“It’s like all the grant and fellowship applications dry up after 30,” my dear friend says to me as I chop onions and garlic. We’re on the phone regaling each other with the happenings of the day, as we often are during the week, and we land on the subject of arts funding and craft. They, a visual artist and filmmaker months away from the big 3-0, and I, a writer squarely planted in my late 20s.
Their qualm about arts funding and grant opportunities isn’t new. With cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts and rise in institutional censorship, artists in the United States are vying for limited funding.
In varying degrees, nearly every Black artist I know, especially those of us without wealthy parents, are wondering how to fund projects when the access to youth programming runs out. Where do artistic dreams go as we age? What does the artist do during a labor crisis?
From sculpture and assemblage to memoir and poetry, these artists disprove any assumption that art and artistry are the exclusive property of the young.
Then, another filmmaker, Nia Hampton, invited me to spend the day with arts organizations Tribe 55+ and the Joshua Johnson Council at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The afternoon adventure showed me a lot about the work of living an artist’s life and how tender intergenerational space can be. From sculpture and assemblage to memoir and poetry, these artists disprove any assumption that art and artistry are the exclusive property of the young.
“I want to live forever, so that’s why I tell y’all my stories,” Mama Sallah said to me while assembling her artwork. As she talks about earning an MFA in her 60s and the long road of raising her children, I’m focused on her. Quickly, I find out the hilarious artist is a mother of eight and grandmother to 25. As she cut and glued pieces into place, she told me much about her life and gave advice for my own. Her matter-of-factness isn’t rigid. Mama Sallah’s anecdotes feel like cool water. They are inarguable and low-pressure.
As we talked, she continued editing her work. “Should I color them in or leave the outline? I can’t decide,” she asked me. Sallah, a multimedia artist who graduated with an MFA in sculpture in 2023, is experimenting in collage assemblage. Gray and canary yellow ballerinas, modeled after men at first position with toes pointed out, were pressed against the stark white background of the page.
Sitting under fluorescent lights in the new Patricia and Mark Joseph Education Center on the ground floor of the Baltimore Museum of Art, we’re learning about gesture and figure from our instructor, Eileen Cave. Above us, hundreds of museum guests were viewing Amy Sherald’s “American Sublime.”
Both groups, the Joshua Johnson Council and Tribe 55+, showcase the deep and vast histories of Black communities and artistry in Baltimore. Named after Joshua Johnson, a Maryland man celebrated as the earliest professional African American painter in the U.S., the council’s primary goal is to honor Black artistry in Baltimore. A group with over 40 years of history supporting African American artists, the JJC dedicates time and resources to supporting Black artists in Baltimore via intergenerational learning and collaboration. One example of this commitment is their annual artist-in-residence program in partnership with the BMA and MICA.
While the JJC’s legacy began in 1984, Tribe 55+ proves that new artist collectives and organizations are important additions to our Baltimore arts ecosystem. Started online in 2023, Tribe 55+ is a collective of Black women artists over 55 years old. The group, originally organized on Facebook, continues to grow in size and ambition as the Black women artists within it connect, creating and studying visual and literary art together throughout the year.
That day, I joined the JJC and Tribe 55+ for their Grayscale: Seeing Ourselves Through Amy Sherald workshop. The day-long agenda started with warm welcomes from Stacey Cruise, lead facilitator whose excitement about Sherald’s artistic return to Baltimore inspired the workshop, and Rose McNeill, chair of the Joshua Johnson Council, before a guided tour of the exhibit with Schroeder Cherry, curator of the James E. Lewis Museum of Art at Morgan State University.
The group of over 30 workshop participants immediately drew the curiosity of other museum guests. Within the group, we’d already started calling the workshop our end-of-the-month field trip, and the crowded Saturday bustle of the BMA added to the feeling. Necks craned and eyes lingered over us as we moved upstairs like a giddy school of fish following Cherry’s lead into the gallery housing Sherald’s portraits.
Before long, other museum guests were idling next to ours in hopes of hearing Cherry’s tour. The slowed steps and turned heads of strangers signaled just how much people appreciate arts education. It’s one thing to get a ticket to see the sold-out exhibit of the season and another to have access to years of visual art knowledge and history from one of the foremost thinkers on the subject. With experience working at the Studio Museum in Harlem and The Art Institute of Chicago, Cherry is a treasure trove of expertise. His tour took us through Sherald’s career and work with impressive detail. “What did you see?” he asked after we spent 15 seconds viewing a portrait. After 15 seconds, he rang a brass bell, prompting us to turn our backs on the work and discuss. His lessons on Sherald’s techniques and motivations were a welcome change to the solo exhibition experience I’m used to.
Cherry’s expertise, and that of everyone in the room, is the core of both organizational missions. Each exists to nurture Black intergenerational artistry by bringing artists together with resources that support study and artistic development. In a tech-motivated world of DIY and self-service, Tribe 55+ and JJC demonstrate how much we can, and should, be learning together.
After lunch, the group splits in two with writers and visual artists working separately to create their own art inspired by Sherald’s portraiture. Cave, a teaching artist and resident of Prince George’s County, is a brilliant instructor who told me her goal is to “take adults out of their comfort zone with gesture” as she moves from table to table observing her visual art students.
Down the hall, Hampton led writers in connecting Sherald’s work to the written works of Lucille Clifton, Toni Morrison, and Christina Sharpe. Hampton’s teaching philosophy is firm and encouraging. “Everybody in here is already a writer, so I don’t want to hear none of that other stuff!” she said proudly at the start of her instruction.
Cave, Cherry, and Hampton are examples of how arts educators collaborate with community organizations and share knowledge outside of traditional classrooms. While their teaching styles differ, their investment in Black diasporic art and its study connects them and the organizations hosting them. For the instructors, along with the JJC and Tribe 55+, Black diasporic art education and fellowship is a pillar of intergenerational community connection.
For workshop participants Norma Scott and Sallah, the Grayscale Workshop was a chance to connect with younger artists while continuing to develop their own talents. Both visual artists used collage materials to create homages to men they love.
For Sallah, her ballerinas are a nod to her son. “I always wanted my son to dance, but with the idea ballet isn’t the most masculine, he never did. I really wish he did though.” Her work challenges gender norms and whispers a mother’s dream back into being. In her art she’s reclaimed a precious wish.
In Scott’s case, she created a piece paying tribute to her late father, an amputee who loved being a fixture of the neighborhood growing up. “Children would ask about his arm and parents would shush them. I guess they thought he was ashamed of it, but he was anything but.”The Grayscale Workshop is a full-circle moment for Scott as a Sherald supporter. “A few years ago, we asked her to come speak with the JJC, but then she got famous,” Scott told me between laughs. The memory is a decade old, from 2016, when Scott and the JJC visited Creative Alliance to support Sherald as a resident artist and view her “REWIND” exhibition. After an artist talk, Sherald made tentative plans to visit with the JJC and give a longer talk on the exhibit, but before plans could be cemented, Sherald won the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery.
At the workshop’s start, McNeill, a member of both Tribe 55+ and the JJC, said, “Today’s a day to slow down.” Following her instructions and slowing down along with artists decades my senior was the perfect way to end the month. There’s nothing like an adult field trip surrounded by steadfast artists to reaffirm why we all commit to craft and community. It doesn’t ease all concern about funding and future, but it’s a balm. Both the Joshua Johnson Council and Tribe 55+ are organizations dedicated to Black artists and intergenerational arts education, featuring some of the most talented artists I’ve met in years. Baltimore is a city of artists of all ages, and judging by the successes of Andre DeShields, Joyce Scott, and Paula Whaley, we’re better for it.