from my MD BLACK FACTS BOOK: FEB 10... 1874, Attorney William H. Howard born in Annapolis, MD. 1902, drummer, William Chick Webb born in Baltimore, MD 1919, MD educator, storyteller, Mary Carter Smith born in Birmingham, Alabama. Baltimore Civil Rights History - Introduction to Two Great Baltimore Artists Elton Clay Fax (1909-1993) Fine Artist, Graphic Artist, Author, Illustrator, Cartoonist, Educator Born October 9, 1909, Baltimore, Maryland, Died May 13, 1993, Queens, New York Over the course of his six-decade-long career, Elton Clay Fax made notable contributions to American culture and society and left his mark in communities around the globe. As an author, artist, and educator, Fax attended Claflin College and the College of Fine Art at Syracuse University, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts, graduating in 1931. He began his career as a lecturer and art teacher at Claflin College in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in the 1930s. He was a prolific artist, illustrating more than thirty books and a multitude of magazine articles, and he produced the weekly comic strip Suzabelle, which ran in several black newspapers during the 1940s. He was also an accomplished writer who travelled extensively throughout the United States and abroad, researching his books on black life and culture. During his illustrated lectures abroad, Fax brought news of the American Civil Rights Movement to other peoples. He held formal positions as a U.S. Department of State International Exchange Program Representative in South America and the Caribbean, a delegate to the International Congress of Society of African Culture in Rome, and a lecturer with the U.S. State Department in East Africa. No matter where his other commitments and interests led him, Fax never lost sight of his calling as an educator, teaching courses in colleges and universities throughout the United States, lecturing in schools around the world, and conducting workshops and talks for children in schools and community centers. He held teaching, guest lecturer, and artist-in-residence positions at several colleges and universities over the course of his career, including a residency at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. His life was filled with remarkable accomplishments and acquaintances with historic personalities. His younger brother, Mark, a child prodigy grew up to become Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Howard University. Fax taught art at Claflin College briefly, then worked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as an artist and teacher at the Harlem Art Center in New York City from 1936 to 1940. He later taught at City College in New York and held residencies at Purdue University, Princeton University, Fisk University, Western Michigan University, University of Hartford, and Texas Southern University. An avid traveller, his interest in Central and South America led him to move his family to Mexico for three years (1953-1956), and to visit Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay and other countries. His travels to Africa inspired him to create a number of sketches which were eventually published in his first book, West African Vignettes and resulted in a position as State Department lecturer in East Africa in 1963, while his trips around Asia and the Soviet Union led him to participate in meetings of the Soviet Writers Union in 1971 and 1973 and the Bulgarian Writers Conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1977. Also in the 1970s Fax began writing and publishing books on black history in the United States, most notably a biography of the African American nationalist Marcus Garvey. Fax became known as a speaker for his unique chalk-talks, during which he would illustrate his stories with spontaneous sketches (he was particularly popular with children). He gave many of these chalk-talks during his travels, often speaking on the civil rights struggle going on in the United States. Throughout his career Faxs sympathy for the plight of third-world peoples and of the poor in every country inspired his work, whether teaching, lecturing or drawing. His work has been exhibited at many well-known institutions including the National Gallery of Art and Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Kerlan Collection, University of Minnesota; and National Museum, Tashkent, Uzbekistan. He received the Womens Civic League Contest gold medal, 1932; MacDowell Colony fellow, 1968; Coretta Scott King Award, American Library Association, for his book Seventeen Black Artists, 1972; Louis E. Seley NACAL gold medal for painting, 1972; Rockefeller Foundation fellow, 1976; Syracuse University, Chancellors Medal, 1990. He eventually settled in Woodside, Queens, where he served as writer-in-residence at the Langston Hughes branch of the Queens Public Library. Faxs career as an illustrator began in 1942 with pictures for Astounding Science-Fiction, which predated those for his first book, Tommy Two Wheels (1943). After a long and distinguished career, Elton Clay Fax died at his home in Queens, New York, on May 13, 1993. He was eighty-three years old. Sources: David Saunders, Boston University, Syracuse University James Amos Porter (December 22, 1905 - February 28, 1970) was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Porter was a pioneer in establishing the field of African-American art history. He was instrumental as the first scholar to provide a systematic, critical analysis of African-American artists and their works of art. Porter was the first scholar to provide a systematic, critical analysis of African American artists and their works. Four Problems in the History of Negro Art, published in 1942 in the Journal of Negro History outlined the difficulties in documenting African American art. These included the unrecorded work of handicrafts and fine arts by African-Americans before 1820, the black artists relation to the white American society, the decline in production among black artists between 1870 and 1890, and the role of the African American artist in the so-called New Negro Movement of 1900-1920. His papers are housed in the Dorothy Porter Wesley Archives, Wesport Foundation and Gallery, Washington, DC. LMW Porter was the son of John Porter and Lydia Peck (Porter). His father was a Christian minister and his mother a schoolteacher. Porter went to the public schools in Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, DC, before graduating cum laude from Howard University in 1927. He was immediately hired as an instructor of drawing and painting in the art department. He received recognition from the Harmon Foundation for his portraits, exhibiting his work at both Howard and Hampton Universities. In 1929 he married Dorothy Louise Burnett and began attending the Art Students League of New York then under Dimitri Romanovsky and George Bridgeman. Porters written work in art history began appearing in 1931 with the article, Versatile Interests of the Early Negro Artist, in Art in America. In 1935, he traveled to Paris to study medieval archaeology at the Institute dArt et Archéologie, Sorbonne through a fellowship from the Scholarship Institute of International Education, and grants from the College Art Association and the Rockefeller Foundation. He was awarded a certificat de présence from the Institut dArt et Archeologie (Sorbonne) in 1935. After completing his MA at New York University, Fine Arts Graduate Center, Porter began writing his book Modern Negro Art, which was published in 1943. The book described the history of African-American art from its beginnings to the mid-twentieth century, and included discussions of contemporary artists such as Archibald Motley and Jacob Lawrence. Porter disagreed with scholars and critics W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke over the role of abstraction in modern African-American art, praising artists who used traditional methods of figural representation over those who used abstract figures. In 1953, he was appointed head of Howard Universitys Art Department, as well as its Art Gallery. As director, his profile at Howard was instrumental in adding the university to among those receiving renaissance and baroque art from the Kress collection at its dispersement in 1961. Porter received research grants from the Belgian Ministry of Education in 1955 to study Belgian art (the Belgium-American Art Seminar), and studied Mexican fresco murals at the Instituto Allende in Guanauato, Mexico. He was a UNESCO delegate at the [Boston] Conference on Africa in 1961. He was a member of the Arts Council of Washington, D.C. between 1961 and 1963. The Washington Evening Star awarded him a Faculty Research grant in 1963, allowing him to spend a year on sabbatical studying art in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Togo and Senegal. In March 1965 Porter was named one of Americas most outstanding men of the arts by President Lyndon Johnsons wife, Lady Bird Johnson, at the National Gallery of Art, in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the National Gallery. The James A. Porter Gallery of African-American Art at Howard University Gallery was dedicated in his honor in 1970 and in 1990 the Department of Art at Howard created the annual James A. Porter Inaugural Colloquium on African-American Art. Sources: James A. Porter Chronology, compiled by Constance Porter Uzelac. Modern Negro Art. Howard University Press, 1992; BAATC/BDX/BBH TOURS events & tours; See updates at facebook/lou.fields.75. Tel: 443.983.7974 upcoming Black History programs... Feb 13, Tubman Day Presentation, Loch Raven Senior Center, Baltimore County, 2pm Feb 22, Tubman Day in St. John’s Episcopal Church, 114 Union Avenue, Harford County, 2-5pm Mar 8, Tubman Day Banquet, Cambridge, Dorchester County, 4pm Mar 8, Harriet Tubman comes to Sojourner-Douglass College, Owings Mills, 1pm-3pm Mar 10-16, Tubman Week in Baltimore (aka Tubman City) Mar 20, Tubman Day @ Randallstown Library, Baltimore County, 6:30pm May 13, VIP Civil Rights Reception & Tour honoring Lillie Carroll Jackson, Elton Fax, James Porter, Langston Hughes, Marshall, Mitchell
Posted on: Mon, 10 Feb 2014 03:19:25 +0000
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