Weekly Critique group: Tuesday 1PM at the Santa Cruz Art League 526 Broadway. The first Tuesday and third Tuesday will be an open paint day and/or presentation day. These have proved to be enjoyable. Bring your supplies and join us. A reminder: Please send your SCWS annual $35 dues to Dale Johnson. Also, if you have a gallery page on this website, please remember to also send a $10 fee to take care of the annual hosting fee with Iversen Design. Also reminder: you must be a member to have a page on the website. Plein Air: Thursdays (Call Shirley for location and time- Shirley’s phone number appears on the membership calendar on this site.) If you would like to receive the membership newsletter for contact information on Plein Air and other membership events, please refer to ‘contact page’ and become a member. ($35 yearly)
*The annual Santa Cruz Watercolor Society potluck, lunch, social , business meeting for 2017 will take place at 229 Fridley, Santa Cruz 11:30 AM on Tuesday, February 28 (Mardi Gras). This will replace that Tuesday’s Critique Group. This is two Tuesdays away. Hoping to see you.
Membership News: Please send information.
Members Exhibits: Please send information.
Show Opportunities:
From Mary Steinbrecher: As a member of the Center for the Arts Evergreen Rocky Mountain National Watermedia Committee I am happy to announce and to invite you to apply to the Rocky Mountain National Watermedia (RMNW) exhibition, in its 44th year, and being presented by Center for the Arts Evergreen (CAE) in Evergreen, Colorado. CAE is honored and excited to take responsibility for hosting this annual exhibition. RMNW attracts entrants and jurors from throughout the United States, and is regarded as one of the top watermedia exhibitions in the country. CAE is pleased to announce that internationally acclaimed painter, author, and teacher, Stephen Quiller, will serve as the juror for the 44th annual Rocky Mountain National Watermedia Exhibition. Mr. Quiller is best known for his work in watermedia, and was awarded the Gold Medal of Honor at the 148th International American Watercolor Society Exhibition in New York City in 2014. His paintings have been on the covers and the subjects of articles of many leading artists magazines. He has authored two best-selling books, Color Choices and Painter’s Guide to Color, and his “Quiller Wheel” is used by artists worldwide. Go to http://bit.ly/2il9x31www.callforentry.org to apply. For further information, contact Becky Guy via email at curator@evergreenarts.org. Please forward this message onto the members of your group.
Classes/Workshops:
Santa Cruz Art League:
Watercolor – Linda Lord – Thursday This class is geared to facilitate those who have never painted and those who have advanced their skills. Most class sessions will include a demo and then time to work on the elements of the demo. Information on materials, including colors and “gimmicks”,and tools is given throughout the six-week period. The goal of this class is to encourage the joy of painting, while improving skills and knowledge.This is a “fun” class, so bring a sense of humor and whatever materials you have and enjoy. Level: All. Offered: 6 Thurs., beginning:March 2nd,1 to 4pm Fee: $155 / $135 Members Instructor: Linda Lord is a self-trained artist and illustrator with over 16 years teaching experience in her studio and via the SC Watercolor Society; an Open Studio artist whose exhibits include Cozumel, Mexico. Linda also publishes with a decorative art publisher.
Botanical Art in Graphite, Watercolor and Colored Pencil Botanical art involves accuracy as well as artistic technique and creativity, but you don’t need to be a botanist, and artists at all levels are welcome. In this class we’ll follow a traditional approach to drawing and painting a botanical subject – from study to finished work. Some drawing experience is a plus. We’ll practice particular methods of applying graphite pencil, watercolor and colored pencil. Each of these media has its own beauty and appeal for artists. The plan will be to render plant subjects in each of the three media first, then to use whatever one or more media you choose in a unified composition. You’ll get plenty of individual attention as you work, to challenge and encourage you at your own level of skill. Plant material will be provided for each lesson, but you may bring botanical subjects of your choice (live plant material, not photographs) if you wish. Level: All, Offered:6 Mondays,beginning: (make up class, March 6th), March class begins March 13th, 9:00 AM – noon, Fee: $155 / $135, Instructor: Maria Cecilia Freeman is a professional artist with 25 years of experience bridging scientific illustration and botanical fine art. Her award-winning drawings and paintings have appeared in solo and juried exhibitions across the U.S. and in Europe. You can see her work at her website: mcf-art.com.
Drawing- JoNeal Boic-This course is an introduction to drawing. We will cover the fundamentals, including contour line, form and modeling with a variety of media. You will learn techniques to improve your observational drawing skills, be introduced to linear perspective and will find that as your abilities improve, your perception of the world around you will as well…in a good way! Bring lunch, March 4 & 5, Time: 9-3:30 Fee: $160 / $140 members. Instructor Jo-NealBoic has been a teacher for more than 40 years and she has been painting and teaching watercolor for 29 of those. She loves to teach and believes that all students are capable of learning to draw and paint in whatever medium they choose. She fancies a variety of subjects but is particularly drawn to nature.
Watercolor for Beginners – JoNeal Boic-This workshop is an introduction to the medium of watercolor. It will include the basic techniques used in painting with watercolor; wet into wet, washes, layering/glazing and a combination of these. Color theory as well as practical application of those theories. If you have a desire to learn to paint in watercolor, Jo-Neal will prove you can do it! And…she is especially fond of working with beginners. Bring lunch, March 18 & 19, Time: 9-3:30 Fee: $160 / $140 members. Instructor Jo-NealBoic has been a teacher for more than 40 years and she has been painting and teaching watercolor for 29 of those. She loves to teach and believes that all students are capable of learning to draw and paint in whatever medium they choose. She fancies a variety of subjects but is particularly drawn to nature.
Painting the Figure Simply & Beautifully in Watercolor – Robert R. Dvorak-This class will be directed to the spontaneous representation of the female figure in watercolor. There will be a strong emphasis on the use of color, white space and composition. Color mixing from a limited palette, light, shade, shadow, brush techniques, graded washes, foreshortening, facial details, lost and found edges, and proportion will be demonstrated and practiced. We will work from professional models. No matter how much previous instruction you have had, this class will have you seeing and painting the figure in a new way. Have had some experience with watercolor, drawing the figure? You will learn easy techniques for painting the figure quickly, loose and free. You will build more confidence and skill painting figures. Robert will demonstrate, work with the class and give individual instruction. Bring a lunch, Offered, Sat. March 25th, Time: 10-4, Fee: $89… $15 material fee to instructor… Instructor Robert R. Dvorak, FAAR, presents workshops and lectures on creativity, drawing, and painting for colleges, universities and art centers. He is the author of The Magic of Drawing, Drawing Without Fear, and Experiential Drawing, The Practice of Drawing as Meditation, Travel Drawing and Painting and The Pocket Drawing Book. He is the author of “Twenty Minutes to a Beautiful Figure” featured in WATERCOLOR An American Artist Publication. He has presented this workshop many times for the University of California Santa Cruz, Foothill and De Anza Colleges, The University of Hawaii, Hui No’eau Visual Art Center in Maui, the Palo Alto Art Center and others. For more information: email: robert@youcreate.com
Intermediate Watercolor – JoNeal Boic-This Intermediate level class will include a variety of skills instruction and practice. How do you create the fold of a leaf or flower petal, the fold of fabric or the surface texture of wood? Can you paint a convincing water drop or effectively paint reflections on water. How do you paint a windowpane that looks real? How about the waves out on West Cliff? Do you know how to paint a tree using the technique of negative space painting? We will focus primarily on creating the illusion of form, painting reflections/reflective surface and negative space painting through a series of exercises. Come and join in on the fun!!!! Bring lunch, April 1 & 2, Time: 9-3:30 Fee: $160 / $140 members. Instructor Jo-NealBoic has been a teacher for more than 40 years and she has been painting and teaching watercolor for 29 of those. She loves to teach and believes that all students are capable of learning to draw and paint in whatever medium they choose. She fancies a variety of subjects but is particularly drawn to nature.
Other opportunities:
From Samantha McNally, Artist Getaway calendar for 2017:
Artist Getaway 2017, workshops and art vacations
April 8-9. Mark Monsarrat 3 day workshop, Alameda, oil
May 1-5. Half Moon Bay Artist Getaway
June 4-9. Murphys Artist Getaway
July 17-19 Rolando Barrero 2 day workshop. Benicia, watercolor
September 16. Meisha Grichuhin 1 day workshop, Pacifica, oil
October 15-20. Occidental Artist Getaway
www.artistgetaway.com for details and registration.
Samantha McNally Watercolors
Artist Getaway 2017
Half Moon Bay, May 1-5, 2017
Murphys, June 4-9, 2017
Occidental, October 15-20, 2017
New! Artist Getaway plein air workshops 2017
Mark Monsarrat, oil painter, April 8 and 9 at Crab Cove in Alameda
Rolando Barrero, watercolor painter, July 17, 18, 19 in Benicia
Meisha Grichuhin, oil painter, September 16 in Pacifica
www.artistgetaway.com – please sign up for the mailing list!
ARTIST GETAWAY, INC.
PO BOX 20214
EL SOBRANTE, CA 94820-0214
Exhibits Around Town:
Santa Cruz Art League:
Figurative Work
Exhibits In Bay Area:
Legion of Honor https://legionofhonor.famsf.org/exhibitions/monet-early-years Monet: The Early Years February 25, 2017 – May 29, 2017 ROSEKRANS COURT, SPECIAL EXHIBITION GALLERIES 20B-F Monet: The Early Years will be the first major US exhibition devoted to the initial phase of Claude Monet’s (French, 1840–1926) career. Through approximately sixty paintings, the exhibition demonstrates the radical invention that marked the artist’s development during the formative years of 1858 to 1872. In this period the young painter developed his unique visual language and technique, creating striking works that manifested his interest in painting textures and the interplay of light upon surfaces. This exhibition is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience Monet’s mastery before Impressionism, and includes paintings that are profoundly daring and surprising. Depictions of moments both large and small, with friends and loved ones, in the solitude of forests and fields and in the quiet scenes of everyday, offer new revelations about an artist that many consider to be ubiquitous. With a selection of works gathered from some of the most important international collections – the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and other public and private collections worldwide – Monet: The Early Years authoritatively demonstrates the artist’s early command of many genres, not only the landscapes for which he has become so renowned but also still lifes, portraits and genre scenes. This exhibition follows the Legion of Honor’s strong history of showing highly important moments in French Impressionism. By following Monet before Impressionism, visitors can see the emergence of his style and how he helped shape the movement. Monet: The Early Years will be on view at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco from February 25 through May 29, 2017. This is the first of two exhibitions curated by George Shackelford, Deputy Director of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas to examine the full artistic career of Claude Monet. The companion exhibition, Monet: The Late Years, will come to San Francisco in 2019. Esther Bell is the curator of both exhibitions for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Legion of Honor https://legionofhonor.famsf.org/exhibitions/degas-impressionism-and-paris-millinery-trade Degas, Impressionism, and the Paris Millinery Trade June 24, 2017 – September 24, 2017 ROSEKRANS COURT, SPECIAL EXHIBITION GALLERIES 20B-F Degas, Impressionism, and the Paris Millinery Trade is a groundbreaking exhibition featuring 60 Impressionist paintings and pastels, including key works by Degas—many never before exhibited in the United States—as well as those by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Édouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and 40 exquisite examples of period hats. Best known for his depictions of Parisian dancers and laundresses, Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917) was enthralled with another aspect of life in the French capital—high-fashion hats and the women who created them. The artist, invariably well-dressed and behatted himself, “dared to go into ecstasies in front of the milliners’ shops,” Paul Gauguin wrote of his lifelong friend. Degas’ fascination inspired a visually compelling and profoundly modern body of work that documents the lives of what one fashion writer of the day called “the aristocracy of the workwomen of Paris, the most elegant and distinguished.” Yet despite the importance of millinery within Degas’s oeuvre, there has been little discussion of its place in Impressionist iconography. The exhibition will be the first to examine the height of the millinery trade in Paris, from around 1875 to 1914, as reflected in the work of the Impressionists. At this time there were around 1,000 milliners working in what was then considered the fashion capital of the world. This exhibition is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Saint Louis Art Museum. Presenting Sponsor: John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn and Diane B. Wilsey. Patron’s Circle: Marion Moore Cope. The catalogue is published with the assistance of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowment for Publications.
Interesting articles/websites:
An article suggested by SCWS member Lenore Doler: https://medium.com/@bagelboy/make-america-bohemian-again-de846e35d757#.174ofhc0c
Make America Bohemian Again Why haven’t we built another multi-billion dollar art colony? <1*4Q3Eww4hZKUwZBmoToYPAw.png> Patti Smith at the Chelsea Hotel. In November 2016, the Chelsea Hotel was sold to a group of wealthy investors for $250M — a tidy sum for the 250-room edifice. At $1M per room, the notoriously dingy artist’s squat fetched a price surprisingly on par with New York’s most opulent hotels, like the Waldorf-Astoria ($1.4M per room), Park Hyatt ($1.8M), Baccarat ($2M) and Four Seasons ($2.4M). Of course, the Chelsea Hotel wasn’t always the object of hifalutin real-estate speculation. It was built as an affordable artist’s co-op (one of the first in New York City) by writer and architect Philip Hubert. Hubert, a disciple of utopian thinker Charles Fourier, was largely responsible for pioneering the “co-op” housing model in the 1880s. He wanted to create a new type of dwelling that would address two of 19th century New York’s most chronic problems—affordable housing and social isolation. Hubert’s first co-ops (called “Hubert Home Clubs”) were modelled after Fourier’s “grand hotels”, and replete with communal spaces. The Chelsea had many, including a shared lobby fireplace, a “roof promenade… dining rooms… frescoed sitting room… billiards room… corridors eight feet wide where residents could meet and linger comfortably in conversation”. Residents could enjoy more square footage here than in a private brownstone (the most common type of New York residence at the time) and the shared kitchens and heating systems cut down on costs too. However, while Hubert had intended for his first co-op building to address “the poor man’s comfort”, most of the rooms were snatched up by middle- and upper-class New Yorkers. This was the great fear of Fourier, Hubert’s utopian idol, who believed that communities needed scholars and artists (not just well-to-do bourgeoisie) in order to thrive. While the bourgeoisie kept their communities financially stabile, scholars and artists would cater to the community’s “psychological and spiritual needs”. Fourier envisioned a community where workers, scholars and artists intermingled — all sharing in domestic duties, but having the freedom to pursue their creative whims as well. Fourier believed such a community would proliferate unlike any other in the history of mankind, saying he “would not be surprised if a full-fledged [grand hotel] produced a Milton or Molière every generation.” <1*JDRTnOCcs7S28WrP3gaKDA.png> Fourier’s “grand hotel” concept (also known as a “phalanstery”) After a string of successes with his early Home Clubs, Hubert set out on his most ambitious (and utopian) project to date: the Chelsea Hotel. Like Hubert’s other co-op buildings, the Chelsea would have multiple stories, grand communal spaces, and a mix of long-term and short-term housing (the circulating cast of characters kept things interesting for long-term residents.) Two things in particular distinguished the Chelsea from all of Hubert’s other co-ops. First was its scale: the Chelsea would be the largest residential structure in all of New York. The second (and most important) difference was the building’s artist-friendly design. Opened in 1884, the Chelsea featured a variety of apartment styles, with sprawling twelve room flats for its wealthy residents and smaller, affordable ones for its resident artists. Of the eighty original apartments, fifteen were set aside as artist’s studios. Placed on the top floor of the Chelsea, the light was perfect for painting: sunshine flooded in from the studios’ gigantic north-facing dormer windows. Writers too, were enamoured of the Chelsea’s stunning views and its cement-filled brick walls — three feet thick — that provided their occupational quietude, insulating them from the racket of other tenants (like the musicians and theatre folk) who soon flocked to the Chelsea. Other people living at the Chelsea included the building’s developers (who worked with the “utmost fidelity” to ensure its success), financiers, traders, servants, retirees, young fops and dandies, newlyweds, bachelors and token eccentrics. As Chelsea Hotel historian Sherill Tippins puts it, “A population of such social diversity had never before lived under a single roof in New York.” <1*3UtWFAj8yWUwI1XS0ZJUCA.jpeg> It didn’t take long for word about the Chelsea to spread. Artists were drawn to the “convivial” feel of the Chelsea and the “workshop atmosphere” that permeated its hallways, elevators, and dining rooms. The good vibes attracted artists for more than a hundred years: Residents included Samuel Clemens (pen name Mark Twain), Tennessee Williams, and Dylan Thomas. Bob Dylan wrote most of Blond on Blond in Chelsea’s room #212. Leonard Cohen immortalized his #412 tryst with Janis Joplin in the aptly-named ballad Chelsea Hotel #2. Joni Mitchell wrote about her sunny flat in Chelsea Morning. After divorcing Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller holed up in the Chelsea. So did Gore Vidal and Jack Kerouac (who wrote On The Road at the Chelsea) for their legendary one-night fling. From its famous painters (Jasper Johns, Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol, William de Kooning and Pollock — who drunkenly desecrated the carpet in Peggy Guggenheim’s room) to musicians (Dylan, Cohen, Joplin, Mitchell, Madonna, Nico, Cher, Graham Nash, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, John Cale, Édith Piaf, Jimi Hendrix, Alice Cooper, Rufus Wainwright, Jim Morrison, The Grateful Dead and Sid Vicious — who allegedly killed his girlfriend in room #100), actors and directors (James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Ethan Hawke, Jane Fonda, Uma Thurman and Stanley Kubrick), and writers (Twain, Williams, Thomas, Miller, Kerouac, Vidal, O. Henry, Allen Ginsberg, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Thomas Wolfe, Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs and Arthur C. Clarke — who wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Chelsea) reading through the list of Chelsea Hotel residents is like watching a highlight reel of 20th century American culture. <1*qMny2CR_01li-VzW3rHPLg.png> Three Flags (1958) by Jasper Johns, Chelsea resident. The painting sold for $1M in 1980. Charles Fourier, the “grand hotel” grandfather, never lived to see the Chelsea. But his wild prediction that a hotel utopia could produce a “Milton and Molière” each generation was madly surpassed at the Chelsea. Informal art colonies have always thrived in America (as I wrote about here) but none were as successful as the intentional community built by Philip Hubert. After Hubert’s death, the Chelsea survived thanks to a string of surprisingly beneficent owners. Artists were often known to pay their rent with paintings or songs — or not pay it at all. As Chelsea’s long-time front desk manager explained: “Everyone owed something… Twenty, thirty grand sometimes. There was a time you could go to any art opening [in New York] and everyone in that opening either owed us money at one time or another or still owed us money.” The New York times reported in 1993 “there’s always room at the inn if he [then owner Stanley Bard] likes you.” It’s hard to imagine this sort of hospitality existing in contemporary New York City. It’s one of the reasons that songwriter and long-time Chelsea resident Patti Smith (who documented her Chelsea days in the ridiculously good memoir Just Kids) cautioned artists to avoid New York City altogether: “New York has closed itself off to the young and struggling… New York City has been taken away from you … So my advice is: Find a new city.” The Chelsea thrived because it stuck to Philip Hubert’s original vision: to house and nurture New York’s creative community — and do so while still being affordable and open to all. It is unlikely that the Chelsea will house the next wave of American creativity (the hotel was closed in 2011, and the new owners are converting it into a pricey boutique hotel. Many of the rooms, including Bob Dylan’s, have since been destroyed.) Yet while New York city’s greatest art colony is all but dead, its structure and ethos continue to enrich American culture — albeit in a different way, and on an entirely different coast. <1*zM_0MmdCdxabhj-yj77LUw.png> Paul Graham (centre) with Y Combinator members in Mountain View, California. The contemporary phenomena of “startup accelerators” don’t look (or smell) much like the Chelsea. For one, they don’t attract bohemian artists — they attract technology entrepreneurs. The managers of startup accelerators typically give a group of 20–100 entrepreneurs a nominal investment (enough to live on for several months… affordable housing ✅) and organize frequent meet-ups in order to trade ideas and criticism about their projects (through dinners or shared housing… creative community ✅). Paul Graham, the father of the startup accelerator model, conceived the idea as a new way to invest in startups. Generally, investment firms will fund a startup whenever a good one crosses their path. What makes startup accelerators so effective, argues Graham, is that they are “funding startups synchronously, instead of asynchronously as it had always been done before.” By having a bunch of smart and creative people working on new projects, simultaneously, bashing their brains together — and not having to worry about the rent — startup accelerators give entrepreneurs a sense of shared purpose and community that has proven, like the Chelsea, wildly successful. Graham’s own accelerator, Y Combinator, has launched startups like Airbnb, Quora, Reddit, 9GAG, ProductHunt, Dropbox, Twitch, Codecademy, Heroku, Scribd, Instacart and BoostedBoards. Not only has it helped shape internet culture, travel, transportation and myriad other industries, but the companies in its program have generated billions and billions and billions of dollars. <1*FqyXPcXc-IpgCS4ZhBza5Q.png> Robert Whitehead, Arthur Miller and Elia Kazan working on a play at the Chelsea (1963). Unlike the Chelsea, startup accelerators profit from the work being done by their members. Paul Graham takes a small stake in all of the companies that he funds, and his own net worth is now in the hundreds of millions (to quite possibly, billions) of dollars. Yet despite the lucrative returns of Y Combinator and other startup accelerators sprouting up around the USA (like TechStars, 500 Startups, AngelPad and SeedCamp) no ambitious community-building projects exist for American arts like they do for American tech. While most talented tech gurus can find a startup accelerator to join (and fund them), aspiring artists are told to get a bedroom in Brooklyn or move to Iowa for an MFA — both of which cost upwards of $40,000 a year and don’t come with a patron. As the political currents shift even more strongly against the American arts, it’s worthwhile to remember that even if you hate all the art ever produced by alumni of the Chelsea, you can still make a purely financial argument for its continued existence. Summing up the net worth of the Chelsea’s most famous residents (which disregards their downstream economic impact — after all, a company’s net worth goes beyond the net worth of its CEO) the Chelsea Hotel was responsible for more than 2.1 billion dollars of value creation while it was open. That estimate is only going off of the net worth of the artists themselves — not all of the downstream albums or paintings or ticket sales they contributed to (i.e. a single painting by Pollock fetched $200M and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey took in more than $190M at the box office. A single room of de Kooning paintings was estimated to be worth as much as $4B.) The funny thing? Despite their obsession with wealth, most startup accelerators don’t even come close to matching the economic impact of the Chelsea Hotel — much less its cultural impact. At the Chelsea, it was a pretty smart move to accept a painting in lieu of rent. The real question is — why in America is that no longer possible? Joe MacNeil is a writer from Montreal, the most bohemian city in North America. You can help fund his writing here.
Also from Lenore Doler: L. https://timeline.com/the-most-important-black-woman-sculptor-of-the-20th-century-deserves-more-recognition-af0ed7084bb1#.6dz5dkn2k
The most important black woman sculptor of the 20th century deserves more recognition Unfortunately, little of her work survives Augusta Savage started sculpting as a child in the 1900s using what she could get her hands on: the clay that was part of the natural landscape in her hometown of Green Cove Springs, Florida. Eventually her talents took her far from the clay pits of the South. She joined the burgeoning arts scene of the Harlem Renaissance when her talents led her to New York. Her work was lauded, and she was consistently admired by contemporary black artists, but her renown was transient. And much of her work has been lost, since she could mostly afford to cast only in plaster. Like other key figures of the 1920s such as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, Savage skillfully challenged negative images and stereotypical depictions of black people. One of her largest commissions, for instance, were sculptures for the World’s Fair of 1939, inspired by “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a song often described as the black national anthem. “The Harp,” another work in the commission, depicted black singers as the ascending strings of that instrument. Regrettably, both pieces were destroyed when the fairgrounds were torn down. Born in 1892, Savage would often sculpt clay into small figures, much to the chagrin of her father, a minister who believed that artistic expression was sinful. In 1921, she moved to Harlem, where she enrolled at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. A gifted student, Savage completed the four-year program in only three and quickly embarked on a career in sculpting. During the early to mid-1920s, she was commissioned to create several sculptures, including a bust of NAACP leader W.E.B. Du Bois and charismatic black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey — two key black leaders of the period who were often at odds with each other. Both pieces were well received, especially in black circles, but the racial climate at the time hampered wider recognition of her work. Savage won a prestigious scholarship at a summer arts program at the Fontainebleau School of the Fine Arts outside of Paris in 1923, for instance, but the offer was withdrawn when the school discovered that she was black. Despite her efforts — she filed a complaint with the Ethical Culture Committee — and public outcry from several well-known black leaders at the time, the organizers upheld the decision. Two years after being rejected from the summer arts program at Fontainebleau, she received a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, Italy. Unable to raise the funds for travel and living expenses, Savage chose not to accept it. Yet, in some ways, the scholarship itself functioned as validation for her work and evidence of her increasing global visibility and influence in the profession. In 1929, though, Savage did get to Paris as part of a prestigious fellowship she won for one of her famous pieces — “Gamin,” a life size bronze bust depicting a young black boy. The sculpture graced the cover of Opportunity, the official magazine of the National Urban League. While in Paris, Savage exhibited her work at several galleries and collaborated with other black men and women residing there, including poets Claude McKay and Countee Cullen, and fellow sculptor Nancy Elizabeth Prophet. Savage presenting a model of “The Harp” to Grover Whalen, organizer of the World’s Fair. (New York Public Library) Her sculptures caught the attention of Martiniquan writer Paulette Nardal, who later included a picture of “Gamin” in a 1930 article on Savage’s life and work. Describing Savage as a self-made woman, Nardal went on to highlight Savage’s extraordinary talent as a sculptor as well as her commitment to mentoring young black artists. When she returned to Harlem in the early 1930s, Savage focused on teaching and founded her own art school in Harlem — Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts. Years later, she opened up a gallery, providing a space (though short-lived) to feature the work of black artists from across the country and the globe. When she passed away in 1962, Savage was remembered by many as a gifted sculpture and passionate activist who stood up in the face of injustice. Much like her predecessor Edmonia Lewis—the 19th century African American sculptor who has been featured in a Google doodle in honor of black history month—Savage used the craft of sculpting as a vehicle for challenging racial discrimination. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture did stage an exhibit featuring nineteen of her pieces in 1988, but few of her sculptures remain. Even so, Savage remains arguably the most influential black woman sculptor of the 20th century. Her efforts no doubt helped to pave the way for many black women sculptors to follow. Keisha N. Blain, Ph.D. is assistant professor of History at the University of Iowa and co-editor of Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism, and Racial Violence (University of Georgia Press, 2016). She is one of the co-developers of #Charlestonsyllabus, a crowdsourced reading list on Twitter relating to the history of racial violence. Blain’s research has been featured on CSPAN and her writing has appeared in The Huffington Post, The Feminist Wire, and Public Books. Follow her on Twitter @KeishaBlain.
Members: Please take time to send interesting links.
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