our next step was to ponder whether a group of Black artists could transcend the “I” or “me” for the “us” and “we” in order to create a basic philosophy which would be the foundation of a visual Black art movement. We wanted to create a greater role as Black artists who were not for self but for our kind. Could we sacrifice the wants of self and ego in order to create the needed
positive visual images of our people? Yes, we can!

A nucleus of artists felt that a collective effort was possible under a common philosophy and a common system of aesthetic principles. The basic nucleus was composed of Jeff Donaldson, painter-teacher; Wadsworth Jarrell, painter-photographer, Jae Jarrell, clothing designer, Barbara J. Jones (Hogu) painter-printmaker-teacher, and Gerald Williams, painter-student. We had all noted that our work had a message: it was not fantasy or art for art’s sake, it was specific and functional by expressing statements about our existence as Black People. Therefore, we began our philosophy with functionalism. Functional from the standpoint that it must communicate to its viewer a statement of truth, of action, of education, of conditions and a state of being to our people. We wanted to speak to them and for them, by having our common thoughts, feelings, trials and tribulations express our total existence as a people. We were aware of the negative experiences in our present and past, but we wanted to accentuate the positive mode of thought and action. Therefore our visual statements were to be Black, positive and direct with identification, purpose and direction. The directness of our statement was to be conveyed in several ways:
A. The visual statement must be humanistic with the figure frontal and direct to stress strength, straight forwardness, profoundness, and proudness.
B. The subject matter must be completely understood by the viewer, therefore lettering would be used to extend and clarify the visual statement. The lettering was to be incorporated into the composition as a part of the visual statement and not as a headline.
C. The visual statement must identify our problems and offer a solution, a pattern of behavior or attitude.
D. The visual statement must educate, it must speak of our past, present, or future.
Black, positive, direct statements created in bright, vivid, singing cool-ade colors of orange, strawberry, cherry, lemon, lime and grape. Pure vivid colors of the sun and nature. Colors that shine on Black people, colors which stand out against the greenery of rural areas. Cool-ade colors, Black positive statements stressing a direction in the image with lettering, lost and found line and shape were the beginning elements which created COBRA, the Coalition of Black Revolutionary Artists.

As COBRA began activating their philosophy we felt that everyone should work on a particular theme, the Black Family. The group met every two weeks to analyze and criticize the progress of each member as they completed their composition. These critiques became extremely important since it gave the artist a chance to work independently and jointly while having a group of his peers point out his strengths and weaknesses. As each artist developed his expression in a COBRA philosophy and aesthetics we moved on to the second theme, “I am Better Than Those Mother Fuckers,” and we are. When the second theme was finished we dropped the idea of a definite theme and decided to start identifying problems, and solutions to problems, which we as Black people experience. Therefore in the third work and thereafter each artist worked on a theme which he felt was pertinent to our existence as a people.

At this point Napoleon Henderson, the weaver, joined the group and we moved from five to six which later changed to seven as Nelson Stevens, painter-printmaker came into the group. Yet we continued to grow with Carolyn Lawrence, painter; Omar Lama, a draftsman in pen and ink; and Sherman Beck, a painter and illustrator. During the same period of time we moved from COBRA to African COBRA to AFRICOBRA, an African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists. We moved from a national perspective to an international perspective. All Black people regardless of their land base have the same problems, the control of land and economics by Europeans or Euro-Americans.
The change from COBRA to AFRICOBRA also crystallized our philosophy and aesthetics, such as:
The Philosophical Concepts
1. IMAGES, a commitment to humanism, inspired by African people and their experience, IMAGES which perform some function which African people can relate to directly and experience. The art is the people, people reflect their art, and the art is for the people, not for the critics.
2. IDENTIFICATION, to define and clarify our commitment as a people to the struggles of African peoples who are waging war for survival and liberation.
3. PROGRAMMATIC, art which deals with concepts that offer positive and feasible solutions to our individual, local, national, and international problems.
4. MODES OF EXPRESSION, that lend themselves to economical mass production techniques such as “Poster Art” so that everyone that wants one can have one.
5. EXPRESSIVE AWESOMENESS, that which does not appeal to serenity but is concerned with the eternally sublime, rather than ephemeral beauty. Art which moves the emotions and appeals to the senses.

The Aesthetic Principles
(These principles were not only drawn from the work of the artists in the group but were also drawn from our inheritable art forms as an African people.)
1. FREE SYMMETRY, the use of syncopated, rhythmic repetition which constantly changes in color, texture, shapes, form, pattern, movement, feature, etc.
2. MIMESIS AT MID-POINT, design which marks the spot where the real and the unreal, the objective and the non-objective, the plus and the minus meet. A point exactly between absolute abstractions and absolute naturalism.
3. VISIBILITY, clarity of form and line based on the interesting irregularity one senses in a freely drawn circle or organic object, the feeling for movement, growth, changes and human touch.
4. LUMINOSITY, “Shine,” literal and figurative, as seen in the dress and personal grooming of shoes, hair (process or Afro), laminated furniture, face, knees or skin.
5. COLOR, Cool-ade color, bright colors with sensibility and harmony.
As we expanded our philosophy we developed as a group who created messages that dealt with the past, to give definition to our existence, in the present, to identify the images and activities of our present situation, and the future that would show a direction toward purpose and solution. Our endeavors and thoughts culminated in 1970 in TEN IN SEARCH OF A NATION, an exhibit which was held at the Studio Museum in Harlem. The work we exhibited was on view to educate and was not for sale. We did not want to promote individual gain of the images but we did want to stress a unified effort of giving our messages to the people. We had plans to create poster prints of the work so that everyone could have some AFRICOBRA messages. Our endeavor was well received. It was the first time that most of the viewers had seen a group of artists jointly working together toward a concerted philosophy with images which stated to Black people “Unite,” “Unite or Perish,” “We Will Build Here or Nobody Will,” because “I Am Somebody,” “I Am Better.”

Each artist dealt with their images in different perspectives. Nelson Stevens dealt with the spiritual aspect of nation building in Jihad, Uhuru, and Ujamma; he wants “to get as close as possible to the jihad… to images of those brothers and sisters who have never existed before,” while Jeff Donaldson dealt with the modern Amos and Andy who are not for Toming but are seriously dealing with our problems with an advanced weapon. His Oshun, Oba and Yansa, the Wives of Shango (God of thunder and lightning who balances all debts), are three sisters who are ready for combat with bullet, belts and guns; while the “Shango Shortys” are dealing with their past in the tensions of today in a high- strung society of crystal clear glass.
Carolyn Lawrence wants to “Take the past and the present and make the new image.” She records her concepts in Pops, a tribute to an old man, while in Manhood she pointed a direction of responsibility for all men. Jae Jarrell, the dress designer, laid out strong messages on her garments with strong patterns, textures and colors of Black Family, Unity, and Manhood.

Wadsworth Jarrell stated, “If you can get to Be-Bop, you can get to me. That is where the truth is.” The rhythms of his Be-Bop can be seen in the repetitious letters and colors of Cool-ade Lester. Jarrell’s Homage to a Giant pays tribute to many pertinent leaders, such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson, Fred Hampton, Huey P. Newton. His images state that we must be about Tightening Up the Game, and This Time Baby we are not going to be turned around from our objective of total liberation.
Each artist brought his peculiar talent to the commune and exhibit. Sherman Beck, a magic maker, extended himself through the magic of his medium. Although he had no titles on his work he dealt with another realm of the spiritual essence of man which could be seen and felt in his paintings. Napoleon Henderson, the weaver, looks toward himself and Africa as his future. The title of his work does not speak of the significant symbolism, bright harmonizing colors and textures in his words “Doodles” “Cool-ade Icicles” and “Bakota.”

Yesterday, today and possibly tomorrow Gerald Williams will respond to the potential for Black Nationhood and the need to develop that potential when he created I Am Somebody, Nationhood, and Wake Up to the King Alfred plan of concentration camps; while Omar Lama works toward positive images—images that will inspire Black people to a higher level of consciousness in Black Jesus, and United or Perish.
Last but not least is Barbara J. Jones, who states Black People a total people, a total force, Unite, Unite, as we learn of our Heritage as an African in a racist country in the Land Where My Father Died which need to Stop Genocide while Black men must Rise and Take Control.

We moved from Ten in Search of A Nation homeward with important feedback from our viewers which gave encouragement, inspiration and direction for the future… The future works of AFRICOBRA became stronger, more powerful and more accessible as we started creating silk screen poster prints which was another phase of our basic philosophy. The poster prints made our images available to a larger audience at a reasonable price. For the prints, which were a total group effort, we selected one work from each artist, especially those that had been exhibited in the Ten in Search Of A Nation exhibit. Carolyn Lawrence’s Manhood, the first print, enthralled everyone in the group as we finished the last color and saw the crystallization of many trials, errors and color separations. The completion of the first print produced a quick production of the next three which were Unite, Wake Up, and Uhuru. The prints which followed were African Solar, and Victory in the Valley of Esu. In the process of working on the prints, we lost Sherman Beck and Omar Lama, but we gained Howard Mallory, ceramicist-jeweler-textile designer, who did a great deal of work on producing all the prints.
In between production of the prints, we did find time to create broader visual statements about the changing conditions of our time and our people. Our new statements related the strength and determination of Angela Davis and Martin Luther King, the truth and wisdom of Malcolm X, the continual fall of Black education and the need of education to be based on the history and accomplishments of Black People. Our children have put up a tough struggle to Keep Their Spirits Free. Our images still stressed Nation Time, but emphasized: Don’t Forget the Struggle, we all need spiritual unity as featured in Spirit Sister, Wholy People, and From These Roots we gain strength. If we Get Some Land Black People, we need land to survive, for land provides the essentials which cultivate and nourish life, and We Must Go Home with Something. These images were the foundation for our AFRICOBRA II show at the Studio Museum in Harlem in the fall of 1971.

Nothing is continuously stable, and things must change, perhaps from young to old, east to west or vice versa or marching seconds of infinite time never to return. In our development we began to change; we first changed in position, time and space. The first to extend our commune was Jeff Donaldson who moved to Washington, D.C. to become the head of the Howard University Art Department early in the spring semester of 1971. Next to leave, Wadsworth and Jae Jarrell with one child at hand and one on the way, they moved eastward to Connecticut, Massachusetts, and later to Washington, D.C. The extension of our space relationship broke down our immediate communications and communal development, but it also built personal progress without the intervention of momentary feedback of criticism in our trials and tribulations which created a more responsive or irresponsive action. As we attempted communications across country we continued to work and develop but at a slower pace. Before long another AFRICOBRA member, Nelson Stevens, had made his way eastward to Amherst, Massachusetts, and what was six became five again. We began with five members in Chicago. The work of AFRICOBRA will continue to grow because we have a foundation by which we have built a strong value system of our work and a philosophy which guides us toward a common aim of artistic endeavor. The works which are exhibited in AFRICOBRA expressed the expansion of our creative effort in new media, new techniques, new styles and a new member, Frank Smith, painter.

Where will we go from here? As time moves so shall we, to a broader and more expanded commitment to our people visually, mentally, and physically. Our new visual statement shall explore the total gamut of our existence:
The Individual and the Family
A. The growth of the individual from the cradle to the grave. We will express the physical, mental and emotional changes of the male and/or female as they develop from a baby to a child to teenager—adult and old age; and in so doing, we can state their trials, their errors, accomplishments and success, their character, wisdom, foolishness, etc.
B. We will make visual statements of how we see the positive or negative relationship between husband and wife, mother and child, and father and children. What type of roles are we playing and are our roles relevant to our whole existence as a people. We will extend our visual imagery to speak of our relationship and activities of our extended family—the cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents, godparents. How they created strong influences on our life, past or present? The family relations with other families or other groups of the same or different ethnic groups. We will identify ourselves visually at this time-space and record our daily activities, our values and the styles of our day. We will record our dances, our athletics, our hobbies, our night life, our parties, our meetings, our leaders, our labors, our children and their education.
Our Visual Image Will Be Greatly Concerned with Education
A. There are different contents of education, including the spiritual education of the family. This is not to replace spiritual education in the Christian church, but to state a need for a spiritual religion based on the needs of our people and a supreme being which reflects ourselves and our needs.
B. The humanizing aspects of education are respect, truth, and brotherhood: The role of man: the role of woman: the role of child and family to the total group. We must be concerned about establishing positive values and relationships in these aspects of education.
C. Our visual image will express the academic education of learning one’s history, circumstances and accomplishments.
D. The industrial education of producing and being productive for self and kind in the building of every component needed to run a nation.
Our Visual Image Can State Our Social Needs and Social Services
A. Health facilities and services. Visually, what is the state of health facilities and services. We will express the need to develop our own health facilities in order to safeguard the health of our people.
B. We will express the protection of safeguarding the welfare of our old, young and those in need. We must be responsible for their welfare.
C. We will visually analyze our protective forces in the police or the use of security guards. Do they actually protect and serve our communities? If not, how can this be altered? The protection of the community and all of its components should be our responsibility and should not be allocated to an opposing group.
D. We will visually express a need to establish and develop our community institutions such as cultural, social, educational and religious or spiritual centers and provoke positive actions by visually stating how these organizations should develop the philosophy and ideology of blackness and its welfare and continuous existence.

The Economic Needs
A. We will visually state types of jobs available to our people and the types of skills and professions needed to run a nation are not just those that are teachers, lawyers, and doctors; but those who are also needed are people skilled in the technology of food, clothing, and housing industries. Those who make operations run such as janitors, secretaries, programmers, repairmen, etc.
B. We will be concerned about the types of businesses and industries which must be created to be self-sufficient people.
C. We will develop new solutions to different types of needs and services which employ community personnel, yet develop and perpetuate our people as a cohesive community.
Visual Statements Concerning the Present, Past and Future Political Needs and Developments
A. What type of governmental or guidance unit should be developed and put into practice and the types of rules and regulations which should govern us as a group, which would provoke the need for government and self-governmental plans over not today but the next twenty or thirty or one hundred years. We are kept from developing future programs because we are kept in an unbalanced state of either acting or reacting to our present circumstances. These methods and solutions to constant flux can be visually stated.
B. Political and group cohesiveness is needed to build a strong Black nation and to develop our total culture. Visually we can state the need for group action toward the positive needs in a cooperative direction.

Religious Needs
A. We will develop an image which stresses a strong religion which has us as the base of its origin with the Supreme Being and the mediator reflecting our physical being. We must illustrate stronger ties between our people and for our people. We must develop a more concrete moral code.

In fact, AFRICOBRA can move toward stating and restating repeatedly the needs for organization, purpose and goals of our people for a stronger cohesive body and the need for racial nationalism. AFRICOBRA will not only state our problems and solutions but also state our emotions, our joys, our love, our attitude, our character, our total emotional and intellectual responses and feelings. Art can be a liberating force—a positive approach concerning the plight and the direction of our people. Visual imagery should bring us together and uplift us as a people into a common—a common unit, moving toward a common destination and a common destiny. WE IN AFRICOBRA SHALL HELP BRING THIS ABOUT.

(from: http://www.areachicago.org/p/issues/6808/history-philosophy-and-aesthetics-africobra/)



Assignment Question: How would you discuss the following works as images that support the missions of Africobra as expressed in the essay by Barbara Jones-Hogu? Post your comments by Midnight, Sunday, February 26.

CIVIL RIGHTS ERA AFRICAN AMERICAN ART: SPIRAL GROUP

Spiral was a New York based group of African American artists - primarily painters - that formed in 1963 in the studio of Romare Bearden to explore how they might participate in the Civil Rights Movement triggered by a particular interest in the upcoming March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Discussions progressed to explorations of the changing landscape in American art, culture and politics. Founding members constituted the vanguard of mid-century African American Modernism including Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, Norman Lewis and Hale Woodruff. Membership spread to Emma Amos (the sole woman and youngest member of the group), Calvin Douglas, Perry Ferguson, Reginald Gammon, Feirath Hines, Alvin Hollingsworth, William Majors, Richard Mayhew, Earl Miller, Merton D. Simpson and James Yeargans. Most of these artists also
worked in various modernist associated abstract styles, and adhered to a range of viewpoints on the emerging politics and art. About the time of the membership expansion, the group installed itself at 147 Christopher Street for weekly meetings.

Discussions in the group centered on the intersection of art and politics: what role does race play in the evaluation of their artwork? What role does subject matter play in their work? How can abstraction add a significant voice to the civil rights struggle? How should artists of color construct and maintain their identity in an overtly racist America, including the art world? The Spiral artists came to the group at a crossroads in their careers. Bearden had begun to experiment with a collage aesthetic for which he would become famous while Norman Lewis, Hale Woodruff and Charles Alston had already been painting in Abstract Expressionist inspired styles throughout the forties and fifties. The name was suggested by Woodruff as a reference to the Archimedean spiral that moves outward, embracing all directions referencing the individual interests, styles, and ideologies of its members. They held one exhibition in their Christopher Street location, having named the space Cinque Gallery, titled First Group Showing: Works in Black and White in 1965. Many of the paintings were embedded with explorations of social change and reiterated the personal styles of each artist as every Modernist tactic - abstraction, social realism, collage, printmaking, black and white chromatic reduction, protest art, etc. converged into a single artistic consciousness devoted to liberation for all. Their collective statement to the exhibition: "We, as Negroes, could not fail to be touched by the outrage of segregation, or fail to relate to the self-reliance, hope, and courage of those persons who were marching in the interest of man’s dignity…if possible, in these times we hoped with our art to justify life…to use only black and white and eschew other coloration. This consideration, or limitation, was conceived from technical concerns; although the deeper motivations may have been involved…what is important now, and what has great portent for the future, is that Negro artists of divergent backgrounds and interests, have come together on terms of mutual respect. It is true to their credit that they were able to fashion art works lit by beauty, and of such diversity".



Black and white serves as multiple metaphors. By ‘eschewing other colorations’ Spiral artists demand that the viewer look at the quality of the work, not the color line in which artworks—and people—are often viewed. Black and white has a rich tradition in Modern painting that is radically de-segregated by the Spiral artists. Spiral artists spoke with their own pictorial language, but simultaneously operated from a unified consciousness in terms of the intent of the show. Spiral members were not disenfranchised U.S. citizens in search of hand out exhibitions from the establishment but singular artists operating out of strength and conviction. The fact that the artists of Spiral chose painting, collage and printmaking—seen from the 70s onward as hidebound and conservative—is a testament to the contribution these artists made to mid-century artistic practice as well as a singular contribution to the advancement of civil rights in America.







Romare Bearden:
Photostat Projection from 1965 Black and White Spiral Group show, 1965
Prevalence of Ritual: Baptism, 1964
Jazz, Chicago, Grand Terrace, 1964

Romare Bearden (1911-1988) was born in Mecklenburg County in Charlotte, NC in the seat of Mecklenberg County. He grew up in a middle class family with high expectations that he would be an achiever. He family relocated to the Harlem section of New York City, escaping the Jim Crow laws of the south. Figures such as Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes and a number of artists, writers and musicians frequented the social and political gatherings held at the Bearden home. He spend occasional times away from Harlem, visiting relatives in Mecklenburg County and Pittsburgh. He held vivid memories of these experiences and African American history - another interest - that became subjects explored in his art. Trains, cats, roosters, barns, school houses, shingled shacks, his grandparents' boardinghouse scenes, steel mills, African American steel workers, etc. also formed images that he would recall in his art.






Woodruff:
Africa and the Bull, 1958
Afro Emblems, 1950
Georgia Landscape, 1934-35

Hale Woodruff (1900-1980) was born in Cairo, IL. He received his early training at the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis, IN and at the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University. In 1927 he received the Harmon Foundation Award ($100) and, with additional money supplied by philanthropist Otto Khn, went to Paris for four years where he studied at the Academie Moderne and the Academie Scandinave. Upon his return to the US he established the art program at Spelman College and Atlanta University, and spearheaded a national art competition and exhibition of African American artworks that was one of the most important contributions to the development of African American art in the country. During his Atlanta years, Woodruff traveled to Mexico in the summer of 1936, studying mural painting with Diego Rivera. He was a Rosenwald Fellow in Creative Painting from 1943 to 1945 and lectured for the Association of American Colleges (1942-1945). He began Professor of Art Education at New York University in the Fall 1945. His abstract and semi-abstract oils show strong affinities with modern European masters. He was an important mural painter, especially noted for his murals in the Savery Library at Talladega College, the first recounting the slave ship Amistad and the history of Talledega College from its founding in 1867 in an abandoned Civil War prison up to ts status as a significant southern institution. Woodruff was celebrated as a teacher as much as he was an artist, being named "Teacher of the Year" at NYU in 1967.
*******RESEARCH HALE ASPACIO WOODRUFF AND DISCUSS HOW HE WAS AN IMPORTANT MODEL OF TEACHER, ACTIVIST, AND ART-MAKER. POST YOUR RESPONSE BY MIDNIGHT WEDS. FEB.15*******







Alston:
Walking, 1963
Black and White, 1960
The Family, 1955

Charles Henry Alston (1907-1977) was born in Charlotte, NC, moving with his family to New York City in 1914, four years after the death of his father and one year after his mother married Harry Pierce Bearden (uncle of Romare Bearden). He attended DeWtt High School and Columbia University where he received the MA as a Dow Fellow. He taught at Utopia House (one of his students was Jacob Lawrence), the Art Students League where he was the first African American instructor, the Museum of Modern Art, and City College. He was the first African American supervisor for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Project. He headed the Harlem Hospital Murals Project n 1935 and was the guiding spirit of "306 Group", a collective of artists and intellectuals who met regularly at 306 W. 141st Street in Harlem in the 1930s.







Lewis:
Processional,1964
Harlem Turns White,1955
Evening Rendezvous, 1994
Carnivale #1, 1965 (below)

Norman Lewis (1909-1979) was born in Harlem to parents had emigrated from Bermuda. Having had a longtime interest in art, he amassed a large library of art history books as a young man. Although he remained based in Harlem, he traveled extensively for two years when working on ocean freighters. He was influenced early in life by sculptor Augusta Savage who gave him an open studio at her Harlem Art Center. He worked on WPA projects with such artists as Jackson Pollock. Lewis produced paintings, drawings and murals. He joined 306 Group in 1934, meeting regularly with Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, Ralph Ellison, Jacob Lawrence, and other artists and writers. His earlier work was primarily figurative, as he "painted what he saw" in works Meeting Place (1930 swamp scene), Yellow Hat (1936 formal Cubist painting), Disposed (1940 eviction scene), and Jazz Musicians (1948 depiction of the bebop being played in Harlem at the time). In the late 1940s his work became increasingly abstract. Migrating Birds (1954) won the Popular Prize at the Carnegie Museum's 1955 Carnegie International Exhibition, the New York Herald-Tribune calling the painting "one of the most significant of all events of the 1955 art year."
His later work includes Alabama II (1969), Part Vision (1971), New World A-Coming (1971), and Seachange, completed during the last years of his life.

Although he received numerous awards, exhibited in popular galleries, and received good reviews, his work did not sell nearly as well as his contemporary Abstract Expressionists that he exhibited with, such as Mark Rothko and Mark Tobey. The primary source of support for his wife, daughter and himself was teaching. He received a grant from the Mark Rothko Foundation and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1972. In 1975 he received Guggenheim Fellowship, one of numerous awards and honors he would achieve.






Gammon:
Scottsboro, c.1970
Freedom Now, 1963
Harlem On My Mind, 1969

Reginald A. Gammon, Jr. (1921-2005) was born in Philadelphia, PA. He excelled as a teacher, painter, and printmaker; and was known as an intellectual artist. His work depicted the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, the dignity of unsung heroes, jazz and blues musicians and observations of everyday life. He received a scholarship to study at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art (then the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Arts). When he began working at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard refurbishing battleships for the war effort, he lost his scholarship. He worked at the shipyard during the day and went to art school at night for the next 18 months. Gammon joined the Navy and served with an all Black unit stationed in Guam from 1944-1946. After the war, he returned to Philadelphia where he turned down a five-year scholarship offer at the Tyler School of Fine Arts so he could help support his family. He worked and went to school. In 1948 he moved to New York, taking a variety of jobs - US post office mail sorter, lampshade painter, advertisement copy designer for Liften, old and Asher, etc.

Gammon joined Spiral in 1963. He worked as an "art expert" with the New York public schools. Teaching in the Saturday Academy Program, he set up an informal studio so that the children in Harlem might work with resident artists. His friend Hughie Lee-Smith recommended him for a visiting lectureship in the "Arts and Ideas" program at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Quickly realizing Gammons' potential contributions to the program, his 10-day lectureship was extended to a one-semester teaching contract. He held a teaching position there for 21 years, retiring in 1991 as Full Professor Emeritus of Fine Arts and Humanities until his death. Settling in Albuquerque, Gammon was one of the founders of the New Grounds Print Workshop & Gallery where he renewed his love for printmaking and created his last body of work: a collection of more than 100 prints of historically important musicians and gospel singers.
*******RESEARCH REGINALD GAMMON AND DISCUSS HIS MULTIPLE ROLES AS AN ARTIST ACTIVIST DURING THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA*******POST YOUR RESPONSE NO LATER THAN FRIDAY, FEB.17.






Hollingsworth:
Untitled (watercolor), c.1980
Lonely Woman, c.1960
Hilltop (Don Qioxote),

Alvin C. Hollingsworth (1928-2000) was born in New York. He studied at the High School of Music and Art before attending the Art Students League (BA, 1956) and City College (MA, 1959). Interested in the effects of ultraviolet light on fluorescent material, he worked as a comic strip illustrator, and collaborated with electronic music pioneer Edgar Varese in the late 1960s to create a large multi-media work that provided sensory experiences for the spectators. His portraits and murals are in numerous private, corporate and museum collections. He taught at Hostos Community College of the City University of New York. In the late 1960s Hollingsworth created a series of murals for the Don Quixote apartment building in the Bronx, NYC and a series of six lithographs by the same title.







Hines:
Hines with black and white painting, 1965
Four Square, 1982
Yellow and Gray, 1978
Transition, 1953

Felrath Hines (1913-1993) was born in Indianapolis, IN and became known for his abstract, monumental color field paintings. He studied Education at NYU before entering Pratt Institute and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (he would later teach at both institutions before settling in Silver Springs, MD). He worked as supervisory conservator for the Fine Arts Conservation Labs in New York 1962-1964. He worked ten years as Conservator at the Museum of Modern Art (1962-1972), as Chief Conservator at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. from 1972 to 1980, and Chief Conservator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. from 1980 to 1984.
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Early in his career Hines was inspired by the geometry of Cubism and the "simplicity" of Piet Mondrian and the De stijl movement. As Hines became more influenced by American modernists - Stuart Davis, Ad Reinhardt, Josef Albers, Ellsworth Kelly, and Barnett Newman - he brgan to eliminate line from his compositions, focusing instead on simple shapes and a restrained color palette. (In Four Square Hines utilized slight symmetry and subtle tonal variations to create the optical effect of a pyramidal form moving forward in space. Hine's interest in the science of color may have been influenced by his professional career as a painting conservator.

Hines was active in the Civil Rights movement and participated in the March on Washington. During this time he was labeled a "Black artist", a title he did not expect and did not like. Not theoretically opposed to participating in African American Art shows, he wanted his imagery to remain universal and not be seen as only relevant to black social causes or to African Americans. In 1971, he declined the opportunity to participate in the Whitney Museum exhibition "Contemporary Black Artists in America". He focused on nonrepresentational subject matter and harmoniously balanced shapes and colors. Hines intended to create works with conceptual meaning: "an artist's work is to rearrange everyday phenomena so as to enlarge our perception of who we are and what goes on about us". Hines wanted his work to be absorbed visually, mentally, and spiritually by all people regardless of gender, ethnicity, or race.






Amos:
Sand Tan, 1980
Does Black Wear Off, 1999
Two Standing Women, 1966

Emma Amos (b. 1938) was born and grew up in Atlanta, GA where her parents owned a drugstore. A painter, printmaker, weaver, teacher and writer, she began drawing at age six. At sixteen, after having attended segregated public schools, she entered a five-year program at Antioch University in Ohio, spending her fourth year abroad at the London Central School of Art. Upon receipt of the BA at Antioch, she returned to the Central School and earned a diploma in etching. Her first solo exhibition was in 1960, the year she moved to New York. hale Woodruff invited her to join Spiral, making her the youngest and only female member of the group.





Mayhew:
Toccata, c.1970
West, 1965
bonfire, 1962

Richard Mayhew (b.1924) was born in Amityville, NY and moved to New York City inn 1945. He studied at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Art Students League, Pratt Institute, Columbia University and at Academia in Florence, Italy. Developing a love for nature at a very early age. He also studied the human anatomy and worked part of his time through school as a medical illustrator. His third love was music, especially jazz, performing with theater groups and singing with jazz combos in his early adult years. He had his first solo exhibition in 1955 at the Brooklyn Museum. His second solo show at the Morris Gallery was two years later. Both exhibitions were acclaimed by critics, especially for his use of color, light and form, where his work was compared to Monet and Winslow Homer. Mayhew studied at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, receiving a fellowship that allowed him to study painting at the Academia in Florence. He resided in Italy for three years. Mayhew received twelve prestigious awards and fellowships between 1958 and 1983, and taught at Pennsylvania State University where he was named Professor emeritus when he retired.







Simpson:
Confrontation IIA, 1967
Untitled, 1965
Angry Young Man, 1965

Merton Simpson (b.1928)was born in Charleston, SC and began drawing after being hospitalized at childhood with diphtheria. When Simpson moved to New York in 1942, he began studying at Cooper Union and later at New York University under Hale Woodruff. He joined the Air Force in 1951 and became the official Air Force aritst, painting portraits of officers including General Dwight David Eisenhower. In 1952, Nocturnal City was shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His military service ended in 1954, his work was in exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum and he opened a gallery on Madison Avenue presenting African and Modern art. He joined Spiral out of a sense of social consciousness. Participation in the group probably influenced his important Confrontation series, a group of mostly black and white canvases expressing the anger and frustration of the Civil Rights era.


William Majors (1930-1982) was born in Indianapolis, IN. He taught at the Vermont Academy where he continued to paint, draw, and print and was acclaimed by the Museum of Modern Art for his etching and printmaking. His paintings received good critical reviews in local and New York papers.

Calvin Douglass (1931-?) was born in Baltimore, MD and resided on New York's Staten Island.

Percy Ferguson, James C. Yeargans, and Earl Miller were also members of Spiral.

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