BEFORE THE AMERICAS

August 25th - November 15th, 2025
Gillespie Gallery, Art and Design Building, Fairfax, VA
Curated by Cheryl Edwards

Before the Americas is an art historical survey featuring 45 works by Afro-Latino, Caribbean, and African American artists, many of whom have lived and worked in Greater Washington. These artists confront racial and colonial constructs and have often been invisible within common art historical narratives. Their works span painting, printmaking, sculpture, book art, performance, and video art. The exhibit traces the significance of these artists through four themes: Genetic Memory, Migration, Invisibility, and Interconnectivity. A public symposium of artists, collectors, and scholars will occur during the exhibition, and additional public programs will engage students and the public. A printed catalogue will be published and will be available online.

The exhibition’s curator, Cheryl Edwards, is a highly respected DC artist and scholar. A significant painting by Sam Gilliam, which was recently donated to the University Art Collection, will be in the exhibition.

Funding from private donors has been received and additional supporters are being cultivated. Please consider making a donation to this important exhibition. This exhibition will be instrumental in Mason Exhibitions’ long-range efforts to establish a Campus Museum in Fairfax. This exhibition was originally scheduled to take place at the Art Museum of the Americas, a branch of the Organization of American States, but was cancelled for budgetary reasons.

Artists in the Exhibition:

M.P. Alladin, Trinidad and Tobago, b.1919, d.1980, John Beadle, Bahamas, b.1964, d.2024, Alexander Skunder Boghossian, DC/Ethiopia, b.1937, d.2003, Everald Brown, Jamaica, b.1917, d.2002, Elizabeth Catlett, DC/Mexico, b.1911, d.2012, Irene Clouthier, DC/Mexico, b. 1974, Alonzo Davis, Maryland, b.1942, d.2025, Roberto Diago, Cuba, b.1920, d.1955, David Driskell, DC, b.1931, d.2020, Jallim Eudovic, Saint Lucia, b.1980,Jacinto "Coco" Galloso, Uruguay, Claudia (Aziza) Gibson-Hunter, DC, b.1954, Sam Gilliam, DC, b.1932, d.2022, Stanley Greaves, Guyana, b.1934, Curlee Raven Holton, DC/PA, b.1951, Martha Jackson Jarvis, DC, b.1952, Lois Mailou Jones, DC, b.1902, d.1998, Patricia Kaersenhout, Suriname, b.1966, Georges Liautaud, Haiti, b.1899, d.1991, Samella Lewis, DC, b.1923, d.2022, Wifredo Lam, Cuba, b.1899, d.1982, Manuel Mendive, Cuba, b. 1944, E.J. Montgomery, DC, b.1930, d.2025, Bernadette Persaud, Guyana, b.1946, James Phillips, Baltimore MD, b.1945, Martin Puryear, DC, b.1941, Melanie Royster, Maryland, b.1993, Joyce Scott, Baltimore MD, b.1948, Amy Sherald, Baltimore MD, b.1973, Alec Simpson, DC, b.1944, Nelson Stevens, DC, b.1938, d.2022, Renee Stout, DC, b.1958, Lou Stovall, DC, b.1934, d.2023, Michelle Talibah, DC, b.1954, Alma Thomas, DC, b.1891, d.1978, Julio Valdez, Dominican Republic, b.1969, Wilfredo Valladares, DC/Honduras, b.1968, Luis Vasquez La Roche, VA/Trinidad, b.1983, Fabiola Yurcisin, b.1973

EXHIBITING ARTISTS AND ARTWORKS

Luis Vasquez La Roche is an artist and educator that resides between Trinidad and Tobago and Virginia. They hold an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University.

In Christina Sharpe’s book In The Wake: Of Blackness and Being she says “In the wake, the past that is not past reappears, always, to rupture the present”. Vasquez La Roche’s practice is interested in aspects of the transatlantic slave trade that repeat themselves in varying ways in present. Aspects such as labour, death, erasure, oppression, violence, and discrimination are profoundly present. Even though the slave trade dehumanised millions of Black people, with the consequence of continuing to do so in the present, we can find hope, resistance, and resilience. The work also functions as a way to explore the gaps in historical archives and as way of filling the intentional void by summoning and collapsing past, present and futures. An essential part of the research is an inquiry regarding material, space, smell and sounds in relationship to personal and historical archives. They employ these materials to articulate aspects of race, identity, culture, politics, and spirituality. These works usually take shape as performances, sculptures or videos.

MP Alladin, Las Palmas (The Palms), 48 x 48 inches

M.P. Alladin was born in 1919 in Tacarigua. He was the second of five children, three sisters and a brother. Alladin was an orthodox Muslim, fluent in Urdu, Hindi and Arabic. He was one of the leading artists in this country who was well-known internationally for his work in Art and Art Education. For this reason he was regularly invited to present lectures and participated in international conferences. Alladin belonged to a creative family, whose father was a craftsman who excelled in drumming and music.

Alladin’s parents encouraged his love for painting, drawing, writing, poetry and music. He was educated at the Tacarigua Canadian Mission School and later employed as an Assistant Teacher from 1938 to 1946. During 1946- 1947, he served as headmaster of Arima Boys’ Government School. However, teaching at a primary school would not remain the profession for this future Picasso.

He opted to further his studies at the Government Training College. He excelled academically and topped the island for his Teachers’ Certificate Exams. Later on the British Council awarded him a scholarship to Birmingham College of Arts and Crafts. Subsequently, he won another scholarship to attend Columbia University, New York, where he obtained an M.A. Degree in Fine and Industrial Arts.

Bio from Mahmoud Pharouk Alladin (1919-1980) - Caribbean Muslims

John Beadle, Four Gods of the Moon, 48 x 36 inches

John Beadle (1964 - 2024) was born in Nassau, the son of a Jamaican man and a Bahamian woman. He began his formal fine art studies at The College of the Bahamas, where after having completed the core subjects of the program he transferred. He received a BFA at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and an MFA in Painting at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, with a period also of studying in Rome, Italy. In 1991, Beadle was named Emerging Artist of Latin America & the Caribbean in Nagoya, Japan, and in 2008 his work was featured in the documentary Artists of The Bahamas.

Bio from John Beadle — TERN Gallery

Alexander Skunder Boghossian, Axum, 45.3 x 31.5 inches

Born in Ethiopia in 1937, Alexander Skunder Boghossian first rose to prominence at the age of 17 when he won second prize for his painting at the Jubilee Anniversary Celebration of Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie I. The following year he was awarded a scholarship to study in London, England at St. Martin’s School and the Slade School of Fine Art. He later moved to Paris, France, where he remained for nine years as both student and teacher at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. While in Paris he interacted with African artists and intellectuals who were part of the Negritude movement. He also encountered the work of the French surrealists. Some of the artists who influenced Boghossian include Paul Klee, Roberto Matta, and the Afro-Cuban artist Wilfredo Lam.

Bio from Alexander Skunder Boghossian (1937-2003) | BlackPast.org

Everald Brown’s artistic beginnings can be situated in the popular cultural ferment in West Kingston that produced Rastafarianism and reggae, fuelled by rural-to-urban migration and growing race and social consciousness among the popular masses. Brother Brown was primarily interested in the spiritual aspects of Rastafarianism and established the Assembly of the Living, a self-styled mission of the Ethiopian Orthodox church, which was located at 82 1/2 Spanish Town Road. His earliest preserved works are carved ritual objects, such as his prayer staff, and the painted decorations he produced for his church. These works illustrate Brother Brown’s assimilation of Ethiopian Orthodox artistic models but also his rootedness in older Afro-Jamaican popular culture, particularly Revivalism and Kumina. Most of all, they reflect the remarkable spiritual and visual imagination that made Everald Brown one of the most original artists of his generation.

Bio from Everald Brown (1917-2003) – National Gallery of Jamaica

A prominent African American sculptor and printmaker, Elizabeth Catlett created art dedicated to aesthetic rigor, human dignity, and freedom for all. Born in 1915, in Washington, DC, she graduated from Howard University then earned a master of fine arts from the University of Iowa—the first student in the US to do so. African art and the works of the Mexican muralists became early—and lifelong—inspirations.

After earning a prestigious Rosenwald Fellowship, Catlett moved to Mexico in 1946, where she became a member of the Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP, People’s Graphic Workshop). She became a citizen there in 1962.

Catlett’s work reflects the strengths and struggles of Black and Mexican people—in her words, her “two peoples.” She portrayed the dignity and resilience of her subjects, addressing challenges surrounding race, gender, and class. Although small, her prints exude strength and power—particularly those from the Black Woman (1946–1947) series. Her sculptures convey a stately presence and quiet beauty, whether portraying public figures such as Sojourner Truth or anonymous women, friends, and family.

A lifelong teacher, Catlett mentored many artists and emphasized the importance of education. Her works and her life continue to inspire artists and audiences today.

Bio from Elizabeth Catlett | National Gallery of Art

Irene Clouthier, No Human Is Illegal, 35 x 30

Irene Clouthier Carillo (born 1974) is a multi-disciplinary artist born in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico who lives and works in the Washington DC metro area. Clouthier’s work explores childhood nostalgia and the idealization of early memories and experiences. She often uses images, objects and materials from childhood games and toys. Much of Clouthier’s work uses plastic as a medium or a visual. As a common material for toys, plastic conjures memories of childhood while also reflecting the artificiality found in daily life. Clouthier often discusses the visual power of light shining through the plastic to create an ephemeral artifice.

Bio from Irene Clouthier Carillo - Wikitia

Alonzo Davis, Kalimba Series #8, 27 × 33 × 7.5 in

Alonzo J. Davis’ career as an artist spans four decades. A native of Tuskegee, Alabama, Davis moved with his family to Los Angeles in his early teens. After acquiring an undergraduate degree at Pepperdine College he earned an MFA in Printmaking and Design at Otis Art Institute. Influenced early on by the assemblagists, Davis soon took wing and began to experiment with a variety of mediums, techniques and themes. At the suggestion of artist and former professor, Charles White, Davis began to produce prints and paintings in series.

While he was inspired by travel to Africa, the Caribbean and American Southwest—the colors and patterns of the Pacific Rim cultures also seeped into Davis’ artwork. During the ‘70’s and early ‘80’s, Davis’ involvement in the California mural movement culminated with the 1984 Olympic Murals project. His Eye on ’84 is one of ten murals on the walls of the downtown Los Angeles Harbor Freeway.

Bio from Alonzo Davis Artist

Roberto Diago Querol was born in Havana in 1920. In 1937 he attended the Estudio Libre de Escultura y Pintura; and between 1936 and1941 the Academia de San Alejandro; both in Havana, Cuba. He deeply explored the African component of his identity by studying and representing deities from the Afro Cuban pantheon. He also did designs for theatre. Diago’s was a very short career since he died in 1955. Despite his untimed death, he left behind an important body of work which showed his maturity as an artist.

Bio from Roberto Diago | Pan American Art Projects

David Driskell, Landscape, 14 x 11 inches

Born in 1931 in Eatonton, Georgia, David C. Driskell grew up in North Carolina and completed the art program at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine in 1953. He received an undergraduate degree in art from Howard University in 1955 and an M.F.A. from The Catholic University of America in 1962. He then explored postgraduate study in art history at The Netherlands Institute for the History of Art in The Hague. Trained as a painter and art historian, Driskell worked primarily in collage and mixed media and printmaking.

Driskell began his teaching career at Talladega College in 1955. He taught at Howard and Fisk Universities and served as visiting professor of art at several universities, including Bowdoin College, the University of Michigan, Queens College and Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. He joined the faculty of the department of art at the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1977 and served as its chairperson from 1978–1983. In 1995, he was named distinguished university professor of art and taught until his retirement in 1998. In 2001, the University of Maryland established the David C. Driskell Center to honor Driskell as an artist, art historian, collector, curator and scholar. The center honors Driskell by preserving the rich heritage of African American visual art and culture.

David C. Driskell | The David C. Driskell Center

Jallim Eudovic, Spiritual Mechanics, unknown

Jallim Eudovic born in 1980, has been a confirmed artist from the tender age of five. A prodigy in every essence of the word, Jallim has a natural affinity for the arts but as he proudly admits, his father and famed St. Lucian sculptor, Vincent Joseph Eudovic has been his greatest mentor.

Though his first love is sculpting, Jallim is receptive to all genres of art, including painting and the literary arts to name a few. With an unbridled passion, deep social and cultural conscience, as well as thought-provoking and awe-inspiring style, it is no wonder that this young artist has acquired international acclaim for his work.

So far Jallim has held exhibitions in Paris, Ottawa, Africa, China, Martinique and England. However, his greatest achievement to date occurred when he was commissioned by the Chinese Government to create a monumental bronze sculpture for the Changchun International Sculpture Park in China, the world’s biggest sculpture park. His sculpture ‘Nature’ was so impressive and well-received by the Directors of the Park that they commissioned him to create a second sculpture for Changchun Urban Sculpture Museum, China’s largest urban sculpture museum.

He was also re-invited to China subsequent to his return to St. Lucia to create another monumental sculpture, this time for the Changchun Automotive Park, a park when completed will celebrate the automobile from past to present and will also be the largest of its kind in the world.

Jallim can be found working daily on his next masterpiece at the internationally renowned Eudovic’s Art Studio in Goodlands, Castries, St. Lucia.

Bio from Talented Woodwork Artists at Eudovic Art Studio in St. Lucia

Jacinto Galloso was trained at the National School of Fine Arts, as well as has taken courses with prominent artists such as Prof. Enrique Badaró, Prof. Plastic Artist Nelbia Romero, and Prof. Nelson Ramos. He has mounted several solo and group exhibitions in different places in Uruguay, as well as in Colombia, Argentina, Spain, Holland and the United States.

Badaró Nadal defines Galloso as "one of the few contemporary artists representative of the Afro-Uruguayan community, who has also been nourished by other links and encounters with creators, exchanging ideas that have fed his work, making him an innovator, and a benchmark for the plastic transformation of Afro-Uruguayan culture". He adds that "he proposes in his visual discourse, to think and rethink behaviors and attitudes that oscillate between the ethical and the aesthetic. It is no coincidence that his work is inspired by Afro-Uruguayan culture, with a critical look at the acts of racism in the world without renouncing artistic values."

Bio from Uruguayan artist exhibits at the Embassy of Uruguay in Washington DC.

Claudia Aziza Gibson Hunter, You Got to Give Up the Stuff that Weighs You Down, 8 ft 4.5 inches x 4ft 3.7

Claudia “Aziza” Gibson-Hunter is a mixed media artist She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Temple University, (BS), and received her MFA from Howard University. Aziza attended Bob Blackburn’s Printmaking Studio, the New York Arts Students League, and later received a fellowship from the Bronx Museum of Art. She joined “Where We At”, a group of Black women artists in the early 1980’s. Ms. Gibson-Hunter was an administrator at Parsons School of Design and a faculty member of the fine arts departments of Howard University, and Bowie State University.

She combines painting, collage, and printmaking to create abstract works surrounding narratives, of agency, healing, memory, expressed through a condensed notion of time. Aziza utilizes color, texture, rhythm, pattern, as tools and acrylic paints, colored pencil, handmade and commercial papers are materials most frequently employed. Unusual juxtapositions of colors, media, technique, and forms help to identify her aesthetic. She is open to other media if it will clarify a narrative. The deckled edge, and unrefined finish of her of handmade paper is for Gibson-Hunter an appreciation of the material’s natural beauty. The jagged peripheries of her work denote a refusal to be contained. Works that are three dimensional are examples of her ongoing exploration of Blackstraction.

Ms. Gibson-Hunter was awarded the Individual Artist Fellowship Program Grant, from the DC Commission of the Arts and Humanities in 2014, 2006, 2018, and 2020. Her work can be found in the collections of the Washington DC Art Bank, the Liberian Embassy, Montgomery County, Maryland, and other noted collections. She completed, two public commissions for Washington, DC Department of General Services. The Wall of Unity (2017) and, ANCESTORS, (2019) are both located in Washington, DC public schools. In 2019 Aziza was a Pyramid Atlantic Denbo Fellow. She is currently a cofounding member of Black Artists of DC, a member of WOAUA, and Dandelion (see PROJECT 2020), both Black female artist groups. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Bio from Gibson-Hunter

Sam Gilliam, Aint More Than Music, 60 x 50 x 10 inches

Sam Gilliam born in 1933, arrived in Washington, DC, in 1962, and immersed himself in the artistic community. Associated with the Washington Color School and inspired by color field painting, he developed the distinctive style of lyrical abstraction.

Gilliam challenged conventional ideas about artistic form. His groundbreaking “drape” paintings, in which the canvas hangs from ceilings or walls like fabric, were a significant contribution to contemporary art. In 1972, he became the first African American artist to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale.

As an African American artist during the 1960s, Gilliam faced criticism for not overtly addressing political and social issues in his abstract works. But he was committed to abstraction and to pushing the boundaries of artistic expression.

Bio from Sam Gilliam | National Gallery of Art

Stanley Greaves was born in 1934 in a "tenement yard" on Carmichael Street, Georgetown, Guyana. He studied art in Guyana with Edward Burrowes in the Working Peoples' Art Class (1948–61)[1] and from 1963 to 1968 attended University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK, where he studied painting, majoring in sculpture for the B.A.Hons degree in Fine Art. He also earned a Diploma in Art Teaching. He was a Fulbright Scholar from 1979 to 1980 at Howard University, where he did printmaking and sculpture for the MFA degree.

In Guyana, Greaves taught at Sacred Heart Primary, St. Stanislaus College (his old schools), Berbice High School, Queen's College, from 1971 to 1975, and was the first Head of the Division of Creative Arts at the University of Guyana from 1975 to 1986. He left Guyana in 1987 and has been resident in Barbados since that time. He now lives in North Carolina.

Before and while in Barbados he served on the first art and craft panel designing the syllabus for the Caribbean Examinations Council and has been a part-time tutor at the Barbados Community College. He was elected a Distinguished Honourable Fellow at University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus in 2003 and it was extended.

Bio from Stanley Greaves - Wikipedia

Curlee Raven Holton, Its Not a Mask, Its a Faith, 37 x 27 inches

Curlee Raven Holton is a painter, printmaker, and the founder of Raven Fine Art Editions. Holton has been exhibited professionally for over 25 years in more than 30 one-person shows and more than 80 group shows. Holton uses artmaking to understand and find meaning in some of life’s most perplexing issues. His prints speak to our human experience, and through the lens of his African American heritage, he brings voice to significant personal, political, and cultural events.

“I have created self-portraits for two primary reasons. The first is to capture a version of myself that is revealing and penetrates my own journey of self-reflection. The second reason is to discover deeper personal insights and understandings, and to make this awareness a part of my everyday consciousness.” - Curlee Raven Holton

Holton’s work is a commentary on issues that impact society, including race, poverty, political concerns, isolation, and class, using symbolism and provocative figurative representations to engage viewers in a shared dialogue. Although also known for his paintings and drawings, it is fitting that Holton chose printmaking to express some of his most socially charged work.

Holton earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1987 from the Cleveland Institute of Fine Arts in Drawing and Printmaking and his Master of Fine Arts degree from Kent State University in 1990. Since 1991 he has taught printmaking and African American art history at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, and is the founding director of the Experimental Printmaking Institute.

His work is part of public and private collections, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, The Discovery Museum of Art and Science, Connecticut; the West Virginia Governor’s Mansion; the Foundation of Culture Rodolfo Morales, Oaxaca, Mexico; Yale University Art Gallery; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Pennsylvania; and the Library of Congress.

Bio from Curlee Raven Holton — Raven Fine Art Editions

Martha Jackson Jarvis, Ancestors Bones: Sounds from the Sea III, 49.5 x 74 inches

Martha Jackson Jarvis’ sculptures have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the United States and abroad, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the Studio Museum of Harlem, Smithsonian Arts and Industries, N.Y. Snug Harbor Cultural Center in Staten Island, Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, N.Y.; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, N.C.; Anacostia Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Tretyakov Gallery Moscow, U.S.S.R. Her numerous awards include a Creative Capital Grant, Virginia Groot Fellowship, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, The Penny McCall Foundation Grant, the Lila Wallace Arts International Travel Grant, recipient 2023 James A. Porter Colloquium Lifetime Achievement Award, Howard University, and the 2024 National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) Women in the Arts Recognition Award.

Born in 1952, Martha Jackson Jarvis grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and currently lives and works in Washington, D.C. She studied at Howard University and received a BFA degree from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and an MFA from Antioch University. Jackson Jarvis also studied mosaic techniques and stone cutting in Ravenna, Italy.

Jackson Jarvis has undertaken public and corporate art commissions for the Philip Morris corporation in Washington, D.C.; Merck Company in Pennsylvania; Fannie Mae in Washington, D.C. Washington Metro Transit Authority, Anacostia Station; New York Transit Authority, Mount Vernon; South Carolina Botanical Gardens in Clemson; Prince George’s County Courthouse in Upper Marlboro, Md.; Spoleto Festival in Charleston, S.C.; and MS/HS 368 Bronx, New York.

Bio from Martha Jackson Jarvis

Loïs Mailou Jones

1905 to 1998

Jones was raised in Boston by working-class parents who emphasized the importance of education and hard work. After graduating from Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Jones began designing textiles for several New York firms. She left in 1928 to take a teaching position at Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina.

At Palmer, Jones founded the art department, coached basketball, taught folk dancing, and played the piano for Sunday services. Two years later, she was recruited by Howard University in Washington, D.C., to join its art department. From 1930–77, Jones trained several generations of African American artists, including David Driskell, Elizabeth Catlett, and Sylvia Snowden.

She began earning recognition for the content and technique of her own art. After a sabbatical year in Paris, Jones introduced African tribal art, a motif enormously popular in Parisian galleries, into her canvases. She was profoundly impacted by Paris, exhilarated by a country where her race seemed irrelevant. Her 1953 marriage to the Haitian graphic designer Louis Vergniaud Pierre-Noël influenced her further as she saw the bright colors and bold patterns of Haitian art on annual trips to her husband’s home.

In 1970, Jones was commissioned by the United States Information Agency to serve as a cultural ambassador to Africa. She gave lectures, interviewed local artists, and visited museums in 11 countries. This experience led her to further explore African subjects in her work, especially her 1971–1989 paintings.

Bio from Loïs Mailou Jones | Artist Profile | National Museum of Women in the Arts

Patricia Kaersenhout

Born in the Netherlands but a descendant from Surinamese parents, we've developed an artistic journey in which we investigates our Surinamese background in relation to our upbringing in a West European culture.

The political thread in our work raises questions about the African Diaspora’s movements and it’s relation to feminism, sexuality, racism and the history of slavery. With many of our projects we try to empower (young) men and women of color and to support marginalized people.

By revealing forgotten histories we try to regain dignity and create transformative justice. Our work is shown frequently in the Netherlands and abroad.

Bio from About we/us | patriciakaersenhout

Georges Liautaud, Crucifixion, 46 x 40.5 x 9 inches

Georges Liautaud was born in Croix des Bouquets in 1899. He studied in Port-au-Prince and then worked at the Haitian-American Sugar Company (HASCO) where he repaired the train tracks for the sugar industry.

In the 1940s, he opened his own forge where he fabricated mechanical parts as well as crosses for the cemetery. DeWitt Peters discovered him in 1953 and encouraged him to dedicate himself to sculpture. Thus, it was Georges Liautaud who gave birth to a new movement of metal sculpture. Honored by famous art critics such as André Malraux, Selden Rodman and Jean-Marie Drot, Georges Liautaud, an emblematic figure of Haitian art, died at the age of 92 in 1992.

He was a part of the famous exhibit “Les Magiciens de la terre (The Magicians of Earth)” and his works have been exhibited internationally in places such as the Grand Palais, the Centre Pompidou, the Abbaye de Daoulas, the Fowler Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Frost Museum, the Bass Museum, the Halle Saint-Pierre and the Musée de Montparnasse. His work is part of the permanent collections at the MoMA in New York, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Davenport Museum, the Waterloo Museum, the Huntington Museum of Art, the Figge Art Museum, the Fond national d’art contemporain de France, the Musée national d’art moderne de Paris, the Musée de l’OEA, Le Centre d’Art, the Musée d’Art Haïtien du Collège Saint-Pierre and the Musée de Panthéon National Haïtien.

Bio from haitianartsociety.org/liautaud-georges-haitian-1899-1991

Dr. Samella Lewis

Samella Lewis, Bayou Women, 24 x 30 inches

(1923-2022)

Artist and art historian Dr. Samella Lewis is renowned for her contributions to African American art and art history. Born on February 27, 1923, in New Orleans, Louisiana, Dr. Lewis’ heritage led her to view art as an essential expression of the community and its struggles. The career of Dr. Lewis spanned over seventy five years and took her to many parts of the world. As an art historian and scholar, her knowledge is boundless and accessible. As an artist, Lewis remained at the forefront of her field. As a collector, she amassed an impressive and diverse collection that includes African American, Asian, Caribbean, Native American, South American and African Arts. As a social and community activist, she will serve as a reference for generations to come.

Bio from Bio - Samella Lewis

Wifredo Lam

Born Sagua la Grande, Cuba, 1902. Died Paris, 1982.

Wifredo Lam attended San Alejandro between 1918 and 1923; at that time he painted mostly still lifes and landscapes, which he showed in some of the yearly salons organized by the Association of Painters and Sculptors of Havana. In 1923 he left for Spain to further his artistic education. He first lived in Madrid, where he enrolled in the studio of the academic painter Fernando Alvarez de Sotomayor and frequented the Prado and the Archeological museums. Lam remained in Spain until 1938, traveling and living for periods of time in Cuenca, Leon, and Barcelona while painting portraits, landscapes, city scenes, and interiors in styles that ranged from realism to cubism and surrealism. Toward the end of his lengthy stay in Spain he joined the republican side in the Spanish civil war.

The turmoil in Spain finally drove Lam to France. He arrived in Paris in 1938 with a letter of introduction to Picasso. The latter put him in touch with the Parisian avant-garde, including Henri Matisse, Fernand Leger, Joan Miro, and Benjamin Peret. In 1929, Pierre Loeb gave Lam his first one-person show, in which he exhibited numerous paintings on the mother-and-child theme. At this time Lam practiced a style of simplified forms influenced by cubism and African sculpture. Lam's Parisian stay was cut short by World War 11. In 1940 he took refuge in Marseilles, where he developed close ties with a group of surrealists that included Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Oscar Dominguez, Victor Brauner, and Pierre Mabille. He participated in the group's activities, such as the making of the Tarot de Marseille, and helped produce collective drawings. He also illustrated Breton's poem Fata Morgana with six drawings that prefigured his mature style and iconography. In 1941 he joined three hundred intellectuals escaping war-torn Europe aboard the Capitaine Paul Merle en route to Martinique. The salient event of his seven-month trip to Cuba was meeting the poet Aime Cesaire, whose exploration and affirmation of Afro-Caribbean culture influenced and paralleled his own.

Lam's rencounter with his native land in 1941 had a decisive effect on his art, perhaps more so than in the case of his contemporaries due to his long absence. His paintings immediately began to reflect his rediscovery of the Cuban landscape and of his Afrocuban heritage. He developed a formal vocabulary, appropriated primarily from Picasso and African sculpture to express African deities and myths still active in Cuba. Up to the mid-1940s he located Afrocuban signs--hybrid figures and ritual objects or attributes--in a tropical and symbolic landscape of sugarcane and tobacco leaves, as seen in La jungla (The Jungle, 1943). His paintings took on a dark and more violent tone after a visit to Haiti in 1946. The hybrid figures became more totemic, the tropical landscape gave way to somber, ambiguous spaces, and the bright neoimpressionist colors turned to earth tones, black, grays, and white, as seen in La boda (The Wedding, 1947). In Haiti he witnessed voodoo ceremonies in the company of Mabille and Breton, which reinforced and expanded his visual-poetic expression of Afro-Caribbean culture and identity.

Between 1947 and 1952 Lam lived and worked in Havana, New York, Paris, and Albisola. He then settled permanently in Paris. During the rest of his long and productive career his style and iconography evolved along a steady course toward greater simplicity and abstraction, at times bordering on the decorative. From the late 19505 on he dedicated increasing attention to graphics and ceramics. The outstanding characteristics of his mature art are a sharp and refined draftsmanship, a violent sensuality, and a highly personal version of modern primitivism. Lam's art began to draw national recognition and international renown in the 1940s. In Havana he held his first one-person show at the Lyceum in 1946 and won the first prize at the 1951 National Salon. The Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York gave him five one-person shows between 1942 and 1950. In the 1944 exhibition, La jungla was universally well received by the critics in the local press; that same year James Johnson--director of the Museum of Modern Art--bought the painting for the museum's collection. His work also was featured in full-length articles in Magazine of Art (1949) and Art News (1950). At about the same time Lam's work gained recognition in Europe. He held one-persons shows in London in 1946 and 1952 and in Paris in 1945 and 1953. Full-length articles on his work appeared in Horizons (1945) and Cahiers d'art (1946). Over the past thirty years Lam has been the subject of several monographs and numerous retrospective exhibitions. His paintings are in museums and private collections all over the world.

Bio from Cuban Painters - Wifredo Lam

Manuel Mendive is an eminent Afro-Cuban painter, sculptor, and performance artist. His colorful, evocative paintings and carvings—as well as his dynamic performance and body art—pay tribute to the historic and religious art forms of Africa and Cuba. Altars, masks, and dance associated with Santería, Voodoo, and Yoruba religions have inspired his work, which brings a contemporary insight into the history of slavery and African mythologies as they transformed the Caribbean Islands. Oya (1967) and Slave Ship (1976) exemplify the artist’s primitive, minimalistic, powerful synthesis of mythology, religion, and history. Born on December 15, 1944 in Havana, Cuba, Mendive studied at the San Alejandro Academy of Plastic Arts in Havana. In the 1970s, the artist gained recognition for his unique combination of European and African styles in promoting Afro-Cuban culture. His works are in the collections of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, and the Ethnographic Museum of Budapest, among others. The artist lives and works in San Jose de la Lagas, Cuba.

Bio from MANUEL MENDIVE — T O T H G A L L E R Y

EJ Montgomery, Ibje Twins-Yoruba Blue, 30 x 22.5 inches

Curator and printmaker Evangeline "EJ" Montgomery was born on May 2, 1930, in New York. Her mother, Carmelite Thompson, was a homemaker and her father, Oliver Thompson was a Baptist minister. She discovered her artistic talents when she received her first oil painting set at the age of fourteen. After her parents separated, Montgomery and her mother moved to Harlem in New York, New York. In 1951, Montgomery earned her high school diploma from Seward Park High School in lower Manhattan, where she was a cheerleader, a member of the swim and basketball teams and a member of student government.

From 1951 until 1954, she worked at statuaries, painting the faces on dolls and religious statues. In 1955, Montgomery moved to Los Angeles with her husband and worked for Thomas Usher, an African American jewelry designer. She received her B.F.A. degree from the California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts) in 1969 and she worked as an independent curator to museums, university galleries and art centers where she organized exhibits. In 1971, she served as the curator for the Rainbow Sign Gallery in Berkeley, California before becoming an exhibition specialist for the American Association for State and Local History in Nashville, Tennessee and coordinating eight national workshops on “Interpreting the Humanities through Museum Exhibits.” She also organized national exhibit workshops for the Association of African American Museums. In 1983, Montgomery began her career with the United States State Department as a program development officer for the Arts America Program, specializing in American exhibitions touring abroad. In this capacity, she developed and implemented successful American fine art programs in the United States and throughout the world. In her own art career, Montgomery is noted for her metal work, especially her metal ancestral boxes which were inspired by the Chinese incense boxes her mother used for praying. Her colorful lithographs have also garnered her attention, being prominently displayed in exhibitions funded by the United States government.

In 1997, she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease which has made it difficult for Montgomery to work with metal. However, she has not let the diagnosis limit her artistic vision, instead shifting her focus to printmaking, lithographs, and the digital arts. In 2005, Blacks In Government (BIG) began the Evangeline J. Montgomery Scholarship Program, to encourage and fund artists who are interested in working in government to spread the influence of the arts.

Evangeline “EJ” Montgomery passed away on May 1st, 2025.

Bio from Evangeline Montgomery's Biography

Bernadette Indira Persaud is one of Guyana’s best-known artists, writers and educators. She was born in Berbice in 1946 and is a graduate of the University of Guyana and of the Burrows School of Art in Georgetown. Her painting career began in the early 1980s, when she felt a need to express her ideas through her creativity. In 1985, she became the first woman to win the Guyana National Visual Arts Competition, and she continues to produce artworks that encourage a social, political and historical consciousness. Her most famous work from her series titled “Gentlemen in the Gardens” depicted camouflaged soldiers in a garden setting between tropical foliage like that of the renown Botanical Gardens in Georgetown.

Bernadette’s paintings have been exhibited and her writings published in Canada, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Guyana. She has also written about art for numerous Guyanese publications.Bernadette was recently inducted into the Caribbean Hall of Fame for Excellence in November, 2012. The award recognizes her outstanding contribution and achievement in the field of Visual Arts. She was selected by the Committee of the Caribbean Development for the Arts, Sports and Culture Foundation in association with the Caribbean Community. The Foundation’s main aim is “to recognize the development of the Arts, Sports and Culture in the Caribbean, and to encourage the natural genius of our people to reach the highest level. This prestigious award, is made by the Foundation in recognition of the notable contribution made by those who have achieved excellence in Arts, Sports and Culture.

Bernadette Persaud, Gentleman Under the Sky (Gulf War), 74 x 50 inches

Bernadette, who has participated in workshops on art, as far off as the Republic of Mauritius, has had a number of regional and international exhibitions and has her pieces in private collections overseas, including Russia, England and North America. Her notable awards and accolades include: The Distinguished Visiting Artist’s Award – awarded by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations with India, in 2005 Guest Artist – International Women’s month – Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, UWI, Jamaica (1999) and the Arrow of Achievement, AA, 1997 (Guyana). Bernadette’s regional and international publications were featured in countries that include Germany, New York, India and in major mainstream media houses such as CNN and BBC.

In a 2004 interview with Caribbean Beat, Bernadette talked about what movitated her and said ” In all of my work, whether I’m dealing with the ancestral cultural aspect of it, or whether I’m dealing with the man with the gun, I’m trying to show everyone that here is beauty — which, though it may be close to you, you don’t see, you don’t notice, because of your own conditioned blindness and ignorance, your own cultural limitations. This is what motivates me, this is what I try to take on in my art.”

Bio from She Rocks! Meet Bernadette Persaud – Artist/Writer, 2012 Caribbean Hall of Fame Inductee – Guyanese Girls Rock!

James Phillips, The Other John, 22.75 x 30.75 inches

James Phillips
Born 1945 in Brooklyn
Lives and works in Baltimore
AfriCOBRA Member: 1973

James Phillips studied at the Fleisher Art Memorial School, Philadelphia (1960s), the Philadelphia College of Art (1964-65), and the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore (MFA 1998).

His solo exhibitions include Homecoming: Da Homey Comes Home: Works by James Phillips (2012; Africa House, Lynchburg, VA); Works on Paper (1996; Parish Gallery, Washington DC); The Awesome Image: Old and New Paintings by James Phillips (1995; Hampton University Museum, VA); James Phillips (1991; Harrison Museum of African American Culture, Roanoke, VA); and James Phillips, AfriCobra Abstractionist (1991; Hammond House, Atlanta).

Phillip’s work has been featured in several group exhibitions, including Outside the Lines, (2013-2014; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Valerie Cassel Oliver, Curator, Houston, TX); AfriCobra and the Chicago Black Arts Movement (2010; Dittmar Memorial Gallery, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL); Silent Voices, Loud Echoes (2006; African American Historical and Cultural Museum, Philadelphia); Black Art, Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African American Art (1989; Dallas Museum of Art); Tradition and Conflict, 1963-1973 (1985; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York); and Directions in Afro American Art (1974; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY).

Works in are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and University of Maryland University College.

Bio from James Phillips Archives - Galerie Myrtis

Martin Puryear, Hand sculpture, 11 x 17 inches, upright

Martin Puryear (born 1941) is known for refined, handmade constructions, primarily in wood. Puryear's abstract forms, while evocative and familiar, elude specific or singular interpretations. In his work, motifs such as the Phrygian cap, human heads, and vessels take on symbolic resonance, functioning as meditations on powerful universal concepts like freedom and shelter, even as they are distilled by the artist into essential forms.

Puryear studied painting at Catholic University in Washington, DC, then spent two years in Africa with the Peace Corps (1964--66), teaching in a village in Sierra Leone. There, he made meticulously detailed drawings, recording local houses, plants, and animals, as well as the people around him. He also experimented with woodcuts; the surface texture of the block in these works prefigures his later sculptures in wood. Many forms and motifs that emerged from these early experiments recur and evolve throughout his career.

From 1966 to 1968, Puryear studied printmaking at the Swedish Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm. He explored a range of techniques--etching, aquatint, drypoint--involving incised lines and furrowed surfaces. Around this time, Puryear also began making sculpture. As he later explained, "It might have been the different ways of incising, which is a kind of carving, that got me considering again the way things are made." Before leaving Europe, Puryear visited the Venice Biennale where he encountered a collection of American minimalism in the International Pavilion. The minimalist sculpture attested to the power of primary form and left a lasting impression on the artist.

Puryear went on to earn an MFA in sculpture from Yale University in 1971. There, his work began to echo the streamlined forms associated with minimalism, but were distinctive in their organic and constructed forms. Puryear's signature mastery of material and mixing of minimalism and traditional craft has established him as a leading voice, exploring both public and private narratives of objects, experiences, and identity.

Puryear is the recipient of a 1982 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 1989 MacArthur Foundation Award, and the 2009 Gold Medal in Sculpture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2011, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. Puryear's work has been the subject of many exhibitions, including Martin Puryear: Multiple Dimensions, which was organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and travelled to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2016. He has completed commissions for numerous public art projects including Philadelphia's Pavilion in the Trees (1993), Washington, DC's Bearing Witness (1997), and Manhattan's temporary Big Bling (2016). In 2018, Martin Puryear was chosen to represent the United States at the 58th Venice Biennale, on view May 11 through November 24, 2019.

Bio from Martin Puryear | Smithsonian American Art Museum

Melanie Royster (MELROY), Multifaceted Visual Artist.

Melanie Royster, Summers Sunset, 30 x 40 inches

Art has always been a passion of hers. Growing up shy and quiet, she has always used art to express herself and tell stories. Melanie really dives into her work and is not afraid to be vulnerable. When you look at her work you can also tell that she is not afraid to experiment with different media or to try different techniques, which really defines her as an artist.

Melanie studied Interior Design at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Arts and is currently working towards growing in her art career. She believes that studying Interior Design has helped her learn to connect with people. When designing for clients she focuses a lot on healing effects of the client’s space, knowing that the design will affect their energy and productivity. She now uses that same practice when it comes to her art, especially when working with other brands.

She wants to make people feel and reflect. Melanie’s design style is influenced by Caribbean and West African cultures, stemming in part from her Jamaican background. A lot of her concepts are centered on the power and worth of women, especially women of color. She also finds Nature to be very grounding in her work and incorporates it in almost every piece. Texture and vibrant colors are also used to highlight important messages and stories, adding movement to her pieces.

With regard to her art career, Melanie is striving to grow and create as much as possible, based on concepts that are really important to her. She does not want to focus on trends and on what’s “popular”. Authenticity is her goal. Melanie offers many different creative services when it comes to her artwork and hopes to use her talents to impact positively those who come across her work.

Bio from BIO/CV | MELROYart LLC

Joyce J. Scott was born in Baltimore in 1948. Her parents were both born to sharecroppers in North Carolina and migrated to Baltimore in the 1930’s and 40’s where Joyce was born and raised. Scott comes from a rich background of quilting and beading starting at the early age of 3, when she began sewing with her mother (and first teacher), Elizabeth T. Scott. Decades later, she is a recent recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” award, and continues to create stunningly beautiful and powerful works.

Scott’s extensive body of work has traversed styles and mediums, ranging from intricate jewelry, to two- and three-dimensional figurative sculptures, installations, and her most recent projects which integrate her trademark beadwork with blown glass sculptures created in collaboration with artisans in Murano, Italy. Scott repositions craft as a potent and expressive platform for social commentary. Many works investigate her personal history as well as social and political injustices, sexism, violence, and racism as they face our society.

Scott’s works delve into the extremes of human nature with her idiosyncratic style and flair—conflating humor and horror; beauty and brutality.

Joyce received a B.F.A. (1970) from the Maryland Institute College of Art, an M.F.A. (1971) from the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and training from her mother, Elizabeth T. Scott, who was an internationally recognized fiber artist. Her work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Museum of Art and Design, the Fuller Craft Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others.

Her work is held in the public collections of numerous national and international museums including: Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; Detroit Institute of the Arts, MI; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Museum of Art and Design, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The Smithsonian, Washington, DC; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Speed Museum, Louisville, KY; Yale University, New Haven, CT, among others.

Bio from Joyce Scott | MCA - Maryland Citizens for the Arts

Amy Sherald, Puppet Master, 72 x 67 inches

Amy Sherald Born in 1973 in Columbus, GA, and now based in Baltimore MD, documents contemporary African-American experience in the United States through arresting, otherworldly portraits. Sherald subverts the medium of portraiture to tease out unexpected narratives, inviting viewers to engage in a more complex debate about accepted notions of race and representation, and to situate black heritage centrally in the story of American art.
Among her influences, Sherald has cited photographs that W.E.B. Du Bois compiled to be displayed at the Paris Exposition in 1900, depicting African-American men, women, and children in ways that countered discriminatory representations of the day. In particular, Sherald is drawn to the way in which African-American family photographs served as intimate, personal portraits, during a time when only white individuals or groups were being iconized in paintings.

While her subjects are always African-American, Sherald renders their skin-tone exclusively in grisaille – an absence of color that directly challenges perceptions of black identity.’ Sherald offsets this against a vibrant palette: eye-popping clothes and ephemera float in tension against abstracted backgrounds. The depth created by the pastel backgrounds are not confined to any specific time or space, but seem to exist beyond the facts of recorded history and national borders.
She defines the subjects of her portraits simply as ephemera float in tension against abstracted background to American identity. The individuals in her paintings are deliberately posed, dramatically staged, and assertive in gaze. Their expressiveness, and the variations in their gestures, clothing, and emotional auras reinforce the complex multiplicities of African-American existence. But the persistent sense of privacy and mystery maintained in Sherald’s work requires viewers to ponder the thoughts and dreams of the black men and women she has depicted.

Sherald was the first woman and first African-American ever to receive first prize in the 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.; in February 2018, the museum unveiled her portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama. Sherald has also received the 2018 David C. Driskell Prize from the High Museum of Art in Atlanta GA. Alongside her painterly practice, Sherald has worked for almost two decades along-side socially committed creative initiatives, including teaching art in prisons and art projects with teenagers.

Bio from Amy Sherald - AFRICANAH.ORG

Alec Simpson

Prints from my recent series Explorations are all unique, one of a kind monotypes. I created them with the master printer Brandon Graving at the Gravity Press Experimental Print Shop in North Adams, Massachusetts.

Computer generated pigment prints from my Twenty Third Psalm series were created with the late master print maker Michael Platt in his workshop in Washington, DC. The original monotypes (not exhibited) were created at the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Maryland. The Twenty-third Psalm has been a source of comfort to countless people, including myself. We all have moments when issues seem to weigh heavily upon us. The words of the Twenty-third Psalm act as a reminder, a kind of balm, bringing solace and promise that somehow this too shall pass.

All works were created with the intent to bring joy and uplift to all those who view them.

I hold a Master of Fine Arts degree from Southern Methodist University in the Comparative Arts (focused on art history and aesthetics). Along the way, I have had the great good fortune to work with a number of fine artists. I took a painting course at the Corcoran School of Art with Mindy Weisel. Later, I began to produce monotypes and mixed media works at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center with Helen Frederick and with Susan Goldman in her workshop. I created large-scale monotypes and monoprints at Gravity Press Experimental Print Shop in the Berkshires and New Orleans with Brandon Graving. Here in Washington, DC, I have produced mixed media works with noted printmaker Lou Stovall and computer-generated pigment prints with Michael Platt and Bridgett Lambert. In spite of learning from these notable artists, I pretty much think of myself more as a non-academic, self-taught artist.

Bio from "Celebrating Color" Artists' Statements - Iona

Nelson Stevens, Eighth Wonder, 40 x 40 inches

Nelson Stevens (1938-2022) was a visionary artist, educator, and founding member of AfriCOBRA (the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists), a collective formed in Chicago in 1968 dedicated to creating a Black aesthetic that empowered the African-American community. Through bold, vibrant works, Stevens and AfriCOBRA sought to reflect the beauty and pride of Blackness back to the viewer. After earning degrees from The Ohio University and Kent State University, Stevens joined the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1972, where he taught until 2003. During the 1970s and 80s, he created a mural initiative in Springfield, Massachusetts, producing over 30 vibrant public artworks with his students.

Stevens’ work celebrated the dignity, power, and beauty of Black life and was featured in prominent institutions like the BROAD in Los Angeles, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Portland Art Museum, and many others. His works were also featured abroad at the Tate Modern in London, the Venice Biennale, and at FESTAC in Lagos, Nigeria. His art remains part of several major museum collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Following his passing in July 2022, the Nelson Stevens Legacy Project was established to preserve and extend his impact through exhibitions, public art, and education, inspiring a new generation of artists of color to continue his mission of cultural uplift through art.

Bio from Nelson Stevens Legacy Project

Renée Stout (b. 1958, Junction City, KS) lives and works in Washington, D.C. As a mixed media artist, Stout draws inspiration from current social and political events, the African diaspora, everyday urban life, and the spiritual realm. Stout's objects and paintings often emerge from her decades of research into the art history and spiritual traditions of Hoodoo, which have evolved from African roots through American slavery to the present.

Small, handmade sculptures are an essential part of Stout's practice. These fabricated, machine-like objects are meant to connect us to the spiritual realm and otherworldly powers. More broadly, they represent the hopes and desires that faiths and religions around the world seek to fulfill. Universal desires for health, love, survival and happiness.

Stout's work has recently been exhibited at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY (2024); the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN (2022); the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, TX (2022); the African American Museum in Philadelphia, PA (2023); and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA (2023).

Her work is included in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Nasher Museum of Art, the High Museum in Atlanta, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Saint Louis Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and many others.

Stout has a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University. She is the recipient of the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation Award and the Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award (2nd place) in 2020, and the Women's Caucus for Art, Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. She is the recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Award, the Pollock Krasner Foundation Award, the Joan Mitchell Painter and Sculptor's Grant Award, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, among others.

Bio from Renée Stout | Marc Straus Gallery

Recollections of Lou Stovall (1937-2023)

July 18, 2023

I am saddened at the loss of one of Washington’s most distinguished and impactful artists, Luther McKinley (Lou) Stovall, who passed on March 3rd at the age of 86. In 1969, Stovall established a studio devoted to printmaking at the briefly active Dupont Center and later moved the enterprise to his home in Cleveland Park where it was known as Workshop, Inc. The studio initially generated posters to promote local events, concerts, and civil rights organizations. Stovall created a supportive environment for artists to work together and learn from each other. He passed on the techniques he developed and trained numerous interns who helped in the laborious work of pulling editions. Stovall had a wide network of friends with whom he collaborated, including such notable artists as Jacob Lawrence, Alexander Calder, Gene Davis, and Sam Gilliam, as well as his wife, the artist Di Bagley Stovall.

Lou Stovall also created his own silkscreens inspired by his love of nature and the surrounding community. In these beautifully drawn and vividly colored prints, Stovall pioneered a non-traditional approach creating painterly effects with speckled layers and textured surfaces that pushed the boundaries of the silkscreen process. His technical innovations in the medium expanded the creative potential and output of those who worked alongside him.

Stovall’s ethic of giving encompassed the local arts community, as he served on the board of arts organizations and contributed to non-profit groups and political causes with his distinctive printed posters. His many prestigious commissions included an Independence Day Invitation for the Reagan White House and a print for the 1988 Democratic National Committee.

Bio from https://library.georgetown.edu/ar

Michelle Talibah

I am an artist/curator. My professional engagement in visual arts is unique, encompassing creative studio, public art, and curatorial practice. Over the past thirty years, I have achieved national acclaim as a painter, and have exhibited in galleries and visual art venues throughout the United States. I have enjoyed the opportunity to experiment with a broad range of media during residencies at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont; and most recently, the Experimental Printmaking Studio at Lafayette College, and Raven Editions in Easton, Pennsylvania.

In 2004 I founded New Door Creative Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland, featuring the work of regional professional and emerging artists. The pioneer gallery was the first to originate in Baltimore’s Station North Arts District in 2006, aligned with the mission to broaden the exposure of artists exploring a wide range of perceptions, cultures, and traditions. My curatorial trajectory is informed by my work as an artist. The gallery has exhibited creative practitioners from around the globe, featuring exhibitions that engage concepts ranging from volume and space to gentrification, and is distinguished as a venue for introducing artists whose exciting work often deviates from the “popular” aesthetic, including the work of so-called Outsider artists. The mission of the gallery is to present “good work” by dedicated artists deserving of broader recognition and support. Gallery clients appreciate the broad range of expressions presented in addition to the curatorial guidance that is informed and personal. New Door Creative is also proud to have highlighted many women artists of color, and legendary artists Faith Ringgold, Richard Mayhew, and the late David C. Driskell.

As a public artist, I have participated in the artist team for three installations designed by the late contemporary artist Sol LeWitt, located in the Washington, D.C. Convention Center, and Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum.

My academic history includes study at Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, and The University of Massachusetts-Boston; and a Master of Arts degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Bio from Meet Michelle Talibah – CanvasRebel Magazine

Alma Woodsey Thomas

Alma Thomas, Lunar Surface, 39.125 x 34 inches

1891 to 1978

Thomas was born in Columbus, Georgia, the oldest of four girls. In 1907, her family moved to Washington, D.C., seeking relief from the racial violence in the South. Though segregated, the nation’s capital still offered more opportunities for African Americans than most cities in those years.

As a girl, Thomas dreamed of being an architect and building bridges, but there were few women architects a century ago. Instead, she attended Howard University, becoming its first fine arts graduate in 1924. In 1924, Thomas began a 35-year career teaching art at a D.C. junior high school. She was devoted to her students and organized art clubs, lectures, and student exhibitions for them. Teaching allowed her to support herself while pursuing her own painting part time.

Thomas’s early art was realistic, though her Howard professor James V. Herring and peer Loïs Mailou Jones challenged her to experiment with abstraction. When she retired from teaching and was able to concentrate on art full time, Thomas finally developed her signature style.

She debuted her abstract work in an exhibition at Howard in 1966, at the age of 75. Thomas’ abstractions have been compared with Byzantine mosaics, the Pointillist technique of Georges Seurat, and the paintings of the Washington Color School, yet her work is quite distinctive.

Thomas became an important role model for women, African Americans, and older artists. She was the first African American woman to have a solo exhibition at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, and she exhibited her paintings at the White House three times.

Bio from Alma Woodsey Thomas | Artist Profile | National Museum of Women in the Arts

Julio Valdez

Born in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic, Julio Valdez relocated to New York in1993. Working between pluri-cultural sensibilities, Valdez infuses his work with multi-layered imagery as a response to the shifting cultural and social influences in his life. A painter, printmaker and mixed media artist whose work has been exhibited internationally, he has received numerous prestigious international awards, including an Artist-in-Residence Fellowship at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City in1997-98, the Silver Palette for Painting at the XXXeme Festival International de la Peinture, Cagnes-sur-Mer, France in 1998, the Grand Prize at the XVII E. Leon Jimenes Biennial, the Dominican Republic in 2000, and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, 2003, among others.

Bio from About | julio-valdez

Wilfredo Valladares

Born in Trujillo Colon, Honduras, Central America, Wilfredo began his career as an artist and educator. It was due to his challenging of perceptions as a teacher during a time of conflict in his country that it became necessary for Wilfredo to seek political asylum in the United States. Wilfredo arrived in the early nineties where he continued his journey as an artist by attending Montgomery College, then Maryland Institute College of Art and graduating with a BFA in sculpture. He pursued and received an MFA in sculpture at the University of Maryland. It was evident that his chosen path would lead him to make contributions in the academic and artistic arenas. He has been part of numerous artistic and educational events, such as group shows, solo exhibits, workshops and environmental installations. In 1997, Wilfredo had his first international sculpture show in Milan, Italy where he had the opportunity to collaborate with a diverse community of artists and curators. Wilfredo’s work is designed to cross boundaries and to move beyond the traditional paradigm of cross-cultural art. In August of 2009, Wilfredo installed a piece entitled “Petalos Reflejantes,” a permanent installation commissioned by Montgomery County and Auras Design. The sculpture was installed in downtown Silver Spring Maryland. A recent installation and one of his most notable commissions, "Journey : Anacostia," — located in the historic neighborhood of Anacostia in Washington, DC — explores the interconnectedness of cultures.

Wilfredo Valladares | Artist, Sculptor, Professor - About

Fabiola Alvarez Yurcisin

I am an artist that utilizes what human progress sheds. My work repurposes obsolete recording materials, like typewriter ribbon and video and audio cassette tapes. The panels, cages, and nets that I weave are reflective surfaces that question the speed in which we produce, consume, and discard our technologies.

I create objects that respond to systems that want to keep us under control or within certain limits. By building metaphors that explore the caging relationship we have with the natural world, I explore the impossibility of our superiority to nature.

Art is my way of translating between the disposable synthetic world, and the cyclical natural world. I use hi-tech residue to question the sustainability of a society based on consumption.

Bio from About — Fabiola Alvarez Yurcisin

Exhibitions