Exhibition Video
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Panel Discussion: “The In and Outsiders” explores formally trained artist Thomas (Tom) Miller’s (1945-2000) brightly colored “Afro-Deco” painted furniture pieces and silkscreen prints, and self-taught artists Anderson (Andy) Pigatt’s (1928-2009) evocative sculptures and Elizabeth T. Scott’s (1916-2011) richly embellished quilts.
Exhibitions
Voodoo (detail), 1977 by Alvin Hollingsworth
Art of the Collectors IV features works from private collections created by prominent African and African American artists. Included in the exhibition are paintings and sculptures by artists who played an integral role in the Harlem Renaissance, as well as those whose works informed the landscape of American art.
Exhibitions
National Aquarium in Baltimore, 1994, Edition no: 32/75, Screenprint, (image: courtesy Steven Scott Gallery)
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During his high school years, Tom attended Carver Vocational High School (1963) and went on to earned a scholarship to the Maryland Institute College of Art where he received both his Bachelor of Fine Arts (1967) and Master of Fine Arts (1987) degrees, subsequently retiring from teaching after 20 years in the Baltimore City School system to become a full-time artist. He was influenced by black artists such as Jacob Lawrence and Aaron Douglas, evidenced in his use of flat color shapes, and the writings of Langston Hughes. He also drew inspiration from patterns analogous to those found in traditional American quilt-making.
Miller was commissioned by the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on Arts and Culture to create six murals from 1991-1998. Of them five remain, and are a testament to his creative genius. They continue to bring beauty in the midst of blithe. The murals grace the walls of buildings in Baltimore’s inner city and are themed around racial pride and the concerns of the black community. The artist used brightly colored and at times whimsical figures to conveying messages of hope and self-determination.
In one of his most powerful murals, Miller depicts a black silhouetted man with a muscular physique wearing a white T-shirt. The black figure, surrounded by an exotic setting, is seated on a yellow sand beach holding a book. Above him is a bright blue sky with a white puffy cloud. There is a tall flower which towers over him and he is joined by a curious bird who sits perched by his side. On the pages is an African proverb: “However far the streams flows it never forgets its source.” Here the artist sought to inspire young men, and of this mural he commented “I wanted to say a person could travel and expand his mind through reading.” And there’s the more subtle message “that you can’t be a strong African American male — or any male for that matter — without being literate.”
Miller gained a reputation as being one of the most renowned contemporary artists of Baltimore. He distinguished himself though his self-described style of “Afro-Deco” painted furniture pieces. Tom recycled old objects, tables, chairs, cabinets and bookcases in his art furniture making. He used color and pattern, statement, satire, and whimsy in an African American vernacular where he cleverly fought against racial stereotyping; and in doing so, created an iconographic system of his own. Miller’s objects, both utilitarian and works of art possess iconic images of animal motifs, Aunt Jemimas, pink flamingos, fruits, birds, palm trees, and watermelons juxtaposed with black faces to address social injustices using humor and wit.
In contextualizing Miller’s painted furniture in a 1991 essay, Lowery Sims, then curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art draws parallels between the artist’s work and Dahomey textiles, 18th century French furniture makers and 19th century African Americans “who successfully created a synthesis of African decoration and European cabinetry”. Sims suggests these elements are evidenced in Miller’s art furniture making. Lowery Sims, Ph.D. is currently curator for the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.
Traditions unique to Baltimore’s African American community were the themes of Miller’s 1994 screen prints. In “Summer in Baltimore” located at 1339 E. North Avenue, he depicts a black arabber with horse-drawn cart selling watermelon. In the shadow sits the Washington Monument and a patron who peers hungrily from a window awaiting a bite of the delicious fruit. In its companion screen print “Maryland Crab Fest”, Miller draws from his African roots as he portrays a family gathering. Seated around a table covered with crabs is a young man wearing a kufi cap, he is joined by another donning a Malcolm X T-shirt, and a girl with “big Baltimore hair” inspired by traditional African braiding. Other family members and animals join the feast as music blares from a boom box.
In 1996, the National Aquarium in Baltimore commissioned Miller to create what would be his final screen print titled “The National Aquarium in Baltimore. In it, the artist depicts school groups and families of all ethnicities visiting the national treasure. The imagery is filled with joy, conveying the artist’s affinity for the aquarium which was one of his favorite places in the city.
Miller became one of the first African American artists from Baltimore to be granted a one-man show at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1995. His work has also been featured in group exhibitions at the Smithsonian Renwick Gallery, Washington, DC; American Craft Museum, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and Contemporary Art Centers in New Orleans, Louisiana and Cincinnati, Ohio.
His works are in the permanent collections of the Academy Art Museum, Easton, Maryland; and Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; Maryland Historical Society; Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Baltimore, Maryland; and the University of Maryland University College in College Park, Maryland.
On June 23, 2000, Miller died at the age of 54 after an 11 year battle with AIDS at The Joseph Richey Hospice in Baltimore. He will always be remembered for his beautiful art, wit and charming personality.
References:
Adams, Eric. “Neo-Romanticism on Display at Steven Scott.” The Sun. Baltimore, MD. 24 May 1991.
Dorsey, John. “Veneer of Humor Covers Furniture of Tom Miller.” The Sun. Baltimore, MD. 12 May 1993.
Dorsey, John. “A Showcase of Black Art.” The Sun. Baltimore, MD. 23 January 1990.
Sims, Lowery. “Tom Miller’s Afro-Deco.” Exhibition Essay, Steven Scott Gallery, Baltimore, MD. Nov. 1991.
Murphy, Eilleen. “Tom Miller Obituary.” City Paper. Baltimore, MD. 28 Jun 2000.
Andy Pigatt (1928-2009) was born in Raeford, North Carolina, October 20, 1928. He received vocational training in general woodworking and carpentry at George Washington Carver High School. Pigatt served in the United States Army in 1950-55; studied cabinetmaking on the G.I. Bill after leaving the military; and apprenticed under James W. Leach, Baltimore, Maryland in refinishing and repairing period antique furniture.
Pigatt performed free-lance work in New York after 1963, working for firms such as Worldwide Antiques, Leonard’s Antique Gallery, Knapp and Seigal Antiques, et al. Restoration experience includes work on Chippendale, Jacobean, Sheraton, Queen Anne and other types of collections.
Anderson launched his sculpture career late in 1960’s. A self-taught sculptor, his work is represented in a number of private and institutional collections.
“Nigger Chained” a seminal work is in the permanent collection of the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York. Other sculptures are in the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York; Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Baltimore, MD; and the American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore, MD.
Pigatt participated in exhibitions sponsored by the American Federation of Fine Arts, the Urban Center of Columbia University, the Harlem Council and Bell Telephone Company. From December, 1967-1976, his work was exhibited in such venues as the Empire State Building, Observation Tower, New York, NY; The Pam Am Building, New York, NY; the Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; Columbia University, New York, NY; Elma Lewis School of Fine Art, Dorchester, MA; University of Florida, Gainesville, FL; Milliken University, Decatur, IL; Reading Public Museum and Art Gallery, Reading, PA; University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI; and the Illinois State Museum, Springfield, IL.
Significant exhibitions include: “Black New Artists of the 20th Century: Selections from the Schomburg Center Collections”, 1970; traveling exhibitions “New Black Artists”, 1971 and “Black Art – Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African-American Art”, 1989-91.
Anderson’s work was favorable reviewed and commented upon by such notables as John Canady of The New York Times on October 8, 1969, with a headline stating “Sculpture Is Strength of ‘New Black Artists’ Show” and Robert Taylor of the Boston Globe on November 22, 1973 with the headline “Anderson Pigatt’s sculpture seen in ‘Speaking Spirits’”. Other comments and accolades come from correspondence from Thomas W. Leavitt, Director of the Herbert f. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Joseph V. Noble, Vice Director for Administration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Dr. Robert Bishop, Director of Museum of American Folk Art in New York.
Mr. Pigatt was selected to participate in the exhibition and publication, Black Art Ancestral Legacy, sponsored by the Dallas Museum of Art, which showed at the High Museum in Atlanta, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond. His work has been purchased by such notables as Singer Richie Havens, artists Andy Warhol and John Biggers.
Elizabeth T. Scott (1916-2011)grew up in Chester, South Carolina, the sixth of fourteen children. There were seven brothers and seven sisters. Her father sharecropped the land where her grandparents had lived as slaves. “He was a sharecropper and we were sharecroopper’s children. Victims,” she says. The tradition of quilting was an integral part of the rural black American experience. Elizabeth’s mother and father quilted. At the age of nine, she began her first quilt and has since developed into an extraordinary artist. Her images not only ellicit rememberances of Africans’ past but evoke new visual traditions in the display of bright colors, complex pattern, animals, buttons, rocks, and “monsters” that grace the stitched surface of her quilts.
Elizabeth T. Scott provides the annals of history with a critical challenge to address the aesthetic contributions of blacks in the New World. More importantly, she presents us with the aesthetic continuity of deep-seated traditions, practiced over generations of time through the linkage of the extended family. We have few records of the African-American families who had active and continuous histories of involvement in the plastic arts; the creative energies of Scott and her family have prevailed where others have yet to be discovered.
Scott practiced her art until 1940, when she moved to Baltimore and ceased to make quilts on a regular basis. Through the constant encouragement of her daughter and her friends, Scott began to quilt again in the mid-1970s. She developed a remarkable body of work and began to exhibit her quilts in conjunction with the work of her daughter, Joyce Jane Scott, a mixed media-performance artist, at Gallery 409 in Baltimore and the Art Gallery of the University of Maryland at College Park. Scott worked relentlessly, and as she produced more quilts, she was invited to teach and lecture at colleges, universities, recreation centers, special workshops, and senior citizens’ groups throughout the state of Maryland. She was asked to exhibit and lecture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Smithsonian Instutition’s Folk Life, Festival, as well as at numerous galleries along the east coast from New York City to Washington, DC.
Scott worked intermittently on that first quilt, begun at the age of nine, for fifty years–hence its title, the Fifty Year Quilt. Her mother, Mamie, took an active interest in Scott’s selection of cloths and colors; at one point, Scott recalls, her mother made her remove a square from the lower right corner because it was too bright. The Fifty Year Quilt is embellished with embroidery and stitchery that form images and symbols of flowers, stars, and animals.
The Plantation Quilt, one of a new series completed in 1979, is conceived from a double perspective. The stars, which are placed almost randomly across the surface, approximate their positions in the sky on a clear evening, just as they might have been seen by women who sat out on their porches sewing and piecing after a long, hard day of work. The stitches under the star pattern take on the contours of a farm, with rows of stitching standing in for the rows of crops. “That’s the way the fields were surveyed off,” Scott explains. “Every corner had to be filled. There were no leavings, no spots in the field. The fields had to be finished.”
-excerpted from the WCA Honor Awards Program of the National Women’s Caucus for Art Conference, Boston, MA, February 10-13, 1987
Exhibitions
National Aquarium in Baltimore, 1994, Edition no: 32/75, Screenprint, (image: courtesy Steven Scott Gallery)
about the artist | watch artists’ talk
The In and Outsiders explores formally trained artist Thomas (Tom) Miller’s (1945-2000) brightly colored “Afro-Deco” painted furniture pieces and silkscreen prints, and self-taught artists Anderson (Andy) Pigatt’s (1928-2009) evocative sculptures and Elizabeth T. Scott’s (1916-2011) richly embellished quilts. Their works are inspired by folklore, imagination and memory, woven around material cultural and social commentary and rooted in the deep-seated tradition of storytelling through art making.
Myrtis Bedolla, Curator
Secondary Market
The Secondary Art Market includes works of art that have been sold before and are available again for sale in the market place. Galerie Myrtis offers personalized divestment strategies to art collectors seeking to sell works through art auctions or private resale. Our expertise in the local, national and international art markets allows us to negotiate profitable sales for clients. We also offer confidential auction representation. For more information call 410-235-3711 or at sales@galeriemyrtis.com
Galerie Myrtis Extra! 15 Tips for Building a Fine Art Collection
Artist
artwork | video | statement | bio | bibl. | press | resume
African-American Visual Artists – An Annotated Bibliography of Educational Resource Materials. Daniel Frye. The Scarecrow Press, Inc.: Lanham, MD, February 7, 2001
Almanac of African American Heritage: A Book of Lists Featuring People, Places, Times, And Events that Shaped Black Culture. Juanita J. Davis, Sharon E. Ferguson-Roberts, Rita G. Giles and Johnnie H. Miles. Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, NY, 2000.
Anonymous.”Harlem Unveiling.” New York Post: New York, NY, August 26, 1975.
Black Art – Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African-American Art. Robert V. Rozelle, Alvia Wardlaw and Maureen A. McKenna, ed. Dallas Museum of Art: Dallas, TX, 1989.
Bullard, C. “African Roots Nourish Universal Images.” Richmond Times-Dispatch: Richmond, VA, October 15, 1993.
Canady, John. ” Sculpture is the Strength of New Black Artists’ Show.” The New York Times: New York, NY, October 8, 1971.
Chandler, Dana. “Anderson Pigatt: A Self-Taught Artist.” Bay State Banner. Boston, MA, November 22, 1973.
Dorsey, John. “Pigatt Retrospective.” The Baltimore Sun: Baltimore, MD, October 20, 1998.
King Hammond, Leslie. Masters, Mentors and Makers.Pavsner Press: Baltimore, MD, 1992.
King Hammond, Leslie. The Intuitive Eye. Harbor Exchange: Baltimore, MD, 1985.
Masters, Barbara. “Integrity of the Message and the Medium.” AURA of the Arts: Baltimore, MD, August 1977.
Pigatt, A. “A Tree Returns to Harlem.” New York Voice: New York, NY, Aug. 29, 1975.
Preston, Malcolm. “Distinctly Black.” Newsday: Long Island, NY, December 24, 1971.
Sharp, Christopher. “Arts and Pleasures, Stories in Wood.” Womens Wear Daily: New York, NY, August 31, 1976.
Smythe, Victor. Black New York Artists of the 20th Century: Selections from the Schomburg Collections. New York Public Library Press: New York, NY, 1998.
Speaking Spirits: Nov. 18-Dec. 2, 1973: Sculpture by Anderson J. Pigatt: Museum of National Center of Afro-American Artists. National Center of Afro-American Artists, 1973
Stevens, Elisabeth. “Intuitive Eye is Artists’ Vision.” The Baltimore Sun: Baltimore, MD, June 6, 1985.
St. James Guide to Black Artists: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Thomas Riggs. St James Press: An Imprint of Gale: Detroit, MI, 1997.
Taylor, Edward. New Black Artists.Clarke and Way, Inc., 1969.
Taylor, Robert. “Anderson J. Pigatt Sculpture Seen in Speaking Spirits.” Boston Globe: Boston, MA, November 22 ,1973.
Artist
artwork | video | statement | bio | bibl. | press | resume
Most of us have lost the real reason why we came into this world, and believe me there is a reason, only known to you – not your mother, father, sister, brother or anyone on this earth – only you before your entry. But if we do as we were intended to do – that is to move around this world – we will find our path again, making us happy for finding the truth. Don’t wait for the truth to come to you; most likely it is a lie.
The path, when found, we must walk until death. If a man takes a wife, and he is of path, truth, love and good health, old age will come to them a happy death. For sickness is a lack of work, and work should be doing the things that make life better for you, your family and friends. If there are kids, they must grow free with only the teaching of truth, so they can keep moving toward their path. And in a lot of cases the son’s path will be the same as the father’s, for the father’s truth will shine bright in the eyes of the son.
Age to me means wisdom: how to move, where to move, what to do, what not to do, and to keep moving toward your end. The end could very well mean another beginning in another life. I often think of my father on his deathbed and the last thing he said that was understood. He said, “What has a man gained if he’s gained the world and lost his soul?” I guess this is why I’m a woodworker, for you see, wood to me is always alive.
These dead trees that I write stories on may last 1,000 years for the world to see. And even though they might become outdated, they are a part of our time. I feel as though some day others may laugh at them to know that man was so dumb. Yet we all work toward that day when killing and hating another man’s color will be a thing of the past, when work will be a thing of enjoyment for all man; the time when there will be no rich man or poor man, black man or white – only man. For when God made man, there were lights, color and sound, happiness all around, and my dream is to bring it about again by returning light, color and sound to the consciousness of mankind. And I will work until hate be replaced with love and greed is replaced with giving.
Powerful is the man of truth and love, taking nothing and giving eternal life.
Artist
artwork | video | statement | bio | bibl. | press | resume
Anderson Pigatt was born in Raeford, North Carolina, October 20, 1928. He received vocational training in general woodworking and carpentry at George Washington Carver High School. Pigatt served in the United States Army in 1950-55; studied cabinetmaking on the G.I. Bill after leaving the military; and apprenticed under James W. Leach, Baltimore, Maryland in refinishing and repairing period antique furniture.
Pigatt performed free-lance work in New York after 1963, working for firms such as Worldwide Antiques, Leonard’s Antique Gallery, Knapp and Seigal Antiques, et al. Restoration experience includes work on Chippendale, Jacobean, Sheraton, Queen Anne and other types of collections.
Anderson launched his sculpture career late in 1960’s. A self-taught sculptor, his work is represented in a number of private and institutional collections.
“Nigger Chained” a seminal work is in the permanent collection of the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York. Other sculptures are in the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York; Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Baltimore, MD; and the American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore, MD.
Mr. Pigatt participated in exhibitions sponsored by the American Federation of Fine Arts, the Urban Center of Columbia University, the Harlem Council and Bell Telephone Company. From December, 1967-1976, his work was exhibited in such venues as the Empire State Building, Observation Tower, New York, NY; The Pam Am Building, New York, NY; the Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; Columbia University, New York, NY; Elma Lewis School of Fine Art, Dorchester, MA; University of Florida, Gainesville, FL; Milliken University, Decatur, IL; Reading Public Museum and Art Gallery, Reading, PA; University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI; and the Illinois State Museum, Springfield, IL.
Significant exhibitions include: “Black New Artists of the 20th Century: Selections from the Schomburg Center Collections”, 1970; traveling exhibitions “New Black Artists”, 1971 and “Black Art – Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African-American Art”, 1989-91.
Anderson’s work was favorable reviewed and commented upon by such notables as John Canady of The New York Times on October 8, 1969, with a headline stating “Sculpture Is Strength of ‘New Black Artists’ Show” and Robert Taylor of the Boston Globe on November 22, 1973 with the headline “Anderson Pigatt’s sculpture seen in ‘Speaking Spirits’”. Other comments and accolades come from correspondence from Thomas W. Leavitt, Director of the Herbert f. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Joseph V. Noble, Vice Director for Administration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Dr. Robert Bishop, Director of Museum of American Folk Art in New York.
Mr. Pigatt was selected to participate in the exhibition and publication, Black Art Ancestral Legacy, sponsored by the Dallas Museum of Art, which showed at the High Museum in Atlanta, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond. His work has been purchased by such notables as Singer Richie Havens, artists Andy Warhol and John Biggers.
