Otto Neals | |
|---|---|
 Otto Neals with Marty Markowitz in 2009 | |
| Born | December 11, 1931 |
| Occupation(s) | painter and sculptor |
Otto Neals (born December 11, 1931 [1] ) is an American painter and sculptor. Throughout his career, Neals worked as an illustrator at the Brooklyn Post Office while pursuing independent art projects in his spare time. [2] He currently resides in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. [3]
Born in South Carolina, Neals moved to New York at the age of four and displayed a passion for painting from a young age. Neals studied commercial art at George Westinghouse Vocational High School, and briefly attended the Brooklyn Museum Art School. [4] Neals studied under notable artists such as Isaac Soyer, Krishna Reddy, Mohammed Khalil, Roberto DeLomanica, and Vivian Schuyler Key. [5]
Neals has been a member of the Weusi Artist Collective since the 1960s. [6]
Neals has been commissioned to execute several public works, including ten bronze plaques for the Harlem Walk of Fame, a 20-foot mural in Kings County Hospital, a bronze of Percy Sutton at the City University of New York, and a bronze monument inspired by the children's book Peter's Chair as centerpiece of an Imagination Playground in Prospect Park. [2] [4] His work is exhibited in the Smithsonian Institution, Howard University, and the Columbia Museum of Art. [7] He features in the private collections of John Lewis, Harry Belafonte, and Oprah Winfrey, [8] and was the subject of an exhibition in the gallery inside the Soldiers' and Sailors' Arch at Grand Army Plaza. [2]
In June 2015, the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation held a 50-year retrospective of his sculptures. [9]
Neals is a founding artist of the Fulton Art Fair, the oldest Black visual arts event in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. [10]
Neals has been the recipient of the New York City Art Commission's Award for Excellence in Design. [11]
Fort Greene is a neighborhood in the northwestern part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Flushing Avenue and the Brooklyn Navy Yard to the north, Flatbush Avenue Extension and Downtown Brooklyn to the west, Atlantic Avenue and Prospect Heights to the south, and Vanderbilt Avenue and Clinton Hill to the east. The Fort Greene Historic District is listed on the New York State Registry and on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a New York City designated historic district.
Bedford–Stuyvesant, colloquially known as Bed–Stuy, is a neighborhood in the northern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Bedford–Stuyvesant is bordered by Flushing Avenue to the north, Classon Avenue to the west, Broadway to the east, and Atlantic Avenue to the south. The main shopping street, Fulton Street, runs east–west the length of the neighborhood and intersects high-traffic north–south streets including Bedford Avenue, Nostrand Avenue, and Stuyvesant Avenue. Bedford–Stuyvesant contains four smaller neighborhoods: Bedford, Stuyvesant Heights, Ocean Hill, and Weeksville. Part of Clinton Hill was once considered part of Bedford–Stuyvesant.
Ocean Hill is a subsection of Bedford–Stuyvesant in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 16 and was founded in 1890. The ZIP code for the neighborhood is 11233. Ocean Hill's boundaries start from Broadway and the neighborhood of Bushwick in the north, Ralph Avenue and the neighborhoods of Bedford-Stuyvesant proper and Crown Heights to the west, East New York Avenue and the neighborhood of Brownsville to the south, and Van Sinderen Avenue and the neighborhood of East New York to the east.
The Sumner Avenue Line and New Lots Avenue Line were two streetcar lines in Brooklyn, New York City, running mainly along Marcus Garvey Boulevard, East 98th Street, and New Lots Avenue between northern Bedford–Stuyvesant and New Lots. Originally streetcar lines, the two lines were combined as a bus route in 1947. That bus route became the present B15 Marcus Garvey Boulevard / New Lots Avenue service, operated by MTA New York City Bus' East New York Depot in East New York. The B15 continues east from New Lots to John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens.
Woodhull Medical Center, branded as NYC Health + Hospitals/Woodhull, is a health care system located in the Bedford–Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York City, United States. Its focus is on preventing disease and promoting healthy lifestyles in the community of North Brooklyn through its fifteen centers. Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center falls administratively under New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation. As of 2018, the current CEO is Gregory Calliste.
The Bronx Museum of the Arts (BxMA), also called the Bronx Museum of Art or simply the Bronx Museum, is an American cultural institution located in Concourse, Bronx, New York. The museum focuses on contemporary and 20th-century works created by American artists, but it has hosted exhibitions of art and design from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Its permanent collection consists of more than 800 paintings, sculptures, photographs, and works on paper. The museum is part of the Grand Concourse Historic District.
The Bruce High Quality Foundation is an arts collective in Brooklyn, New York City, the United States, which was "created to foster an alternative to everything." The collective is made up of five to eight rotating and anonymous members, most or all of whom are Cooper Union graduates. The group has attracted attention with the subversive, humorous and erudite style of their work and operates an unaccredited art school, the Bruce High Quality Foundation University.
Dindga McCannon is an African-American artist, fiber artist, muralist, teacher author and illustrator. She co-founded the collective Where We At, Black Women Artists in 1971.
The bust of Edward Snowden, called Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument 2.0 by its creators, was an ephemeral, illegally installed public sculpture of Edward Snowden, an American whistleblower who leaked classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) and was charged with federal crimes as a result. The bronze-like bust was placed in Fort Greene Park in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, New York City, on April 6, 2015. This sparked outrage by the Society of Old Brooklynites. It was attached to a Doric column on the perimeter of the park's Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument, a memorial and crypt which honors and inters the more than 11,500 American prisoners of war who died in the American Revolution while housed on British prison ships.
Chief Charles A. Joshua Plaza is a .22-acre public space located at the crossroads of Ralph Avenue, Fulton Street and Macdougal Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. The plaza's namesake, Chief Charles Adebowale Joshua (1924-1999) was a community activist who led efforts to stimulate cooperation among the neighborhood's numerous nonprofit organizations, including programs serving foster children, people with mental disabilities and people living with HIV and AIDS. Beginning in 1973, as Executive Director of the Central Brooklyn Coordinating Council, he worked to stimulate cooperation among more than 135 community agencies in implementing social programs benefiting local residents. Joshua was also a founder of the Caribbean-American Chamber of Commerce and Industry, an organization founded in 1985 to provide assistance to small businesses within the city's Caribbean immigrant community.
Emmett Wigglesworth is a muralist, painter, sculptor, fabric designer, poet and civil rights activist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has resided in New York since 1958. Wigglesworth is known for his abstract and colorful murals that he says are inspired by his own cultural heritage and life experience.
Weusi Artist Collective is an organization of African-American artists, established in 1965, based in the Harlem section of New York City. Inspired by the Black Arts Movement, the members of the Weusi Artist Collective create art invoking African themes and symbols. The organization was a major driving force behind the development, production and dissemination of black art in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.
Che Baraka is an American mixed media artist whose conceptional and abstract paintings have been exhibited across the United States. Baraka was born in Chicago, Illinois. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions and collections throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Rasu Jilani is an independent curator, social sculptor, and an entrepreneur whose work is to investigate the intersection between art, culture and civic engagement as a means of raising critical consciousness. The objective of his work is to activate interaction between artists, the local community and the wider public in order to promote awareness around social issues through exhibitions, humanities, community programs, and cultural events.
Blaise Tobia is a contemporary artist and photographer who lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is married to sculptor, Virginia Maksymowicz. Together they maintain TandM Arts Studio.
Sigmund Abeles is an American figurative artist and art educator. His work embodies the "expressive and psychological aspects of the human figure; an art focused on the life cycle." He taught art for 27 years at various institutions including Swain School of Design, Wellesley College, Boston University, the National Academy, and the Art Students League of New York. Currently Professor Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire, Abeles works full-time in his NYC and upstate NY studios. He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards for printmaking, drawing, painting, and sculpture, including Pastel Society of America Hall of Fame honoree in 2004 and most recently the Artists' Fellowship 2017 Benjamin West Clinedinst Medal. His work can be found in many public institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Art Institute of Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Abeles was one of three artists featured in Manfred Kirchheimer's 2012 feature-length independent film Art Is... The Permanent Revolution, on the history of the art of protest in prints.
The East was a community education and arts organization in Brooklyn, New York City focused on black nationalism, which was founded in 1969.
Jitu Weusi was an American educator, education advocate, author, a community leader, writer, activist, mentor, jazz and art program promoter. He is one of the founders of the National Black United Front, Jitu Weusi Institute for Development, and the International African Arts Festival. The festival started in 1971.
The Parfitt Brothers were architects in Brooklyn, New York CIty. The firm included three brothers, Henry, Walter and Albert, who were born in Frome, England. They were "one of Brooklyn’s best and busiest architectural firms of the late 19th and early 20th" centuries. They designed row houses, mansions, apartment buildings, public offices, commercial buildings and churches. Their work includes two buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places: Moody Mansion in Pittston, Maine and the Tree Studio Building and Annexes in Chicago.
William "Bill" Lowell Howell was a graphic designer, painter, illustrator, set designer and photographer. He was an early member of the Weusi Artist Collective, a group of artists who helped birth the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s. He was art director for The New Lafayette Theatre in New York and its Black Theater magazine. He co-founded the Pamoja Studio Gallery in New York in 1967.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
