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Artist Shirley Woodson’s bold strokes There’s a lot going on in Shirley Woodson’s vivid paintings. And at 85, this artist and former schoolteacher is being celebrated with her first one-woman show at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Correspondent Rita Braver reports. Elana Meyers Taylor is most-decorated Black Winter Olympian The Douglasville, Georgia native won a Bronze in her final event in Beijing.

Eluster Richardson poses for a portrait with some of his painting, which will be displayed at the Anderson Brickler Gallery in October. Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat Source: Tallahassee.com The last months of 2021 and all of 2022 are set to be banner years for one of Tallahassee’s most beloved painters, Eluster Richardson, who will show both here in Tallahassee, and later at the Gadsden Arts Center. With “Quilts, Lives, Legacies, (Oct. 9-Dec. 29, 2021) at Tallahassee’s Anderson Brickler Gallery, Richardson will close the year with a personal glimpse of the wonderous real-life quilts created by his mother, and the mesmerizing art into which he turned not only images of the coverlets, but also of the woman who made them. Since he was small, Eluster Richardson has never been far from art. He found it among the rocks, dirt, trees, and water of the Ayavalla Plantation where he was born. He created it in small sketchbooks where drawings of wrenches and hand drills would appear beneath his pencil. And later he would go on to reproduce the natural art he observed within his own home, a place where simple things, simple tasks, the ordinary act of making a bed or folding laundry would become an existential meditation on what it means to be alive. To be alive, yes, says the 70-year-old painter as he gazes at a painting of his mother who died at 97, but a means to leave a legacy that will forever say his mother, Amanda Richardson, was important — and that in his paintings of her and her quilts, the life she lived will be honored. Eluster Richardson’s “Young Girl Sleeping,” Oil on canvas 36 X 48 inches, 2017, is part of the “Quilts, Lives, Legacies” exhibit opening at Anderson Brickler Gallery on October 9, 2021. ‘I love the human figure’ Even as you see the oil paintings of Eluster Richardson’s wife, mother, or daughter going about their daily lives upon his canvases, two things become clear: one, Richardson loves color. And second, he is a master of the “color block” background—geometric panels that are sometimes part of a room or a shadow, sometimes, abstracted forms that perfect a piece. Just as in a quilt, where each square brings a different hue, adds its own unique voice to the chorus of the whole, so do the colors and designed back-grounds of his paintings. Then, of course, there are Eluster’s “quilt women” who busy themselves with careful stitches, or drape themselves in pixeled cloth, or smooth the wrinkles of fabric, even as time creates its own upon them. “I love the human figure,” says Richardson from his home studio. “I’ve painted my daughter, Jasmine, from the time she was in diapers.” Sometimes dancing, other times reflective, Jasmine with a brilliant scarf around her head, or posing as an African princess, brings her own drama to a Richardson work. Eluster Richardson poses for a portrait with some of his painting, which will be displayed at the Anderson Brickler Gallery in October. Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat Tribute to painter’s mother For the current Anderson-Brickler show, it is mostly Amanda Richardson’s turn. “After nearly 30 years at the telephone company as a systems engineer, I had retired — just when my mother needed me. She moved into my home, and we found ourselves with time to devote to our passions … my art, and her quilting.” Richardson says his mother would have scraps of cloth all over the living room, but he could see her patience and her zeal for what she was creating. And together, their lives became part of the legacy he always has at the back of his mind. Fourteen of his paintings will adorn the Anderson Brickler walls, along with four of his mother’s real quilts. Another from the family of Marjorie Turnbull dating to the 1800s, and one by Valerie S. Goodwin, former FAMU professor, whose quilt deals with African burial grounds, will be on display. Interest in quilts has burgeoned over the years. Quilting societies have sprung up, fine arts galleries feature them as both forms of vernacular art and as pieces of hand-made fine art, both primitive and highly detailed. Kabuya Priscilla Bowens-Saffo, the ABG’s Chief Curator, has reached out to local quilting shops and organizations to share their own stories, quilts, and legacies. She hopes to mount their submitted photos and histories of their quilts in a separate room at the gallery. Eluster Richardson works on a painting in his studio. Marina Brown Gallery founder creates glossy exhibit books Dr. Celeste Hart, who is the fourth generation in line to the formidable and lauded Harriet Tubman, in addition to being a practicing medical doctor in the Brickler family tradition, established the Anderson Brickler Gallery as part of her devotion to art, its history, and the experiences art can produce. She also wanted to extend the appreciation of the moment of seeing deeply moving art by providing the viewer with something tangible to take home to relive the experience. “I have long been a collector of art catalogs. I often see things I missed in the works when they were first viewed. Art is very specific to a given time and place, capturing history in ways other documentary media do not.” Eluster Richardson poses for a portrait with some of his painting, which will be displayed at the Anderson Brickler Gallery in October. Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat Hart believes that in addition to “thanking” the artists for the display of their works, it is important to see their development and the time spent in its evolution. Her response has been a hard-bound, glossy print book of two of the Anderson Brickler’s exhibitions: that of Ken Falana, and now, Eluster Richardson. “To have a book of my paintings is something I have dreamed about for 25 years,” says Richardson. “And this one is beautifully produced.” Richardson will have a book signing at the gallery Nov. 13. And yet new works are always literally “on the drawing board.” From his home studio, just off the living room where his family gathers, Eluster Richardson can be found most evenings, sketching, working in watercolors, oils, even creating figurative sculptures that will be turned to bronze. “It’s like scratching an itch that never goes away,” he laughs. And everyone who sees his work is very, very glad that as of yet, there is no remedy. If You Go What: Exhibition of the work of Eluster Richardson, “Quilts, Lives, Legacies” When: Exhibit opens Saturday, Oct. 9, and runs through Dec 29 Where: Anderson Brickler Gallery, 1747 S. Adams, Lower Level Artist Talk and Book Signing: 3-4 p.m. Nov. 13, Contact: andersonbricklergallery.com

Source: Tallahassee Democrat Stanley Johnson, a local photographer, will have an exhibit titled “Walls” at the Anderson Brickler Gallery starting Friday, October 30, 2020. In the Anderson Bricker Gallery’s new exhibition of photography opening Oct. 30, Stan Johnson illuminates what so many African Americans have felt for generations. Titled simply, “Walls,” Johnson’s poignant images for the first time find the photographic artist speaking about his own life, and the barriers, be they brick or bias, that people “like him” face every day. Johnson was born in Quincy, an athletic boy who would later put his football talent to use in his home town. His mother was a teacher, and father a maintenance man who had an affinity for the camera. “My dad had been in the military and acquired a German Kodak Retina 1A camera there that he used for taking family photos.” At the time, Johnson’s interests leaned more toward elaborate “doodling” and a fascination with bugs, but like his father, he had begun to “play around” with that well-used camera. Entering FAMU, Johnson wavered between entomology and engineering. But like many others before him, neither major proved a perfect fit. What had begun to blossom however, was an artistic sensibility inspired by an art-majoring fraternity brother. “I began to paint in acrylics. Later I took up air brush work. I developed proficiency in screen printing,” Johnson said, all culminating, while still a student, in his becoming the senior graphic artist at a custom T-shirt company. An award-winning photograph by Stanley Johnson titled “What Future?” is part of his exhibit “Walls” which will be at the Anderson Brickler Gallery starting Friday, October 30, 2020. But Johnson says he realized he would not graduate college in four years, and he was eager to get on with his life. Almost surprising himself, he enlisted in the Marines, where he would spend the next three years traveling the world…and acquiring a good camera for himself — an AE1 Canon. Yet it would not be used professionally for years to come. After the Marines, Johnson worked in state and county government jobs, started his own successful screen-print T-shirt company, and returned to FAMU to earn a degree in Graphic Communications, eventually using it doing graphics for the Gadsden City Times, and for the Department of Children and Families. It was from that springboard, that his artistic life truly grew. “DCF asked me if I could create a brochure and video about foster children and their families. They also wanted still photographs of eight or 10 of the children. When they came back…,” he says with incredulity, “They were really pretty good. These are nice!” And so, in 2005 Johnson began a kind of “college course” in photographic self-teaching. He was excited like he had never been in school. He read everything he could on photography, and laid down his old AE1 Canon to buy a new Canon EOS R digital camera, which he admits, appealed to his need for “immediate gratification.” Walls: Pure Liberty Lost by Stan Johnson Soon, Johnson was documenting weddings and anniversaries, creating portraits in his own studio, and tending to the new company he had started, Stan Johnson PhotoGraphics (SJPG.) And yet, as the years went on, he says he was feeling a little burned out with the routine assignments. “I needed a new vision. I guess I needed some new inspiration from professionals who were not self-taught like I was.” In 2018, Johnson decided to get a Masters in Photography from the Academy of Art at the University of San Francisco. Italy Palio Di Siena, one of the images Stan Johnson shot while studying in Italy. The directional turn from that period is clear. The resulting images from three months’ study-abroad in Italy show color-flooded landscapes, lonely people in the midst of crowds, stunning close-ups of horses at the famed Palio in Sienna. But there is also a shift in the artist’s motives. “One of the professors told me that my photos were great, but that he didn’t see “me” there. He pushed me to put myself into the work,” says Johnson. And so began the emergence of Johnson’s own truth into the photographer’s work. An African American man making a statement about living today in America. What will hang in the Anderson Brickler Gallery beginning Oct. 30 and running through Dec. 30 is what Stan Johnson calls his “Master’s Thesis.” “In the past, I had always photographed as if I were trying to not offend. These images represent what I feel.” Titled, “Walls,” the exhibition will show 16 photographs depicting the barriers to a full and empowered life experienced by African Americans and other minorities in the United States today. Though a wrenching topic, the photographs are beautiful, their compositions painterly, their messages delivered without bitterness, but with a sadness that perhaps may move another human soul toward change. Walls: Empty Pockets by Stan Johnson A young black man against a white brick wall whose “Empty Pockets” depict not only poverty, but the opportunities that are lacking in his life. The photo of a young woman seated behind bars as she holds a withering flower, which Johnson says speaks to the loss of true liberty felt by African Americans and minorities. A photograph of two black youngsters gazing at the American flag from behind a pane of glass, a barrier that though invisible, keeps them from true participation in the American dream. These and other photographs, Stan Johnson says, confront the disparities he has felt in this land of liberty. Johnson, who was born into a segregated South, delivered by a black midwife into a black household, attending an all-black school in an all-black community knows that his opportunities were limited. He remembers two years of what he calls, “true integration” and the friendship of a peer who was white, only to have the friendship extinguished when the “private white school was built.” Stan Johnson, along with Cynthia Rose, a poet, he has published the E-book, “Beautiful Grace,” filled with his photographs and verses of the Bible. Johnson recalls the looks of disgust from white adults to the dark-skinned grade school boy and the verbal abuses he heard yelled at grown-ups he loved. In his images at the Anderson Brickler Gallery, Stan Johnson means to challenge and mentally provoke the viewer with a hope that the inequality born from what feels like an uncaring society will be altered. But in the man himself there seems little bitterness or anger. Instead, along with Cynthia Rose, a poet, he has published the E-book, “Beautiful Grace,” filled with his photographs and verses of the Bible, and a forthcoming volume of poetry and photography, called “Journey of Light.” From a man who has grown from technician to an artist willing to expose his innermost feelings, the new exhibition of photographs is a journey many will want to take. Contact Marina Brown at: mcdb100@comcast.net.