Art galleries across Pittsburgh's Cultural District will welcome hundreds of visitors on Friday, July 28 for this summer's Gallery Crawl. The lineup includes live music, poetry readings and a commemoration of the late artist Elizabeth "Betty" Asche Douglas.
She died earlier this month in her native Rochester Township at age 92. Douglas was the first Black student to enroll in the art department at the Carnegie Institute of Technology ( Carnegie Mellon today). She went on to become an accomplished visual artist, educator and jazz vocalist. She once described her work as expressing various levels and elements of being alive.
Tina Williams Brewer, a Fiber Art storyteller, and teacher at the Pittsburgh Center for Arts and Media, spoke to 90.5 WESA's Priyanka Tewari about her connection to Elizabeth "Betty" Douglas.
Tewari: Thank you for being here.
Brewer: Thank you for asking me. This is quite an honor to be able to speak about Betty. She was a magnificent human being. She had a genuineness about her, and a truth-telling about her. And I could feel that she was the kind of person that I wanted to emulate. And I asked her right off, I said, you know, I would love to grow up to be just like Betty Douglas.
Betty actually grew up in Rochester in the 1930s and 40s Do you think that some of her artwork reflected her upbringing or where she grew up?
I think that she had adversity, just like I had adversity because of the time. I came to Pittsburgh in the early 70s and I had a very similar kind of interaction with the energy here, just the struggle of being an African-American woman. Our rights were not handed to us, so there was a struggle. But there was also a persistence to define yourself, your identity, and to stick with it. And that's what I saw with Betty, because she was always looking for the next option to be able to rise. And she was rising every single day.
Betty Douglas taught at Geneva College where she developed a humanities program that drew from art, literature, and music. As an educator yourself, how do those disciplines actually work together?
That is African sensibilities. Things are holistic. The visual is influenced by music, dance, poetry. All of those things can be seen in her work, as well as mine. Her work was a little more straightforward than mine. Mine is multiple layers of information, but it is very holistic because it is influenced by music. And so her work also had a kind of a cutting edge to it where you could see the technology and her advancement in that. But it always was kind of framed with that African sensibility that was there.
Is that something that you teach your students as well?
Absolutely. I mean, because when I work with students, my purpose is to get them involved with the process. Sometimes it's just the mind and the hands working together, whether it's painters sculpting, or whatever. It is a prayer. The artwork is the prayer that you connect with the creator. And so I really feel like that was like Betty did because Betty was vital and authentic. Very much to the end. And we will miss her.
Well, here's to keeping our authentic selves alive in whatever shape or form. Thank you so much, Tina, for taking the time to join me today.
Thank you so much for having me. It was wonderful to remember Betty.
Tina Williams Brewer's work "Out of Troubled Waters Comes Bliss" is on display at the 707 Penn Gallery in the Cultural District.
