Guiding spirits of art

New Crisis, The, Mar/Apr 2001 by Fitzgerald, Sharon

Who elightens the visionaries? The revered painter Jacob Lawrence once stated that if it had not been for the influence and support of sculptor Augusta Savage, he might have become a postman instead of an artist. Indeed, it was within the art workshops that Savage established in Harlem during the 1930s that Lawrence was afforded the opportunity to work and to reveal his creative gifts. Therefore, even as we acclaim Savage's sculptures, the generosity of her spirit ultimately may be the most extraordinary part of her legacy.

The four artists captured here are all special representatives of that creative tradition. Each is respected within the artistic community, but has committed a portion of her career to instructing others. While they work in various mediums, and at different academic institutions, it is clear that the spirit guiding their contributions is the same. These are women dedicated to upholding the legacy of African American artistic expression.

Yvonne Edwards Tucker: Phoenix on Fire, Earthenware ceramics, (1999)

CRISIS NM&CR/,kPM 2001 33 Charnelle Holloway Having painter Jenelsie Walden Holloway for a mother ensured that Charnelle Holloway's artistic instincts were honed from the start. "She took away our coloring books," Charnelle Holloway recalls. "She bought us all of the paper and crayons and paint that we wanted, but she didn't want us in coloring books.

"She said that they stunted creativity, that when you are coloring in somebody else's drawing, you're just filling in the blanks."

Fusing tradition and independence has marked Holloway's life and her art. She lived at home while attending Spelman and worked harder because her mother chaired the art department in which she was enrolled.

("It wasn't as if I could skip class," she says, "and I didn't want people saying `She gets an A because she's the teacher's daughter.' ") But then her original interest in life drawing was supplanted by the desire to sculpt.

"I took a class from Heather Hilton and realized that when you do sculpture, it's in the world with you. When you do drawing, it's like looking through a window-like being a spectator and not being able to participate. So I decided that I was more comfortable with sculpture."

Determined not to become "a starving artist," she attended graduate school at Georgia State where she studied silversmithing, jewelry making and design. At first, she expected to follow the path of other craft artists who make lucrative livings selling their art to museum shops and at regional expositions. Then she agreed to teach at Spelman for a couple of semesters and discovered that the lure of academia was not necessarily the paycheck, but the students.

"It's something," she says. "They come in and they don't understand, and then all of a sudden you see that the actions or the behavior of a student have changed because of something you've said. All of a sudden, you see a budding artist instead of a confused student. Oh, heavens! You get a chill!

"I'm teaching them design and drawing, helping them to develop their ideas so that they will become individual artists, good craftsmen, profound thinkers-that kind of thing. And in the meantime, they're teaching me what's going on in the world with that particular age group. They have issues that you know that you've dealt with before, but the situations are different now because it's a different time.

Jenelsie Walden Holloway

Master artists touched the canvas of painter Jenelsie Walden Holloway's early years. Henry Ossawa Tanner was a family member whom she encountered as a child; Hale Woodruff first taught her drawing at Atlanta University's elementary school, and later was her art instructor (along with sculptor Elizabeth Prophet) when she enrolled in Spelman College. After doing graduate work at the Art Institute of Chicago, she began teachingfirst at the University of Texas and then at Dillard University. When offered a position in the art department at Spelman, she returned home to Atlanta.

Holloway admits that her work as an art instructor (and for nearly 20 years as the chair of Spelman's art department) may have slowed her progress as a painter, and she hopes that her recent retirement will allow her to spend more time alone in the studio. Yet she does not underestimate the meaning of her artistic life.

"It's been extremely important to me," she says, "and I guess that there may be many people who don't understand that. There are many people who never get into the creative areas of their lives because they don't feel the importance of doing it, or because they think it's more important to do something in which they're making a lot of money

"But I think that anyone who gets into the arts never wants to leave-there's something about the arts that holds you. It happens with students as well. A lot of students come in because they have to take the class. But once they begin to understand the beauty and the challenge of being personally creative, it's hard for them to get rid of that."