Artist James Washington dies

Mississippi-born painter and sculptor James W. Washington Jr. was known widely for his sensitively carved stone figures of small mammals and forest animals.

Through them, he proposed the innate spirituality of all living beings and became known for his belief that ecology and the environment are windows to spiritual existence. His depictions of famous figures from African and African-American history also brought attention to the artist who was a veteran of the nation's earliest civil-rights struggles.

The Seattle artist, 91, died Wednesday in Seattle's Providence Hospital after a brief illness.

Critics, curators, art historians and a loving public far beyond the Pacific Northwest acclaimed him. Over a 50-year period, he was one of the nation's leading African-American visionary folk artists, whose work was displayed in exhibitions throughout the nation as well as in Japan and England.

Subject of a 1989 biographical study, "The Spirit in the Stone: The Visionary Art of James W. Washington, Jr.," Mr. Washington drew attention early in the Seattle art community after his 1944 move here to work in Bremerton as a civilian electrician during World War II.

Although he never formally attended art school, he studied at the University of Washington extension program with painter Yvonne Twining Humber and printmaker Glen Alps. He also studied privately with Northwest master Mark Tobey.

Mr. Washington's first museum exhibition was in the "Northwest Annual" of 1948 at the Seattle Art Museum. He also acted as the curator for a series of annual art shows at Seattle's Mount Zion Baptist Church. They were notable for their multiracial representation of the city's artists.

Encouraged by Tobey to pursue sculpture, Mr. Washington's first carved stone sculptures of small animals were exhibited at Campus Music and Gallery in 1956 in Seattle. Often appearing to emerge directly from the stone, his animal figures attracted recognition because of their simplicity and direct carving on the stone.

His New York debut was in 1960 at the Willard Gallery. He has been represented by Seattle's Foster/ White Gallery since 1970; his last exhibition there was in 1998.

An articulate spokesman and writer on civil rights and the necessity of spiritual content in art, Mr. Washington lectured at Seattle Pacific University, Western Washington University, St. Mary's College of Notre Dame and the Center for Urban Black Studies in Berkeley, Calif., where he received an honorary doctorate in 1975.

Many sculptures of granite, wood and other materials are in private, corporate and museum collections. Besides the animals, he also created memorial portraits of significant historical and mythical figures like Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Job, "Young Queen of Ethiopia," St. Luke, and Frederick Douglass. People responded to the diminutive size of his works and their paradoxical breathing, animated quality, even though they were made of the hardest stone.

In addition to the Seattle Art Museum collection, he is represented in many museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Oakland Museum of California and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. He made specially commissioned works for, among others, the Seattle Arts Commission, U.S. Bank, Safeco, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, World Trade Center and the Weyerhaeuser Company.

Retrospective exhibitions of Mr. Washington's art were held in 1980 at the Frye Art Museum and in 1989 at the Bellevue Art Museum. His work is on view in "Earthly Paradise" at the Seattle Art Museum through Oct. 8 and at the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle exhibition through June 25 at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center.

Mr. Washington served on the Washington state Arts Commission between 1959 and 1966 and again between 1971 and 1976. He received a Governor's Arts and Heritage Award in 1973, the King County Arts Commission Honors Award in 1984, and a prize for sculpture in the 1962 Seattle World's Fair exhibit, "Northwest Art Today."

Barbara Johns, a special projects manager for the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution and former interim director of the Tacoma Art Museum, said she was "always impressed with the deep and very genuine spiritual intent he had for his work."

"Dr. Washington's contribution to the region's art was important," Johns added, "but his art must be examined and reconsidered in the long range so we can hope for a better and continuing assessment of his role in American art as a whole."

A memorial service will be announced at a later date.