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D12 ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL 
OBITUARIES
REGINALD GAMMON

Artist Loved To Tell Stories
BY LLOYD JOJOLA

Journal Staff Writer

Reginald Gammon was a storyteller; an artist whose paintings and prints captured everything from the civil rights movement to his Philadelphia upbringing and horn-blowing jazz  musicians.

Gammon: "An artist who was true to himself and his vision"

"He was always interested in other people and their stories. The stories were big for him," said Regina Held of New Grounds Pring Workshop in Albuquerque, where Gammon's work is shown.  "He loved to tell stories with his work, also."

Gammon, a nationally recognized artist who retired to New Mexico in the early 1990s after serving as a professor of fine arts and humanities at Western Michigan University, died last week. He was 84.

His funeral will take place Friday at St. Simon the Cyrenian Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. A local memorial service will be held from 5-8 p.m. Nov. 28 at the Albuquerque Museum in Old Town.

Held called Gammon "the most uncommercial artist" she had ever met, an artist "who would follow his heart.

"He would never do something because he could sell it," Held said. "He did jazz musicians when he wanted to, but not because the gallery wanted a show on jazz... He would be an artist who was true to himself and his vision."

Born in Philadelphia, Gamon studied at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art and the Tyler School of Fine Art at Temple University.

His studies were interrupted for 18 months while he was working in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and for two years in the Navy, serving in the Pacific toward the end of World War II.

Eventually, he moved to New York, where he became a founding member of Harlem's Spiral group in the early 1960s. 

The organization of black artists, which included the likes of Romare Bearden and Richard Mayhew, prompted their works and explored how they could use their talents to aid the civil rights movement. 

Spiral Group disbanded after putting together only on exhibition. In 1969, Gammon joined the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, which was formed to protest the exclusion and disparaging treatment of black art in mainstream museums and galleries. 

He came to Western Michigan as a visiting scholar in 1970 and was offered a permanent teaching job at the end of his stay. Gammon moved to the Albuquerque area after retiring from the Kalamazoo university in 1991. 

Gammon, who had a studio at the Harwood Art Center in Albuquerque, was always a painter, a figurative artist who loved to do portraits. His work included print making, as well, which he did at New Grounds Print Workshop. 

He had been making prints on and off since the late 1940s, but had recently learned the mezzotint technique at New Grounds, Gammon told the Journal last year, when New Grounds held a solo show titled "All That Jazz: New Works by Reggie Gammon." The show was in honor of his 83rd birthday. 

"I've always loved movies and music, but I see my prints as being inspired by black-and-white still photography," he told the Journal. "Though I enjoy using color in my paintings, I feel that black and white is best for printmaking." 

He said on many levels, Gammon's work was personal. For instance, he did a series of works on his upbringing in Philadelphia, having triple by-pass surgery and joining a health club afterward, she said.

"In addition to that he was very personable," Held said, "I think for somebody who was as well known as he was, he was extremely humble, and he knew he was only as good as his last painting."

Always wearing a smile, the deep-voiced Gammon was a "charmer," Held said.

"He just had the extremely beautiful spirit; this very pleasant spirit," she said. "He would always say nice things to people about their work. He, who had made art longer than all of us here, would come in and say 'Wow, this is really great! I wish I could be this good!'" 

Gammon is survived by his wife, Jonni Gammon; daughter Regina Lee; son Patrick King; sisters Russe Jackson and Ruth Graham; and three grandchildren.