Color Us Different

A Family of Artists Paints their Legacy in Bold Strokes

by D. Amari Jackson

The Little Pageant Queen Gwendolyn Aqui-Brooks

“I remember the times that I spent in the studio with my father,” says well-known artist Gwendolyn Aqui-Brooks, of her legendary father, Dr. Albert Carter. Carter, a prominent art scholar and professor, and the longtime curator of Howard University’s art gallery, died in 1981. “I loved to watch him in the studio and, at times, I was a subject of some of his paintings,” recounts Aqui-Brooks, noting “he did about four portraits of me when I was a child. Believe it or not, I remember the one when I was three years old, where he touched my face and told me to be still. I also remember the outfit that I had on for that particular painting.”

Along with her late father—and her husband, Bernard Brooks, also a talented artist—Aqui-Brooks will be the focus of the upcoming exhibition, Color Us Different: A Family of Painters. The highly-anticipated exhibit runs September 11 through October 25 at Black Art In America Gallery & Gardens in East Point, with an artist reception on September 13 from 2pm to 4pm. 

“I’m so excited about our upcoming exhibition,” acknowledges Aqui-Brooks, offering how “my father would be so proud” to have taken part. “For this exhibition my primary focus is on my mixed-media paintings. However,  just to stir the pot up a bit, I have included a few art quilts and my newest creations, ceramic vessels.” The multi-talented artist, whose skills include mixed-media paintings, art quilts, soft sculpture dolls, altered books, journals, and ceramic vessels, clarifies the themes she will explore including “dreams and their meanings, fantasy and playful imaginary people, ways in which travel has had a profound effect on my creativity, and visions from the ancestors. My paintings are infused with bright bold colors and intricate designs. Each painting is one of a kind with a unique story.” 

"The Mouse & His Friends" by Albert J. Carter

Bernard Brooks—also “overjoyed” to be a part of the exhibition and whose practice consists of watercolors, mixed-media paintings, pen and ink drawings, and printmaking—adds that his “themes for this show are mixed-media paintings which depict social issues, large pencil drawing dealing with civil rights, musical pieces, scenes from travels, and talking ancestors.” He further characterizes the event as a “unique opportunity to showcase my late father in-law’s paintings, my wife’s work, and myself.”

For decades, Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi showcased Aqui-Brooks’ quilts after founding the Women of Color Quilters Network in 1985, a national non-profit whose mission is to educate, preserve, exhibit, promote and document quilts made by African Americans. 

“She’s one of my favorite quilters,” says Mazloomi, a collector of Aqui-Brooks’ art who owns a quilt recently added to the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “Her work is narrative in nature,” offers Mazloomi, and “I'm always interested in the stories that African American people, quiltmakers especially, visualize in their quilts. So her quilts are quite special in that she’s one of the few quilters that still makes handmade quilts. She does not utilize a sewing machine at all in any process of the making of her quilts,” says Mazloomi, pointing out how, in this current era, everything is “going on the sewing machine. So that sets her quilts apart from other people’s work.”

 
For Aqui-Brooks, it’s always been that way. “I am not interested in copying people’s style,” she acknowledges, stressing “I’ve always wanted to develop my own style and I think, as an artist, we should be able to come up with our own ideas. I want to be very unique,” clarifies Aqui-Brooks. “It’s easy to copy somebody’s work. It’s not as easy to come into the studio, and you have a blank canvas, and you have to come up with an idea.” Consistently, “I don't really preplan what I do, to be honest with you,” she reveals, noting that “it’s a very spiritual thing for me. I come into my studio, I usually start with a circle and, from that circle, other things evolve.”

The long and artsy evolution to the September exhibition began well over a century ago in a segregated Washington DC with the birth of Albert Carter in 1915. Carter attended Dunbar High and produced the artwork for the school yearbook before earning a bachelor’s degree from Howard University in 1938, where he met his longtime friend, iconic artist Elizabeth Catlett. Carter left DC to receive a master’s degree in fine arts and fine arts education from Columbia University in 1940. He taught at Prairie View A&M College in Texas before returning and joining the Howard faculty, serving as curator of the university’s art gallery from 1946 until his retirement three decades later.   

“He loved the kids up at Howard and he had a lot of ideas for things that he wanted to be incorporated into the program,” says Aqui-Brooks, revealing that “one of which was to have a curators program for them. He had already gotten the curriculum together for the classes that they would take, and they (Howard U) sort of poo-pooed that idea because of budget problems,” she laments. “He also wanted more equipment, particularly in the printmaking department, for the kids at the time,” adds Aqui-Brooks, depicting how “when he first came to Howard, the collection was small compared to when he left and it was over 1000 paintings” all brought by Carter to the university. “So he was always fighting for them.”
“His work could be compared to such artists as Henry Ossawa Tanner, Edward Hopper, Van Gogh, and Pablo Picasso,” says Aqui-Brooks, identifying her father’s medium as oil. Among the teachers that were influential in shaping Carter’s career were James A. Porter, Lois Mailou Jones, and James L. Wells. “He was part of the realism movement. It was believed that subjects were to appear as they did in real life.”

For Carter’s only child, real life, growing up in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington DC, was just as inspiring. 

“The studio was always in our home,” says Aqui-Brooks, recalling how her father’s “easel, brushes, rags, containers for water, and turpentine were meticulously arranged. I remember he loved to paint in the evenings and on weekends.” 

“If I close my eyes, I can still smell oil paint and turpentine.” 

Aqui-Brooks’ mother was artistically inclined as well, a Howard alum like her husband and daughter, and well-skilled in haberdashery, a craft of sewing and textile arts including embroidery, quilting, and tailoring. “She designed most of my clothes until I went to junior high, and I remember an overcoat that she designed for my father.” 

“They always encouraged me to do art,” says Aqui-Brooks. “About four or five years old, I really started drawing. My father had a studio in the house and there was always a little table there for me with paper and pencils to play on so I could do my own thing and watch my dad at the same time.” 

Such cultivation—especially as an only child who was encouraged to be both artistic and fiercely unique—gave Aqui-Brooks a strong sense of self at an early age. When she was eight, her father encouraged her to take piano lessons at Howard from instructor Elizabeth Nixon. “She was very strict with what she wanted the kids to do and how they were supposed to sit at the piano and have their hands on the keys and so forth. And this particular day, I started to play my little piece and I thought I was doing pretty good and, all of a sudden, she went across my hand with a ruler,” recounts Aqui-Brooks. “Well, that wasn’t too good, because I took the ruler and went back across her hand,” she laughs, detailing how Nixon “of course, called my father to come and get me. So I got scolded, but by the same token, he told me he knew how strict she could be. I think he gave me some candy or something, and that’s how it ended.”

Her parents' encouragement paid off as Aqui-Brooks went on to receive her BFA in Art Education from Howard and a master’s degree in education from Trinity College before embarking on a successful career in art. She’s been honored by a wide array of prominent institutions with awards, commissions, and exhibitions, and many of her works are in public and corporate collections both domestically and abroad. She has also traveled extensively during her career, a major influence on her art, including such destinations as Brazil, Turkey, Greece, Venice, West Africa, and Trinidad and Tobago.

And by no means did her father’s influence cease with his passing in 1981. 

“I knew my husband for many years,” says Aqui-Brooks, noting “he actually had worked in the gallery with my father.” Two decades ago, after both had moved on from previous marriages, the indelible impact of the late Albert Carter was felt once more. “One evening, I had invited Bernie over to my house since I wanted to give him a piece of my father’s work,” she recalls, explaining that “this is something I wanted to do because I knew how fond my father was of Bernie. So when he came, he brought his cousin with him, and they stayed and they talked and talked, and I’m saying to myself, ‘Now, when are you people going home?” And all of a sudden, the cousin said, ‘Do you realize how much you guys have in common?’ And she turned to Bernie and said, ‘You should ask this lady out on a date!’ Well, that’s what he did,” laughs Aqui-Brooks. “He was living in North Carolina part time, so we had a long distance relationship for a little while, and then we got married. It wasn’t really a long courtship as we decided that didn’t make sense. We were both older.” 

Like his artistic spouse, Bernard Brooks also “came from an artist family, always surrounded by art. My favorite uncle was the first Black instructor at the Maryland Institute College of Art.” Though he was born and raised in Alexandria, VA, Bernard attended Spingarn High in Washington DC before studying art at the Philadelphia College of Art, University of Maryland and, ultimately, Howard, where he received a BFA. 

“I’d already learned photographic silkscreen from my uncle who was also the founder of the art department at Carver Vocational High School in Baltimore,” acknowledges Bernard, who “had a chance to be instructed by some of the major artists of the day” at Howard including Mailou Jones, Wells, and Walter Hannula. “So when I went to Howard, I pretty much took the practice of silk-screening to Howard. I was a little bit older than most of the students there and I actually had a chance to work with Mr. Wells and help them set up some of the stuff that they’ve done there,” reveals Bernard, noting that “Mr. Wells was one of the nicest people on the planet and I worked in his lab for the duration of the time I was there.” 

Bernard would know, particularly given his extensive travels throughout the planet and its impact on his art. “I have traveled to about three-fourths of the planet,” he reports, having spent time on most of the continents, including Africa where he visited Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa. “I have always been lucky enough to have contact with people that were living here, at the time, from those countries,” details Bernard, who “also had a chance to actually blend in” to the cultures he visited. “What I used to do was travel and then come back home and do a show. And I really enjoyed that part,” he reminisces. “I’d come back from some other country and then use different mediums on what I did when I got back.” 

Over the years, his extensive travel and ongoing studies in art have made him a valued resource in the field. “What impresses me about Bernard Brooks is his encyclopedic knowledge of African American art history,” says Mazloomi, who owns several of his paintings. “He’s like a walking encyclopedia. He knows so many artists and their work and can talk about it with such knowledge. And I’ve always been impressed by him as somewhat of an art historian.”  

While certainly impressive in both his artistic ability and scholarship, Bernard takes a more empirical assessment of his career. “Well, I’m not Pablo Picasso because I don’t have his reputation,” offers Bernard, the recipient of a variety of awards, commissions, and honors and whose work graces public and private collections. “But the point is I’ve worked in just about every medium and I tried to be proficient in each one of those areas.” 

His wife is currently advancing yet another medium along with her art.

“I see myself planning to write some more children’s books,” reveals Aqui-Brooks, author of the illustrated 2013 children’s story, The Birthday Party. “And I have a plan to do a book with poetry in my artwork. I’m working on both of those things right now.”

Fortunately, the wide and extraordinary variety of artistic talents between Aqui-Brooks, Bernard Brooks, and Dr. Albert Carter will all be on display in September at the once-in-a-lifetime exhibition, Color Us Different: A Family of Painters.

Ironically, when asked whether or not African American artists have a responsibility to employ their talents on behalf of their culture, the answer Aqui-Brooks gives is ultimately the reason why people should attend the upcoming exhibit.

“Yes, they do have a responsibility to their culture, because we have been underrated, underserved, and underrepresented, and people really need to know about us,” insists Aqui-Brooks. 

“And it’s through our artworks that they become familiar with us and who we are.”