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Artist, Activist
92-year-old painter reflects on standing against racism
PALM COAST -- Georgette Seabrooke Powell doesn't paint anymore. Her hands still weakened by a stroke suffered last fall, the 92-year-old artist can't practice the craft she began as a young girl growing up in Manhattan. Powell -- a small woman with a bright smile and warm demeanor -- was actively sketching and drawing until plagued by illness, her family and friends say. Seated in a wheelchair in the dining room of her Palm Coast home on a recent summer afternoon, Powell seems almost apologetic for not being able to show a guest how she's created her artwork. "I haven't been able to (paint) in years as I should," she said. But demonstrations are unnecessary. Powell's home -- an intimate setting decorated with family photos, her artwork and that of others -- is testament to a career that spans 60 years, a journey in which she faced great rewards and great disappointments. Today, Powell's works are renowned for their expressive detail and precise documentation of people and places. Her paintings have been exhibited internationally and in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Smithsonian Institute's Anacostia Community Museum in Washington, D.C. Perhaps Powell's greatest artistic achievement, however, doesn't hang in an austere room of a famous gallery. For 70 years, Powell's mural "Recreation in Harlem" hung in what was the nurses' break room of Harlem Hospital. The painting of blacks and whites depicted in everyday actions around Harlem seems like a scene taken out of most urban settings across America today. But 70 years ago, the hospital's white administrators deemed Powell's seemingly innocent interpretation of Harlem too radical. That decision sparked a controversy that propelled Powell and other black artists to take a firm stand against racism years ahead of sit-ins and marches. Powell and her colleagues made a powerful decision to take on the administrators at a time when the majority of the country was out of work and blacks had yet to be wholly accepted into American society, said Michelle Black Smith, an independent curator and educator who is collaborating with Powell on a book about her life and work. "The artists who decided to protest did so at great sacrifice," Black Smith said. "They said, 'We're not going to be censored' -- and that's an important battle." 'THINGS BEGAN HAPPENING' From an early age Powell, who was born in Charleston, S.C., was encouraged by her parents to develop her artistic skills. By the time she was 15 in the early 1930s, Powell had graduated from high school and was enrolled in an art program at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. "Then things began happening," she said. This was the time of the post-Harlem Renaissance -- when the glory days of luminaries like writers Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston had faded and the country was in the midst of the Great Depression. In 1936, Powell landed a job through the Works Progress Administration's Federal Arts Project and was assigned, along with other black artists, to the Harlem Hospital mural project, headed up by famed artist Charles Alston. Finding steady work during the Depression was no small feat and Powell said she knew she "was fortunate enough to be employed in the program." Her works, experts came to say, strongly reflect her knack for accurately capturing her subjects in intimate moments -- like grooming or nurturing themselves -- and conveying complex emotions, like when in the throes of worship. Powell "has an amazing sense of empathy" that enables viewers to instantly connect with her work because they can "see some of themselves in it," Black Smith said. "She does have that ability to reach people," she said. "Her images are very lifelike and expressive." As an artist, Powell is adept at using the stroke of a brush to express her opinion on a variety of issues, like spirituality, said Robert Hall, the associate director of education for the Anacostia Community Museum. "Her style is representational art and a lot of it has to do with documenting a people or place or time," he said. "She's a storyteller and instead of using text, she uses images." During this productive period, she created some of her most renowned works such as "Tired Feet," "Emily" and "Church Scene." The latter -- a snapshot of a worship service at a black church -- so impressed colleagues and faculty at Cooper Union that it earned Powell the Silver Medal, the school's most prestigious award. Powell's life was on an upswing -- but it would be short-lived. 'TOO MUCH NEGRO SUBJECT MATTER' In the proposal for her mural, Powell wrote that her work featured people in scenes of everyday living such as children playing, women gossiping and vendors selling their wares. "The subject matter which I find entertaining and human rather than seriously boring," she said. The hospital's administration didn't agree. According to correspondence on the matter that Powell keeps in her personal files, her mural -- along with that of the other black artists -- was rejected on the grounds that they "contain too much Negro subject matter." The hospital administration's prejudice was disheartening, Powell said. "I was very depressed that our work had been rejected by the director," she said. Powell's "first major fight" is "huge in terms of black struggle" and marks the beginning of her using her art as activism -- a sort of precursor to the civil rights movement, Black Smith said. "It's at a time when black people were doing their very best to fit into America and they do it in the middle of the Great Depression," she said. "So when it comes to a decision between integrity and money, they choose integrity." After two years of battle, the hospital relented and allowed the murals to go up -- but the artists' victory was bittersweet for Powell. The delay in the project's approval prompted Cooper Union to deny her an internship credit, which, ultimately, kept her from graduating. 'WE MADE HISTORY' Powell would go on to marry and raise three children with Dr. George W. Powell, a New York firefighter who later ran a podiatry practice when the couple moved to Washington, D.C., in the 1960s. In Washington, Powell opened Tomorrow's World Art Center, which offered art and music programs for more than 30 years. She hosted public art gatherings dubbed "Art in the Park," and embarked on a career in art therapy. After years of neglect, Powell's mural is faded and chipped but her message of hope and unity still shines through. Now under restoration, the mural and those of other artists of the Harlem Hospital have been taken down to be restored and will be unveiled in 2011. At home, Powell's living room walls bear a collection of paintings that are similar to the mural. "Happiness Is," which stands on an easel across the room, features a mother wrapped in a swirl of orange, purple and cream holding her child. Surrounded by flowers and covered with a plaid cloth, the smiling pair look as if they will suddenly spring to life. Today, when Powell reflects on the Harlem Hospital controversy, there's no hint of bitterness in her voice. Powell -- who earned a bachelor's degree from Howard University in 1973 -- said Cooper Union granted her a degree in the 1980s after she wrote them asking them to reconsider their earlier denial of her internship credit. She said she never regretted her decision to stand up with the other artists in protest against the hospital. "I had to do it," she said. "I think we made history in many ways."
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