Title: Coast watch
Identifier: coastwatch00uncs_11 (find matches)
Year: 1979 (1970s)
Authors: UNC Sea Grant College Program
Subjects: Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology
Publisher: (Raleigh, N. C. : UNC Sea Grant College Program)
Contributing Library: State Library of North Carolina
Digitizing Sponsor: North Carolina Digital Heritage Center

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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 Rosenwald
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Students write their impressions of the art and the artist. 16 WINTER 1998

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