BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:NingEventWidget-v1
VERSION:2.0
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:1992552:Event:339481
DTSTAMP:20260307T022247Z
SUMMARY:The Album Art of Mozelle Thompson; LP Illustrations 1953-1969
DESCRIPTION: November’s retrospective at Most Wanted Fine Art focuse
 s on the album cover art of Mozelle Thompson. The exhibition will be a
  must-see for anyone with an interest in local history, art or music. 
 It includes additional book and magazine illustrations accompanied by 
 biographical information about the artist. There will be six opportuni
 ties to see the exhibition and our hope is to ultimately raise an awar
 eness of this neglected artist’s legacy and demonstrate a need for f
 urther documentation and preservation of his life’s work.  Mozelle 
 W. Thompson, Jr (1926-1969) was a prolific African American illustrato
 r born in Pittsburgh with associations to neighborhoods including the 
 Hill District, Garfield and Homewood. Thompson’s professional career
  arguably began as early as 1944 when he was published in the pages of
  Mademoiselle magazine as a senior at Peabody High School. He won nume
 rous awards that year including a scholarship to the Parsons School of
  Design in New York. At age twenty-one he traveled abroad to study in 
 Europe, which is documented in the February 1949 issue of Ebony Magazi
 ne.   Thompson’s earliest known album cover illustration was done in
  1953. By 1960 he had illustrated over fifty album covers and by 1969 
 he illustrated at least ninety albums, which very likely makes him the
  most prolific African American visual artist of that era to contribut
 e to album cover illustration. Thompson’s imagery adorns albums from
  the likes of Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Gerry Mulligan, Hank Will
 iams and Jimmie Rodgers, just to name a few. Throughout the 1960’s h
 e received numerous acknowledgements from publications such as Billboa
 rd Magazine, Graphis Annual and Art Direction Magazine. In 1967 he rec
 eived a Grammy Award nomination for graphic arts. His illustrations we
 re featured on book covers, in magazines, on theatrical posters and in
  the pages of The New York Times. Illustrations for a paperback of A C
 lockwork Orange and the first edition of the novel Shaft gave him a ve
 ry early association with relevant works that eventually had an indeli
 ble impact on popular culture. His illustrations for James P. Johnsonâ
 €™s Lift Every Voice And Sing, which he was working on at the time of 
 his death, received critical acclaim.  Thompson fell six stories from 
 his apartment window just short of his forty-third birthday. He was a 
 working artist teaching at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New 
 York City at the time. His death was reported as a suicide and his leg
 acy has been forgotten over the course of forty-five years. He current
 ly has no representation to speak of in the city of Pittsburgh, where 
 he had a very traditional experience as a young local artist sharing m
 entors with the likes of Andy Warhol, Philip Pearlstein, Mary Shaw Mar
 ohnic, Louise Pershing and George Heppenstall, not to mention affiliat
 ions with historic local institutions, The Pittsburgh Courier and Gimb
 els department store. \n\n\nFor more information visit https://jazzbur
 gher.ning.com/events/the-album-art-of-mozelle-thompson-lp-illustration
 s-1953-1969
DTSTART:20141107T180000Z
DTEND:20141130T180000Z
CATEGORIES:art, music, history
LOCATION:Most Wanted Fine Art, 5015 Penn Ave. (Garfield)
WEBSITE:
URL:
CONTACT:
ORGANIZER;CN="J. Malls":https://jazzburgher.ning.com/profile/JMalls
ATTACH;FMTTYPE="image/jpeg":http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/
 file/get/1045012846?profile=original
ATTENDEE;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;PARTSTAT=ACCEPTED;RSVP=TRUE;CN="J. Malls
 ":https://jazzburgher.ning.com/profile/JMalls
ATTENDEE;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;PARTSTAT=TENTATIVE;RSVP=TRUE;CN="Roberta
  Windle":https://jazzburgher.ning.com/profile/RobertaJeanWindle
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR