Going through Bess Daniels’ north Columbus apartment is like a who’s who of African-American history and art. The Georgia native moved to Columbus two months ago and has already filled her new home with art works from around the world, many of which demonstrate her love of world culture and black history. Her own art pieces — primarily mosaics which, she points out, were the first forms of art in the world apart from cave paintings — hang on the walls alongside a mask from Africa and a painting by Russell Blackwell.
On her father’s side, her family was musical, she said. On her mother’s side, her family was artistic. Daniels herself does both.
“I’m a wannabe visual artist and a wannabe performing artist,” she said.
She sang as a little girl growing up in Augusta, Georgia. Daniels was one of seven children, all of whom sang — even the one sister who Daniels said was so bad the other siblings would cover their ears, much to their mother’s frustration. Daniels didn’t sing professionally growing up, not until she was in her 60s, she said, and living outside Columbia, South Carolina.
Daniels also began art as a little girl. She used to draw people with “square heads,” she said, but she would always make her younger brothers color them.
One of her most important influences was her high school art teacher who was also her homeroom teacher. Daniels was in the teacher’s class every school day for four years. It was where she learned to make flower arrangements.
It was also, she said, where she learned about black artists. At the time, schools in Georgia were still segregated by race, and there was a certain curriculum teachers in black schools were supposed to present to students, Daniels said. But the art teacher used to break off from the curriculum and teach them about black artists and other African-Americans of note.
Even now, Daniels’ conversations are sprinkled with references to and tidbits about accomplished African-Americans not widely talked about in public schools today. Mary Leontyne Price, her favorite opera singer. Oberlin-educated musician William Grant Still, Mississippian Minnie Clark, who was appointed postmaster in Indianola by President Benjamin Harrison. Daniel Hale Williams, one of the first surgeons to perform open-heart surgery. Even stoplights — “Every civilized country in the world has them, and it was invented by a black man named Garrett Morgan, and no one knows it,” Daniels said.
Her apartment is filled too with paintings and pieces by black artists. Art from Africa hangs on the wall, and a painting by Lois Mailou Jones leans against the wall by her bedroom.
African-Americans from history also inspire some of Daniels’ own art. One mosaic hanging on the wall of her dining room is centered around a Wheaties box picture of Hammerin’ Hank Aaron, a black Major League baseball player who broke Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1974. The box cut-out is surrounded by orange flattened marbles.
Finding inspiration
Her favorite of her pieces features Susan Taylor, an African-American nurse during the Civil War. Daniels told the story of how Taylor risked her life to save not only Union soldiers, but soldiers fighting for the Confederacy. One Confederate soldier wrote years later that she had saved his life, Daniels said.
Daniels compared Taylor to white abolitionists who helped slaves escape on the Underground Railroad, adding that it was extraordinary for a black nurse in the Civil War to go out of her way to save Confederate soldiers.
“She didn’t care who was bleeding,” Daniels said.
In the piece, blue flat marbles make up Taylor’s dress, while the background is filled with strips from pine cones — nature is something else Daniels likes to explore in her art. One mosaic features palm trees, the state tree of South Carolina, while another from about 30 years ago is called “No More Lemons in the Ocean” and features a large yellow lemon surrounded by a sea of blue. Daniels said she thought of the phrase “no more lemons in the ocean” while thinking about all the trash and man-made objects that ended up in the world’s oceans and rivers. Her mosaics are full of blue and green flat marbles.
Her love of African-American history and culture also infuses her music. She likes jazz, reggae, gospel and blues. In fact, a love of blues is partly what drew her to Mississippi, though she ended up in Columbus instead of the Delta. She writes and performs songs herself, a few of which are on YouTube. One she’s particularly proud of, “Nobody Paints a Picture Like You,” she performed at her daughter’s wedding. She’s also proud of “Go Slowly Little Girl Before You Fall in Love” which is a song about women choosing who they can fall in love with.
“Don’t just fall in love with every jerk who tells you you’re pretty,” Daniels said when talking of it.
Each song and each piece of art has a story or two or five, anecdotes about her own life or biographies she read on figures from history. She tells the story of Susie Taylor with a reverence that contrasts with the sauciness she infuses into a story about singing a raunchy jazz song for a scandalized audience many years ago.
Each story she infuses with a lesson about understanding people, from learning more about their cultures to understanding their attitudes. Daniels says she encourages people to learn more about other religions and to be able to greet people in multiple languages. It’s more important now than ever, she added.
“America now is people from every culture,” she said.
One of her mosaics hangs high in the dining room. The wooden frame is African, she said, while the mosaic itself is made up of orange flat marbles. In the center is a square of orange cloth brightly decorated and inspired by clothing from India, Daniels said. Framing the pattern are bright orange feathers she said were inspired by Native American art.
It’s representative of many cultures, she said.
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