Community | July 21, 2008 | 8 comments

112-year-old artist still going strong

source: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/07/20/elderly.artist.ap/index.html

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rwylie
Alabama artist Frank Calloway has spent half his life in a mental health centre, but his works will now be part of an exhibit at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.

Amazingly at 112 his art, which mostly depicts rural scenes from the early 20th century, is attracting a lot of attention: according to an official at the Kentuck Museum in Alabama, their appeal is that they "speak to a time gone by."

Carers at the hospital where Frank lives say that he spends 7 to 9 hours painting each day, sitting at a table by the window: "It's what he loves to do."
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8 comments // 112-year-old artist still going strong

  • joshng01
    • 0
      joshng01  

    • I just sit here and wonder if the man was incapable of learning anything or was just a product of a time that didn't do anything for black people that had no where to go, or if his parents and family died and couldn't care for him.

      Often, in the south, and I'm a southerner, even the mentally handicapped white people were put away if families couldn't are for them. Remember....we're talking about a time when people paid for their own doctors and health care and there were no kinds of facilities to teach families how to care for people who, "weren't all there." So very sad, wondering what he could have been. And so happy that there were people who took care of him and nurtured him.

    • 3 years ago
  • Neghie
  • clayjj05
  • RudyRudell
  • rwylie
  • malathion
  • RudyRudell
  • joshng01
    • 0
      joshng01  

    • This is of great interest to me because so often people who are tagged as retarded or "mentally ill" are put away when they probably could have been nurtured and developed a lot more than Mr. Calloway was. Being retarded does not always mean incapable.
      I would like to see someone publish pictures of his murals for people who will probably never get to the art museum in Baltimore. I know I probably won't. I think good primitive art is a wonderful thing. It seems that looking at him using what looks like a circle maker, that his art is on the high end of primitive, sort of in the architectural look. It' s well worth seeing his art as well as reading the article. It shows what caring people he had to encourage him like that.

    • 3 years ago
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