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James W. Washington, Jr. (November 10, 1909 – June 7, 2000〔The Social Security Death Index lists only one James Washington who died in 2000 in Washington state; he is listed as having been issued his Social Security number in Mississippi, and these are the dates given; the November 10 birthday matches Washington's statements. However, several sources, including , give Washington's birth year as 1911.〕) was an African-American painter and sculptor who grew into prominence in the Seattle, Washington, art community.〔Susan Noyes Platt, "James W. Washington, Jr." in program for ''Making a Life | Creating a World'', Northwest African American Museum, 2008, an exhibit featuring works by Washington and by Jacob Lawrence.〕 ==Life== Washington was born and raised in Gloster, Mississippi, a rural mill town in the Jim Crow South.〔 He was one of six children of Baptist minister James Washington and his wife Lizzie.〔 While he was still a child, his father fled due to threats of violence, and they never met again.〔 He began to draw at the age of 12,〔 and apprenticed at the age of 14 to become a shoemaker, and worked a series of odd jobs. By the time he was 17, he had obtained his first Civil Service job; he worked for the federal government intermittently until his late 50s.〔 In 1938 he became involved with the Federal Works Progress Administration as an assistant art instructor at the Baptist Academy in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Excluded in the South from shows featuring white artists, he created a WPA-sponsored exhibition of Black artists, the first such in Mississippi.〔 In 1941 Washington moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where his mother had already taken up residence.〔 He worked there repairing shoes at Camp Robinson.〔 This Civil Service job soon took him to the Pacific Northwest, where he and his wife Janie Rogella Washington,〔 ''née'' Miller,〔 arrived in 1944. It was their home for the rest of their lives. Washington did electrical wiring for warships at the Bremerton, Washington Naval Base before transferring to Fort Lawton in Seattle, where he set up and operated a shoe shop.〔 He quickly became part of Seattle's then-small art community. He showed at the Frederick and Nelson Department Store Gallery with Leo Kenney, studied under Mark Tobey (who appears mostly to have encouraged him rather than taught him anything specific〔), and, from 1948 to 1961, curated a series of art shows at Seattle's Mt. Zion Baptist Church. Among the artists who showed there was photographer Kenneth Callahan, then curator at the Seattle Art Museum.〔 From the time of his study with Tobey, Washington's work took on characteristics of the Northwest School, sharing characteristics with Tobey's work and that of Morris Graves.〔 Other artists Washington met during this period were Fay Chong, Andrew Chinn, Kenjiro Nomura, John Matsudaira, and George Tsutakawa. He also took University of Washington extension classes with painter Yvonne Twining Humber and printmaker Glen Alps.〔 Washington and his wife lived in Seattle's Central District, near the Madison Valley; he maintained a studio in his home. From 1950 he was a member of Artists Equity Seattle; he served as its secretary (1950–1960) and later president (1960–1962).〔 Washington traveled to Mexico in 1951, where he met muralists Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros and where he encountered the soft volcanic stone that would soon drive his work in the direction of sculpture; what little sculpture he had done previously was in wood.〔〔 His first stone sculpture, ''Young Boy of Athens'' was done with a stone he picked up at Teotihuacán on the path between the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「James W. Washington, Jr.」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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