Wadsworth Aikens Jarrell (born November 20, 1929) is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker. He was born in Albany, Georgia, and moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he attended the Art Institute of Chicago. After graduation, he became heavily involved in the local art scene and through his early work he explored the working life of African Americans in Chicago and found influence in the sights and sounds of jazz music. In the late 1960s, he opened WJ Studio and Gallery, where he, along with his wife, Jae, hosted regional artists and musicians.
Mid-1960s Chicago saw a rise in racial violence leading to the examination of race relations and black empowerment by local artists. Jarrell became involved in the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), a group that would serve as a launching pad for the era's Black Arts movement. In 1967, OBAC artists created the Wall of Respect, a mural in Chicago that depicted African-American heroes and is credited with triggering the political mural movement in Chicago and beyond. In 1969, Jarrell co-founded AfriCOBRA (the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists). AfriCOBRA would become internationally acclaimed for their politically themed art and use of "coolade colors" in their paintings.
Jarrell's career took him in 1977 to Africa, where he found inspiration in the Senufo people of Ivory Coast, Mali and Burkina Faso. Upon return to the United States, he moved to Georgia and taught at the University of Georgia. In Georgia, he began to use a bricklayer's trowel on his canvases, creating a textured appearance within his already visually active paintings. The figures often seen in his paintings are abstract and inspired by the masks and sculptures of Nigeria. These Nigerian arts have also inspired Jarrell's totem sculptures. Living and working in Cleveland, Jarrell continues to explore the contemporary African-American experience through his paintings, sculptures, and prints. His work is found in the collections of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, High Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Detroit Institute of Arts and the University of Delaware.
Personal life
Early life Jarrell was born in Albany, Georgia, on November 20, 1929, to Solomon Marcus and Tabitha Jarrell. Named after the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, he was the youngest of six children.Douglas, 1. A year after Jarrell's birth, the family moved to a 28-acre farm near Athens, Georgia, where they grew vegetables and cotton. Jarrell's father was a carpenter and furniture maker who had his own business, the S.M. Jarrell Furniture Store.Douglas, 2. All three Jarrell boys worked there, one of them learning to cane chairs. Their father's artistic ability and mother's skill as a quilt-maker contributed to the entire family's love for art. As a child, Jarrell first attended a one-room schoolhouse, where he was encouraged by his teacher, Jessie Lois Hall, to explore his artistic side. He then went to a private Baptist school starting in the seventh grade before transferring to Athens High in the tenth grade. In high school, his talent for art was apparent as he started creating his own comic strip, cartoons for the school paper, and illustrations for sports events, finally taking up oil painting. As a young man interested in art during the late 1930s and early 1940s, he learned about painting and illustration through magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and Collier's. Unable to figure out the distinction between illustration and painting, Jarrell thought "artists eventually got rich – but it was illustrators making the large sums of money."Douglas, 2–3.
Jarrell's relationship with his mother became closer once his father and one of his brothers left to work at a shipyard during World War II. His father died of malaria while working there. While in high school, Jarrell helped his mother tend the farm, but did not like the work. After graduating from high school, he joined the Army, was stationed at Fort Polk, Louisiana, and served briefly in Korea. At Fort Polk, he became company artist and made extra money designing shirts and making paintings for fellow soldiers.Douglas, 5.
Higher education and current life
After military service, Jarrell moved to Chicago, where his sister Nellie attended Northwestern University. It was in Chicago that Jarrell had his first museum experiences. Growing in up Georgia, African Americans were not allowed to visit museums until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, therefore these early museum visits made a major impression on Jarrell. A year later, he enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago for advertising art and graphic design, where he attended night classes. His days were spent working at the International Paint company, where he mixed paint. He also took classes at the Ray Vogue School for Commercial Arts. He began attending the Art Institute full-time in 1954. Jarrell eventually lost interest in commercial art and focused on classes about painting and drawing, gaining inspiration from instructor Laura McKinnon and her ideas about spatial relationship theory. In 1958, he graduated with his original major(s), retaining a strong desire to pursue the life of a fine artist. At this time he also met artist Jeff Donaldson, who became a friend who influenced his career. In 1959, the year of Jarrell's first marriage, he became an advertising photographer, taking photos of type and lettering styles. The couple divorced shortly after the marriage.Douglas, 7.
In 1963, Jarrell met Elaine Annette Johnson, known as Jae, who ran a clothing boutique,Douglas, 19. the woman who became his second wife on June 2, 1967.Douglas, 22. They spent their honeymoon in Nassau and on January 7, 1968, Wadsworth Jr. was born. During the pregnancy, Jae closed her boutique and moved into Jarrell's studio, running a mail order service instead.Douglas, 24. As the social and economic world of Chicago declined, gang violence threatened the family's neighborhood. After their second child, Jennifer, was born the family decided to move to the New York City area.Douglas, 36. In May 1971, they made the move, first heading to Waterbury, Connecticut, then to New Haven, before spending three months in Boston. The family then moved to Washington, D.C., where Jarrell began teaching at Howard University in 1971, recruited by Jeff Donaldson.Douglas, 39. At Howard, he pursued his MFA, focusing on African culture, specifically the Senufo people.Douglas, 42. The couple had another daughter, Roslyn Angela, in 1972.
Struggling to fit in at Howard, unable to make tenure, and with concerns about the increasing crime rates in Washington, the family decided to move once again in 1977,Douglas, 50. this time to Athens, Georgia. Shortly after the move, Jarrell became an assistant professor at the University of Georgia. He and his wife started a high-end educational toy company that stemmed from their children's love for similar toys when living in Washington, D.C.Douglas, 53. They opened a small shop called Tadpole Toys and Hobby Center in Athens, to great reception. However, as a result of poor sales, in May 1982 they were forced to close it. Soon afterwards, Jarrell received tenure at the university.Douglas, 64.
In 1988, he retired from his position and from teaching as a whole in order to focus on his creative work. By 1994, all three children were adults; the two daughters attended the Art Institute of Chicago, and Wadsworth Jr. became a seafarer. That year, Jae and daughter Jennifer moved to New York to find a place to live, settling in SoHo, where they were joined by Jarrell a few months later.Douglas, 91. Currently, Jarrell and Jae live and work in Cleveland, Ohio.
Artistic career
Chicago After graduation from the Art Institute, Jarrell lived off his wages from mixing paint and furthered his skills in his studio for a year. He started to submit his work to competitions, being accepted at the Chicago Show at the Navy Pier and the Union League Show. Jarrell produced artworks inspired by theories learned in school and scenes of everyday life in black Chicago. With an interest in horse racing, jazz clubs and bars, he often took a sketchpad on his explorations, eventually creating paintings like Neon Row (1958), a street scene, Shamrock Inn (1962), a bar scene, and The Jockeys #1 (1962), from a visit to a horse-racing track. These themes would recur throughout his career. His early works display the "two-dimensional illusionism" he learned in school: linear and geometric perspective with overlapping objects receding to a vanishing point on the horizon. Color is used to depict movement and stability, a contrast seen in Shamrock Inn and The Jockeys #1, however, Jarrell's palette had evolved into brighter and bolder color combinations, at times contrasting in their final execution. The influence of Post-Impressionism is evident in these earlier works, in line with art education trends at the time.Douglas, 9.
A notable turning point for his career came in 1964 when his watercolor entitled "The Art Pub" – similar to Jazz Giants #1 (1962) – was accepted for the Art Institute's exhibition Second Biennial of Prints, Drawings, Watercolors By Illinois Artists (cat. 48). The exhibit earned him prizes, media attention, and the opportunity to exhibit his work at other galleries throughout the Midwest. He moved to a large studio in the Hyde Park neighborhood and continued expanding on his work and focusing on musical and sport related themes. His pigment application became rapid, whether he was depicting a jazz musician or a jockey on his horse, allowing the image to express strong movement. Cockfight (1965) shows the evolution of Jarrell's work: intense color bands, swirls, and at times a psychedelic appearance to the bird in focus, a style that became a mainstay in his work.Douglas, 10.
Influenced by his honeymoon in the Caribbean, Jarrell became interested in the effects of man-made and natural sunlight on the environment. Experimentation with pigments, media, imagery and design allowed him to create artworks that fully expressed his intended messages. Referring to works such as Nassau (1968) and Sign of the Times (1966), Jarrell commented: "The colors of the Bahamas influenced my use of color and my approach to my work." With Sign of the Times he shows a street scene, his first attempt at a painting involving social interaction. In 1968, Jarrell became art director at Sander Line Graphics, only to quit shortly thereafter to become self-employed. Aside from creating his art he also started a successful mail-order photo processing business. Soon after Jarrell and Jae decided to open a gallery space below their studio: WJ Studio and Gallery. While the studio and gallery flourished, Jarrell taught part-time art classes at Wadsworth Elementary School and considered moving to New York, seeking refuge in the heart of the art world.Douglas, 35.
Wall of Respect