Artists of all kinds turn out for celebration of their work

By Maddie Scott
Louisiana State University

Baton Rouge-area artists showcased musical, culinary, visual, and spiritual art to residents at Eden Park Branch Library’s meet-the-artist event on Sunday.

Visitors could hear a soulful melody as they strolled in, thanks to Helen Domingue McCarter on the keyboard and 95-year-old Harry W. Johnson on the saxophone. Paintings and drawings were displayed throughout the room and hallway.

Creativity was also evident in the decoration and flavors of homemade cakes and pies on a table in the back of the room: honeybun, lemon, apple, and 7-Up. The event’s host, local artist Darlene A. Moore, said they were made with love and invited visitors to indulge in a slice.

While guests enjoyed the sweets, McCarter and Johnson played their instruments. One would start a melody while the other listened for a place to jump in. “That’s a C,” Harry told McCarter between breaths on his saxophone.

“Music comes in so many different ways,” Johnson told the audience. “Physical, mental—all kinds of ways. When I was getting ready to get married, I didn’t know what to do. So I played a song for her. And I might just sing it and play it on my horn.”

His wife, Mae Ruby Diaz Johnson, 94, sat in the audience, not knowing he would serenade her to “You Are So Beautiful” by Joe Cocker. After growing up together in Iberville, Mississippi, Harry and Mae Ruby crossed paths again later in life when he surprised her at her 70th birthday party, and the rest is history, she said. They’ve been married for 22 years.

Johnson played the song’s beginning melody on his saxophone, an instrument that a friend of Fats Domino taught him in the 1940s, he said. He switched among the instrument, singing and storytelling during the performance.

“Harry, please keep blowing that horn and keep on singing,” Moore said to Johnson after the serenade.

The event also featured a panel of four artists. Randell Henry, an art professor at Southern University, sat on the panel, still wearing green beads from the St. Patrick’s Day Parade that ended an hour prior. Two of his former students sat on the panel with him: Jeanne’ E. Brown and Lewellin Bradford.

Brown has been creating art since she was 3 years old. She brought her 2011 line of graphite and charcoal drawings honoring Native Americans. Bradford brought a few pieces, one of which is a Bob Ross-inspired landscape painting in acrylic. One by one, the panelists explained the inspiration and history behind their art.

Because the panelists were old friends, they didn’t need questions to fuel conversation. The discussion flowed as each person had a story or comment pop into their head. Henry said he thought of the song “We Go a Long Way Back” by Bloodstone when he looked around the people in the room.

Henry brought his painting named “Blue Monday,” inspired by the blues he feels on Mondays. He said he used sad and happy colors because even when we’re sad, we can still feel good. The painting had spent three years in the Stella Jones Gallery in New Orleans, and Henry had picked it up a few days ago, the sides still wrapped in protective plastic.

Henry also talked about the importance of growing up in libraries and how it developed his creativity.

“When I was a kid, instead of going out to recess in junior high school, I went straight to the library,” Henry said. “Got 15 minutes of recess. I was in the library reading through art books, reading famous artists and looking at paintings.”

Art is without limits and full of possibilities, Moore said, sitting next to Henry on the panel. She said her paintings often depict family, sisterhood, church hats, and flowers.

“In many scenes, you’ll also see a preacher lady because that’s me,” Moore said. “Preaching the word, telling people North, South, East and West. God is our foundation, and he is our hope.”

Moore held up a painting that looked exactly like what she described—a lady in pink wearing a big church hat with greenery and flowers behind her. Moore is a one-year cancer survivor, which inspired the lady’s pink dress.

Moore grew up in Mandeville, Louisiana, a tight-knit community where she remembers seeing baptisms on the lakefront of Lake Pontchartrain. She pulls much of her artistic inspiration from Mandeville, still one of her favorite places to visit, she said.

“I’ve always told people, if you’re from somewhere, don't ever forget where you’re from,” Moore said. “I reside in Baton Rouge, and I call Baton Rouge my home now. But there’s nothing that I do without acknowledging that I am from Mandeville, Louisiana, because Mandeville, Louisiana, has loved us.”

This story was reported and written by a student with the support of the non-profit Louisiana Collegiate News Collaborative, an LSU-led coalition of eight universities funded by the Henry Luce and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundations.