A few years ago, I picked up an Elizabeth Catlett lithograph of a Mexican girl with a stoic and determined stare. It was the first of Catlett’s images that I’d come across from her years…
Category: Art
The art of Walter Dodd Condit
Posted in Art
As I peered at the watercolor, I saw signs of the style of artist Walter Dodd Condit. In the mishmash of angles and colors were the familiar outlines of rowhouses typical of much of the…
As soon as I saw the woman in the painting, I recognized her. Her portrait had come up for auction some years before with another painting of a black soldier with attitude. I wasn’t able…
Wow, I thought as I saw the bold figure of a lion drawn in deep dark colors that seemed to glisten on the page in front of me. I had asked the auction-house staffer for…
Several of the paintings and prints in my collection of African American art are musicians with saxophones. I’ve always loved this instrument that sounds like an anguished soul. So when I see artwork at auction with a saxophone,…
In 1923, Augusta Savage applied for a summer program at the Fontainebleau School of Fine Arts, a newly opened American-owned school in France. The all-white and all-male selection committee rejected her because she was black. Savage…
Black regiment’s Civil War flag & the stories it could tell
Posted in Art, Black history, Civil War, history, and Military
What this flag must have seen! It started out as a piece of silk cloth in Philadelphia, painted by David Bustill Bowser with an emblem of a black Union soldier waving goodbye to a white woman…
Two lamps were placed close to each other in a brightly lit glass case. Which is Tiffany, visitors were asked. They looked just alike, but one was obviously an imposter. I chose the lamp on the…
First, I saw the skull. It was dark heavy metal with screws in its ears. My eyes traveled down the art piece – I assumed that’s what it was since it was mounted on weathered wood…
1950s Fred Press glasses that I didn’t know I had
Posted in Art, collectibles, Glassware, and Home
I kept the glasses in my kitchen cabinet for several years, thinking that I would someday take them out, serve iced tea or lavender lemonade in them, and marvel at their beauty. They were 1950s glasses with single stalks…