I’m standing in the foyer of the home of artist Roy Crosse (alias roycrosse) and his wife, Anelda Peters, 12 years after his passing. Big windows beam light in every direction. I’m surrounded by thousands of spirited works that Crosse created during his prolific career. Towering sculptures made out of tin ceiling tiles, found objects, and braided jute; lushly colored abstract oil and acrylic paintings; and meditative graphite drawings are installed lovingly on every wall, in every room, nook, and cranny of their beautiful four-story brownstone in Station North. Each work harkens back to Crosse’s Caribbean roots and celebrates his abstract expressionist influences.
The space once hosted an architect’s office, and its high ceilings, winding staircase, and unconventional rooms provide an ideal space for dreamers to cultivate new ideas. Viewing the results of Crosse’s prolific compulsion to create and his innovative approach with found materials, I witnessed bright evidence of Crosse’s genius, which Peters has been quietly stewarding the legacy of since his passing in 2014.
A retrospective showcasing his body of work has been long overdue. “Contrast Between Dreams and Reality,” now on view at the Eubie Blake Cultural Center through June 6, presents a selection of works created by Crosse between 1986 and 2013. The show is collaboratively curated by Eubie Blake Director Derek Price, art historian Leslie King-Hammond, and artist Ernest Shaw, with consultation by Peters.
Though the exhibition is relatively small for a retrospective, showcasing just over 40 objects including works on paper, sculptures, paintings, and a powerful piece made from crutches that Crosse dedicated to veterans, it stands as one of the only exhibitions about his practice staged by a gallery since his untimely death from cancer in 2014. It is encouraging that many of the works on display in the exhibition are being made available for purchase, which not only supports Crosse’s estate, but also ensures that his legacy lives on in the homes of prominent collectors.
“The breadth of his work and the detail of these sculptures are unbelievable,” Price says. “More broadly, our work is to show young and emerging Black artists and unsung artists like Roy Crosse because no one else is really showing this work. This exhibition is a way of showing the skill and depth of his work to the community, collectors, and other institutions.”
While Peters gives me a tour of their home, I feel like I’m walking through a time capsule. Crosse installed many of the works himself, and since his passing Peters has changed very few details of his initial interior design. Every piece has an innate rhythm, a flow, and beat that feels both improvisational and divinely channeled. Most of the works are untitled, and the few that do have names are straight to the point. All intention and attention is directed towards looking closely at the work.
“He was always interested in observing the materialness of the world, which is why a lot of his art, at least the sculptures, are done with objects that he found,” Peters says while we sit and sip tea in her living room. “He wanted to show the utilization of all these materials in the world and how to make them significant even past their use.”
“He was always interested in observing the materialness of the world, which is why a lot of his art, at least the sculptures, are done with objects that he found.”
The scale, depth and dimension, his use of color, recurrent geometric forms, and dynamic composition all pulse off the canvas, paper, and sculptural totems with delicious ease. You can see Crosse’s musicality in the work, and it’s difficult not to admire his clever nod to movements often left out of the canon of art history. Dancer (1998), a 6-foot tall sculpture composed of braided cotton, wood, leather, and metal, is a seminal example of this aesthetic. The head is likened more to an anthropomorphic bird mask than a face. Its beak peeks through long strips of fabric akin to hair, feathers, or mane. The Dancer’s body is an intricate and dense cacophony of braided and loose textiles interwoven with discordant textures and knots that incite movement despite the sculpture’s stationary installation.
“Crosse’s connection to abstraction offers valuable lessons in visual literacy for diverse audiences,” Shaw says. “His artwork appeals to people from all backgrounds. Historically and culturally, it reflects an Afro-diasporic tradition of image making.”
“His artwork appeals to people from all backgrounds. Historically and culturally, it reflects an Afro-diasporic tradition of image making.”
Artist Ernest Shaw
Though he was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and had shown much of his earliest work there and in Canada, the experimental, DIY spirit of Baltimore was the ideal place for Crosse’s later years. When he and Peters moved to the city in 2000 from a closed artist cooperative in Newark, New Jersey, the 100 block of W. North Avenue was grossly underserved. Station North did not exist, but artists were steadily migrating to Baltimore from saturated cities in search of affordable live-work occupancies. Crosse determined that he would transform his property into a cultural hub for artists to gather, exhibit their work, and listen to live music. He turned his backyard into an oasis with pineapple trees, a koi pond, a stage for his band, the roycrosse Quintet, and other musicians, and a flourishing herb and flower garden. In 2003, he opened the Westnorth Studio on the first floor as a gallery. Westnorth Studio quickly became a celebrated venue for experimentation, play, and discourse about the transformative potential of art in community. Many of the artists who exhibited there were underdogs living on the periphery of institutional support, with few connections to major museums or galleries. So, they created their own spaces and championed their own communities.
“He was a do-it-yourself kind of person because a lot of his life he had to figure things out on his own,” Peters says. “That’s what I learned from him. Many of the renovations in our home we did ourselves.”
Just one year after Westnorth Studio opened, journalist Glenn McNatt wrote an article for The Baltimore Sun celebrating the gallery. McNatt noted that the quality of Westnorth Studio’s exhibitions “demonstrates why this off the beaten path gallery is one of the city’s most adventurous alternative art spaces.”
In the heyday of Westnorth Studio, regional and internationally recognized artists exhibited work there, including Oletha DeVane, Sam Gilliam, Vivian McDuffie, Chevelle M. Jones, William Rhodes, Michael Platt, and Grace Graupe-Pillard, among many others. Decades later, I can see why Westnorth Studio was so beloved by the community. It’s not just that the space is beautiful, with pristine hardwood floors and bright airy rooms, it’s also that every wall exudes Crosse’s passion for art. He wasn’t a stereotypical solitary genius who made art in a silo. Rather, his practice was epically inspired by his connection to creative communities in Baltimore. That loving energy remains palpable in his home and in people’s memories about him.
“He was a mentor and example,” says Pierre Bennu, longtime friend and collaborator of Crosse. “He made a value system where art could incubate. He helped establish Station North. What I loved about him, he didn’t wait for permission. He would say, ‘Do it! You’re thinking about it, do it, now! Your job as an artist is to do the work!’”
Bennu shared a story with me about Crosse’s unyielding care for his community. Shortly after moving in, Crosse planted flowers in front of his home, but every day someone would trample the plants. Every time the flowers were trampled, Crosse would replace them and speak to the people in the neighborhood about their own beauty and the power they had to transform themselves and the world they inhabited. Bennu could not recall how many months this cycle of loving defiance against destructive patterns lasted, but eventually the message became clear, the flowers thrived, and the community learned to respect the work that Crosse was dedicated to pursuing for the betterment of the neighborhood.
One of Crosse’s biggest collaborators was Sherwin Mark, the owner of Load of Fun Galerie (now the Motor House). Mark converted a defunct furniture store into a thriving gallery and artist residencies a block away from Crosse’s space. In 2006, Mark and Crosse created the alternative art festival Altskape. Unlike Artscape, which was criticized for not reflecting the broad traditions of artists across the city, Altskape celebrated the spirit of the underground DIY creative culture of the 1970s and ’80s. Altskape invited artists to install temporary site-specific sculptures and installations along North Avenue, participate in group exhibitions at Westnorth Studio and Load of Fun Galerie, and listen to live performances by local musicians.
Crosse was 57 when he opened Westnorth and, though he’d successfully staged major shows at museums and galleries across the United States and sold work to major private collections, the DIY spirit he found in Baltimore, and manifest with Altskape, was a fitting testament to his life and refusal to separate art and community.
“Contrast Between Dreams and Reality” shows that spirit and recognizes Crosse as a creative genius with a powerful legacy. His work served as a beacon and call to action for other visionaries to channel the power of art to counter the despair of systemic disinvestment.