1/8/2024 0 Comments Silkscreen posters printingHe printed color after color on the same piece of paper. They all knew to be there around Lou’s printing schedule. In the early years, Lou and Di Stovall took breaks every day for tea “and some yummy sweet,” says Di. Talking on the phone for hours (with Lou’s beloved jazz in the background), unable to see the work together, they counted out leaf by leaf, so Lawrence could say where he wanted slight adjustments in color. They mailed colors and proofs back and forth, for the artist’s approval. Jacob Lawrence was in Seattle Stovall in D.C. The foreground is framed with rows of spear-shaped leaves in varied greens. It’s a landscape, six small white houses in the far distance, their brown rooftops lined with flames. At 85 now, Lou tells the story of how he and Jacob Lawrence got Lawrence’s The Burning printed decades ago. In the days before computers and FaceTime, the telephone and post office were part of the partnership. Screenprint, 34 x 21 in.Ĭollection of Lou and Di Stovall © Estate of David C. He understood what they wanted, got inside their heads, and honored their vision.ĭavid Driskell, Dancing Angel, 2002. Screenprint, 31 x 23 in.Ĭollection of Lou and Di Stovall © Estate of Louis DelsarteĪrtists found Lou Stovall to be an indefatigable worker, a true collaborator. Curator Danielle O’Steen says “he felt silkscreen didn’t have to be flat.” And so the experimentation began: “He and some artists helped turn it into an art form.” Bold, flat, attention-getting signs - STOP, or SALE. In those days, silkscreen was mostly used for commercial posters. “I just stood there looking, staring, fascinated.” He was hooked. “I noticed this odor, and discovered an old man printing silkscreen signs.” They were small posters announcing what the store was selling. The grocer sent him downstairs to get something. He first saw it used when he was 15, working as a stock boy - “a glorified errand boy,” he says - in a grocery store in Springfield. In addition to creating a community of artists in Washington, Stovall discovered new ways to make silk screens. National Gallery curator Harry Cooper, in his foreward to Stovall’s new book Of the Land, edited by his son artist Will Stovall, describes Lou as “a small figure…calm and smiling, Buddha-like amidst the clamor.” (That book - a collection of Lou’s poems, prints and drawings, is featured in a second show at the Kreeger.) To sustain such collaborations, the printer needed “to be open-minded, sociable, creative and welcoming, to create an atmosphere where artists can thrive,” says Danielle O’Steen, curator of Washington’s Kreeger Museum exhibition “Lou Stovall: On Inventions and Color.” In his quiet, focused way, Lou is all of that. Their collaborations produced extraordinary works. Lou made prints with and for some major American artists: his hero Jacob Lawrence (known for his “Migration” series, which tours top museums), his neighbor Gene Davis (whose stripe paintings look as if a clutch of rulers got lost in a paint box of primary colors), his close friend Sam Gilliam (canvases dyed and draped along the wall) all came to Lou’s studio to make their screenprints. They came to get his help to print their often brilliant screenprints. Over time, I met Lou: I sat on the PEN/Faulkner Literary Award Board with him for years, bumped into him at museum and gallery openings, and learned about the community of creative men and women who gravitated to him and his artist wife Di for friendship, inspiration and tea (more about that later). Over time, I met Lou: I sat on the PEN/Faulkner Literary Award Board with him for years, bumped into him at museum and gallery openings, and learned about the community of creative men and women who gr……. Photo by Greg Staley /Courtesy of the Artist That’s because I hadn’t met Lou Stovall and didn’t know about the silkscreens he was making. D.C., a federal city of low white marble Greek buildings and careful bureaucrats in suits and ties, seemed the last place an artist could thrive. In Manhattan, I grew up among artists and musicians. As newlyweds, we were excited to be in a new place, with the new, vigorous Kennedy administration. Born and raised in New York, I married into the city my husband, Lou Stamberg, got a government job here. Born in Athens, Georgia and raised in Springfield, Mass., he came to study at Howard University. Lou Stovall and I each moved to Washington, D.C.
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