Blizzard vs Street Painting

If I was at 47 Pianos, I would have awakened to a blizzard forecast.  Instead, I got to the Lake Worth Beach Street Painting Festival before the crowds arrived on a hot sunny day, before the mercury plunges 40 degrees tomorrow!

Check out the tatted artist's socks.

I probably should support the Lake Worth Playhouse more.  It opened in the silent movie era and was nearly demolished during the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane--the fourth worst in the United States--when the Wurlitzer organ went bye-bye.

Several artists prioritized avoiding Forida's bright February sun.

Others coordinated their outfits to create a Sixties vehicle even more iconic than my very own Herr Cucaracha.

The heat didn't seem to bother Marimba Anhelos Del Copal.

Animals are always popular subjects

. . . and beautiful women, too.

Ya gotta love a good pun!

I couldn't tell if this work was political or not.

If so, it and this portrait of Angela Davis were the only ones that sought to enlighten rather than soothe. When I complimented the artist, he exulted "She's still alive!" Unlike so many of the other Black Panthers.

Many of the artists were POC

. . . including green.

Compass, a community center for LGBTQI+ folk needs to up its game, both in terms of deadlines and content.  The festival began yesterday.

I read in the Times this morning that Luke Evans is going to star in Broadway's revival of The Rocky Horror Show.  Hubba, hubba. I caught the original production with the incomparable Tim Curry as Dr. Frank 'n Furter at the Belasco Theater in 1975.

Labyrinth, which I've never seen, is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.  Bowie's already been dead a decade.

You just know "Golden" is gonna the win Oscar for Best Song this year!

Other pop culture nods included Dawson's Creek and Pluribus.  I like the latter mural a lot more than the angry show itself.

Did you know bikes could be "lowriders" too?  Hot dawg!

I never noticed this mural of the Lake Worth Beach Pier before.  I haven't walked on it since Christine first invited me to visit in 2010. 

Update:

The NYC forecast proved accurate.  Alex, the neighbor who waters my plants, sent me this photo of the view from 47 Pianos Monday morning:

Photo by Alex Ruter

More Street Painting:

Duck Lip Grannies (2025)

Lake Worth's Big Weekend (2024)

Artists @ Work (2023)

Artistic Tanning (2022)

Sweet Invasion (2020)

Tweed, Not Tweet (2019)

Homesteading (2018)

Revolutionary Artist (& Undesirable Alien)

Born to freed slaves in Washington, DC, Elizabeth Catlett lived nearly a century, long enough to see Barrack Obama elected president.  In between, her skin color prevented her from attending Carnegie Institute of Technology--Andy Warhol's alma mater--and the United States banned her from returning to America after she moved to Mexico because of her association with an artists collective, some of whose members belonged to the Communist Party.  A survey of Catlett's work at the Brooklyn Museum is truly revelatory; the artist looks at racism and sexism with the clear-eyed gaze evident in an early sculpture. 

"Young Girl" (1946)

As far as I'm concerned, her "Black Woman" series of woodcuts (1946-47) ranks with some of the best art ever printed in America.  

"I have special reservations" 

"In Phillis Wheatley | Proved Intellectual Equality in the Midst of Slavery"

"I Have Always Worked Hard in America" 

Firing on all cylinders, Catlett offered a powerful visual analog to the incipient Civil Rights movement.

"Civil Rights Congress" (1949)

She sees dignity in individuals, not their professions.

"Sharecropper (Male)" (1945)

"Sharecropper" (1952)

While widely admired for her work in the African-American community, Catlett was out of synch with the art establishment in the 1950s.  She used a fellowship established by the president of Sears Roebuck (!) "for the well-being of mankind" to move to Mexico where her peers preferred social realism to abstraction.  She met her second husband, Francisco Mora, when she joined Taller de Gráfica Popular, a print collective that embraced art as a revolutionary tool. 

Though dramatic and compelling, his work lacks her powerful simplicity.

"(Indigenous People of Mexico are Stripped of Their Land)" by Francisco Mora (1947)

Catlett, determined to highlight acts of African-American heroism even as an expatriate, led an ill-fated group project during the mid 50s called "Against Discrimination in the United States."

W.E.B. DuBois by Guillermo Rodriguez Camacho 

Blanche K. Bruce by Francisco Mora

Untitled (Harriet Tubman) by Elizabeth Catlett

Taller de Gráfica Popular planned to publish the series in Freedom, a Black newspaper in America founded by Paul Robeson.  But when the publication refused to accept one of the prints (the museum doesn't indicate which one), the collective withdrew the entire series from consideration.  Could lionizing Nat Turner have been a step too far?

Nat Turner by Alberto Beltrán

The US government, then routinely surveilling artists for their political activities, forced Catlett (who was arrested in Mexico City for her involvement in a railroad strike) to view the Black Power movement from afar.  She had renounced her citizenship after it barred her from re-entering the country, even to visit her dying mother.  

"Malcolm X Speaks for Us" (1969)

However, after Eldridge Cleaver (lower panel, left)  revealed his misogyny in Soul On Ice, she deleted his image from future editions of this linocut, sacrificing aesthetic balance for her deeply feminist convictions.  The memoir may have been sexist, but reading it helped my father become more progressive in his views on race.

"Homage to the Panthers" (1970)

Catlett ardently supported the release of Angela Davis, an intellectual and charismatic activist who had been arrested by the FBI.  A jury acquitted the philosophy professor at UCLA who earlier had been fired for her "real" crime, membership in the Communist party.

"Free Angela" (1972)

It's hard to argue against this symbolism of this work half a century after Catlett sculpted it.

"Target Practice" (1970)

Mora depicted his revolutionary wife at work in this undated sketch.  Catlett advised other women:  Marry a feminist. My husband defends the rights of women whenever he sees them infringed upon. He specifically defends my right to work as an artist and have a career.

They had three children, all of whom pursued careers in the creative arts.

"My Children" (1958)

"Floating Family" by Elizabeth Catlett (1995-96)

Has equality ever been more beautifully expressed?

"Freedom" (1998)

Catlett regained her US citizenship after Mora died in 2002, although she continued to live in Mexico for the remainder of her life.  She never stopped working--or appreciating Black contributions to American culture.

Ralph Ellison Memorial Maquette (Invisible Man) (1999)

"Gossip" (2005)

Mahalia Jackson, New Orleans (2010)