take over her husband's business. She 

 sold brick to contractors, often rising 

 before dawn to meet them at the job site 

 and then rushing home to prepare 

 breakfast for her son. Knowing that her 

 son would have to work to help 

 supplement her income, Jessie Howell 

 proposed a most unusual arrangement 

 that suited them both. For years, Howell 

 worked at the Atlantic Coastline 

 Railroad and gave each paycheck to his 

 mother. She, in turn, took care of all the 

 finances and mundane responsibilities of 

 the home and gave him whatever 

 spending money he needed, thus 

 providing him with the freedom to use 

 all his spare time for painting. Much of 

 his earlier art is very dark, largely 

 because he most often painted at night 



when the light was poor. He and his 

 mother lived together until her death in 

 1972. They frequently traveled together, 

 and many of their delightful adventures 

 are recorded in his personal journals. 



Children are intrigued by the details 

 of Howell's life, one that was very 

 different in so many ways from their 

 own. They are treated to these stories, 

 narrated in the distinctive southern drawl 

 of the artist, in a biographical documen- 

 tary video entitled A Quality of Light that 

 aired on the North Carolina public 

 television network several years ago. 



"I've always been fascinated with 

 the way the world changes because of the 

 quality of light — fascinated with light 

 and space," Howell said. 



In the course of their study, the 



children will become familiar with this 

 preoccupation with light and space. 

 Proportions are often distorted in the 

 serigraphs. Heads are noticeably smaller 

 and hands overly large, indicative of the 

 fact that these men work with their 

 hands. Kirk, a fifth-grader at Berkeley 

 Manor School, points out that "the hands 

 in the picture look big because you are 

 looking straight at them, and the faces of 

 the men are more in the background." 

 Kirk is also taken with the varying 

 shades of blue in the picture of a single 

 fisherman sitting on the side of his boat 

 surveying his catch. "I like all that blue," 

 he says, "and the man counting his fish. 

 The expression on his face is so good." 



Howell knew those expressions 

 firsthand. In 1948, he won a Rosen wald 



Students write their impressions of the art and the artist. 



16 WINTER 1998 



