Calvin B. Jones

Last updated

Calvin Bell Jones (January 7, 1934 – August 21, 2010) [1] was an afrocentric visual artist and a Black Arts Movement activist from Chicago. He is known primarily for his nine murals and paintings.

Contents

He was awarded a full scholarship to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received his BFA in drawing/painting and illustration in 1957. [1] Jones' initial 17-year career was in advertising. He was Hallmark Cards' first African American Art Director [2] and worked for the first black-owned ad agency, Vince Cullers Advertising (founded in 1956). [3] Additionally, Jones worked with his own company, Sales Graphics Advertising.

Beginning in 1976, he became a community mural leader in Chicago and collaborated with Mitchell Caton on six Chicago murals. [4] Additionally, Jones' mural portfolio includes a mural in Detroit and Atlanta. [5] :254

Personal life

In the 1950s, Jones married Irene Tabron. They had a son, Byron Jones in the 1950s.[ citation needed ]

In the 1960s, Jones developed keratoconus, a corneal condition that causes vision distortion. The condition left him legally blind for much of his life. [3] He stated that it caused him "to see light like a kaleidoscope, eight times." Faheem Majeed, South Side Community Arts Center Executive Director and curator, posited that it was debatable if he created what he saw or if he was purposefully creating abstracted imagery. Jones received cornea transplants in the 1980s which restored his eyesight.

Jones kidney condition worsened while in California visiting his partner Cynthia Ross. He declined dialysis. His ashes are split between California's redwood forest and his surviving family.25 He is survived by his son Byron and his sister Alletta Jumper.

His papers are held at the Chicago Public Library [4]

Fine art paintings

Jones' paintings were exhibited internationally (Senegal and Nigeria). [3] His work was included in the Art in Chicago, 1945-1995 exhibition. [3]

The artwork of his early fine art career incorporated African American figures set against patterns reminiscent of African textiles. Jones' later artwork became abstract in the 1980s and used dramatic and textural compositions with intense colors, often incorporating objects onto the paintings such as bark, [3] ceramic kiln furniture, feathers, dyed fabric and paper-mache. [3]

When he was a freelancer, he was commissioned by Seagram Company and the Hiram Walker Foundation to paint what became the Beefeater set of limited edition prints "The Art of Good Taste". [3] "The set comprises the seven original paintings which traveled across the U.S. throughout 1992, as part of a major program sponsored by Beefeater to celebrate African American culture through art. [6] In its first year, "The Art of Good Taste" program generated 89.5 million impressions nationally through advertising, promotion, events, publicity and consumer offers. It was also acclaimed as "one of the most dramatic and well executed marketing promotional campaigns ever seen in the beverage industry." [7] The program earned five awards from Beverage Dynamics, along with the PRAME Award for best ethnic campaign from the National Association of Market Developers and the National Black Public Relations Society.*" [3]

Murals

Jones and Caton's influenced the murals of Chicago, with their identifiable aesthetic of patterns and realistic figures which can still be seen with the murals "A Time to Unite (with Justine DeVan), "Another Time's Voice Remembers My Passions Humanity", and "Memories of the Future". [8] :36

Jones and Mitchell Caton were part of the Chicago Mural Group. Their 1981 mural, Builders of the Cultural Present, used a segmented format in canted parallelograms for the mural composition. [9]

Olivia Guide and Jeff Hueber credit Jones and Caton for their innovated nonuniform mural contours which create a dynamic sense of vibrancy and movement as the composition was not confined by the paint and the building's surface. [8] :78 Jones and Caton's murals used strong colors and were technically finely executed because of their strong draftsmanship. [5] :31

Jones stated in 1994 that he did not use preliminary drawings or the grid method for his murals. He felt that it was a waste of his time. [5] :78 Jones would use African patterns in his mural designs to symbolize the progressive relationship between the past and the present. [5] :31

"We, as people, all have our idiosyncrasies, prejudices and stereotypes concerning art and culture. The only way this gap can be bridged is through exposure and education. My challenge and obligation is to document, sensitize and relate to the Black experience of the societies and cultures in which we live and to be a responsible communicator in the projection and relation of my heritage -- the mirror of my spiritual center." Calvin B. Jones [10]

Solo exhibits

Selected group exhibits

[12]

Commissions

Murals

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Romare Bearden</span> African American artist (1911–1988)

Romare Bearden was an American artist, author, and songwriter. He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils, and collages. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bearden grew up in New York City and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated from New York University in 1935.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aaron Douglas (artist)</span> American painter

Aaron Douglas was an American painter, illustrator and visual arts educator. He was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He developed his art career painting murals and creating illustrations that addressed social issues around race and segregation in the United States by utilizing African-centric imagery. Douglas set the stage for young, African-American artists to enter the public-arts realm through his involvement with the Harlem Artists Guild. In 1944, he concluded his art career by founding the Art Department at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. He taught visual art classes at Fisk until his retirement in 1966. Douglas is known as a prominent leader in modern African-American art whose work influenced artists for years to come.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Hunt (sculptor)</span> American artist and sculptor

Richard Howard Hunt is an American sculptor. In the second half of the 20th century, he became "the foremost African-American abstract sculptor and artist of public sculpture." Hunt, the descendant of enslaved people brought through the port of Savannah from West Africa, studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1950s, and while there received multiple prizes for his work. He was the first African American sculptor to have a retrospective at Museum of Modern Art in 1971. Hunt has created over 160 public sculpture commissions in prominent locations in 24 states across the United States, more than any other sculptor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hale Woodruff</span> African American artist

Hale Aspacio Woodruff was an American artist known for his murals, paintings, and prints.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert S. Duncanson</span> American painter

Robert Seldon Duncanson was a 19th-century American landscapist of European and African ancestry. Inspired by famous American landscape artists like Thomas Cole, Duncanson created renowned landscape paintings and is considered a second generation Hudson River School artist. Duncanson spent the majority of his career in Cincinnati, Ohio and helped develop the Ohio River Valley landscape tradition. As a free black man in antebellum America, Duncanson engaged the abolitionist community in America and England to support and promote his work. Duncanson is considered the first African-American artist to be internationally known. He operated in the cultural circles of Cincinnati, Detroit, Montreal, and London. The primary art historical debate centered on Duncanson concerns the role that contemporary racial issues played in his work. Some art historians, like Joseph D. Ketner, believe that Duncanson used racial metaphors in his artwork, while others, like Margaret Rose Vendryes, discourage viewers from approaching his art with a racialized perspective.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles W. White</span> American painter (1918–1979)

Charles Wilbert White, Jr. was an American artist known for his chronicling of African American related subjects in paintings, drawings, lithographs, and murals. White's lifelong commitment to chronicling the triumphs and struggles of his community in representational from, cemented him as one of the most well-known artists in African American art history. Following his death in 1979, White's work has been included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, The Newark Museum, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. White's best known work is The Contribution of the Negro to American Democracy, a mural at Hampton University. In 2018, the centenary year of his birth, the first major retrospective exhibition of his work was organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roger Brown (artist)</span> American artist and painter

Roger Brown was an American artist and painter. Often associated with the Chicago Imagist groups, he was internationally known for his distinctive painting style and shrewd social commentaries on politics, religion, and art.

Louis Jessup Delsarte III was an African-American artist known for what has sometimes been called his "illusionistic" style. He was a painter, muralist, printmaker, and illustrator.

Kerry James Marshall is an American artist and professor, known for his paintings of Black figures. He previously taught painting at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2017, Marshall was included on the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. He was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and moved in childhood to South Central Los Angeles. He has spent much of his career in Chicago, Illinois.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thelma Johnson Streat</span> American painter

Thelma Beatrice Johnson Streat (1912–1959) was an African-American artist, dancer, and educator. She gained prominence in the 1940s for her art, performance and work to foster intercultural understanding and appreciation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irving Kriesberg</span> American painter

Irving Kriesberg was an American painter, sculptor, educator, author, and filmmaker, whose work combined elements of Abstract Expressionism with representational human, animal, and humanoid forms. Because Kriesberg blended formalist elements with figurative forms he is often considered to be a Figurative Expressionist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mitchell Siporin</span> American painter

Mitchell Siporin (1910–1976) was a Social Realist American painter.

George Earl Ortman was an American painter, printmaker, constructionist and sculptor. His work has been referred to as Neo-Dada, pop art, minimalism and hard-edge painting. His constructions, built with a variety of materials and objects, deal with the exploration off visual language derived from geometry—geometry as symbol and sign.

Alvin D. Loving Jr., better known as Al Loving, was an African-American abstract expressionist painter. His work is known for hard-edge abstraction, fabric constructions, and large paper collages, all exploring complicated color relationships.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Kelpe</span> American painter

Paul Kelpe was a German-born American abstract painter. His constructions integrating found objects into paintings were the first such works created in the United States and he painted two of the five Williamsburg murals, the first abstract murals in the United States. In addition to his mural work for various American government projects, he was an innovative independent painter and university art professor. He was a pioneer of American abstract art, including his work in Chicago during a period in which abstracts were not well accepted or appreciated.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suzanne Jackson (artist)</span>

Suzanne Jackson is an American visual artist, gallery owner, poet, dancer, educator, and set designer; with a career spanning five decades. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world. Since the late 1960s, Jackson has dedicated her life to studio art with additional participation in theatre, teaching, arts administration, community life, and social activism. Jackson's oeuvre includes poetry, dance, theater, costume design, paintings, prints, and drawings.

Carole Marie Byard was an American visual artist, illustrator, and photographer. She was an award-winning illustrator of children's books, and the recipient of a Caldecott Honor, as well as multiple Coretta Scott King Awards.

Lawrence Arthur Jones (1910-1996) was a twentieth century African-American artist and printmaker. Born in Lynchburg, Virginia, Jones spent most of his career as an art teacher in Louisiana, Georgia, and Mississippi. He was a contemporary of the prominent black artists Charles White and Eldzier Cortor. Jones's most notable accomplishment is his establishment of a fine arts program at Jackson State University in Mississippi.

Vincent DaCosta Smith was an American artist, painter, printmaker and teacher. He was known for his depictions of black life.

Shirley Woodson is an American visual artist, educator, mentor, and art collector who is most known for her spectacular figurative paintings depicting African American history. Her work that spans a career of 60 years and counting can be found in the collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, among other institutions. Woodson was named the 2021 Kresge Eminent Artist. The Detroit Institute of Arts exhibited 11 of her pieces in "Shirley Woodson: Shield of the Nile" Dec. 18, 2021 through June 12, 2022, the museum's first solo exhibition of Ms. Woodson's work. A painting by Ms. Woodson is featured in the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit exhibition "Ground Up: Reflections on Black Abstraction" April 8-August 16, 2022.

References

  1. 1 2 Leiby, Sofia. "Calvin B. Jones (BFA 1961)". my.saic.edu. School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Archived from the original on 23 December 2015. Retrieved 23 December 2015.
  2. Huebner, Jeff. "An Artist's Homecoming". Chicago Reader. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Huebner, Jeff (10 March 2011). "An Artist's Homecoming". Chicago Reader. Sun-Times Media. Retrieved 23 December 2015.
  4. 1 2 "Jones, Calvin B. Papers". chipublib.org. Retrieved 23 December 2015.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Dunitz, Robin J.; Prigoff, James (2000). Walls of Heritage, Walls of Pride: African American Murals. San Francisco: Pomegranate. ISBN   0-7649-1339-5.
  6. "The Art of Good Taste". Ebony. Johnson Publishing Company: 9. August 1992. ISSN   0012-9011.
  7. Personal papers of Calvin B. Jones from Beefeater issued Press Release issued by The Morgan Group, Chicago, IL, Sharon Morgan, 312/769-5101
  8. 1 2 Gude, Olivia; Huebner, Jeff (2000). Urban Art Chicago: A Guide to Community Murals, Mosaics, and Sculptures. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee Publisher. ISBN   1-56663-284-6.
  9. Weber, John Pitman. "Mural Composition". CPAG.net. Retrieved 23 December 2015.
  10. Personal papers of Calvin B. Jones from the archives of Byron Jones
  11. Art Of The Masters: A Survey of African American Images, 1980 – 2000” by Dwight Smith, published by National Conference of Artists – Michigan Chapter, 1st Ed.; year 2009: Detroit – ISBN   978-0615344829
  12. "Jones, Calvin Bell. (Chicago, IL, 1934-Arcata, CA, 2010)". African-American Visual Artist Database. Retrieved 22 December 2015.

Further reading