John Robinson's Art | Back in the early 1990s my stepmother inherited two paintings from her cousin Dorothy. The paintings whose three images you see here were done by a friend and coworker, a man named John Robinson. Now I don't know much of the artist. I know that his work has been on exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery [1976] and at Washington DC's City Hall [1986]. He painted ~and began exhibiting~ at a time when established black artists rarely gained recognition. Thus it is all the more remarkable that Robinson, who worked as a kitchen helper at St Elizabeth's Hospital, (and not as well connected with loftier realms of cultural commerce) was able to develop a memorable body of work and to then get his work exhibited. Largely self-taught, he worked in media that were less costly but always managed to keep up his efforts. Mr. Robinson's exhibition with the Corcoran, incidentally, was completed with funds coming from the National Endowment for the Arts, as part of an effort to get local, and lesser known artists, the recognition their works warrant and deserve.

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other sites of interest about African-American Artists

National Center of Afro-American Artists | Roxbury MA: exhibitions, collections, conservation, publications, research and education

Ijele | Civil Rights and the African American Artists: Have we Overcome?

Artnoir Index listings of Afro-Artists on the Internet

Don Mabry's Historic Text Archive | An extensive bibliography [1993] resource of Afro-American Artists and Art

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Steve Driscoll portrays electrical linemen at their jobs. Mr. Driscoll is not just one interested in this as a visual subject matter but is also employed as a lineman himself. || A self-taught illustrator, he uses pencil as his medium to depict his co-workers risking their lives regularly.

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     From the sculpture end, the site also makes note of Michael Garman[ ^ ], whose work actually pays tribute to not only linemen (look for them in the "professionals" on his site) but also to many whose lives helped "shape America-the firemen, sportsmen, professionals,military personnel, heroes of early America, streetpeople..." and others.
     Personally, I'm hard pressed to figure out how golfers are iconocized as American heroes, and I find some of Garman's work a little on the kitchy side, but the variety in his work is intriguing. Moreover, his attitude about public access to artistic creations "...that art should be available to everyone and, much as a classic book becomes published in paperback to the affordable by the general public..." works for me.

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