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being associated with other of these young people who were interested in becoming artists was that when I was about fourteen, there was an art club in the Negro neighborhood, composed of all Negro artists, that used to meet on Sundays at the various members houses, and we would hold little exhibitions and occasionally would have life drawing classes and things.
...Well, the ages varied. I was the youngest member, as I was fourteen. And there were some there even, you know, in their early forties. I mean people who were all interested in art. The organization was called the Arts and Crafts Guild. This thing was interesting because we were all working people or young people, and it was interesting because nobody in this group had really had any formal art education. We were all amateurs except one individual who was sort of the president of the group. His name was George E. Neal. And George had gone to an art school for a couple of years, and he was a quite talented young man. He must have been at that time in his early twenties, and he would more-or-less guide us and give us the real formal knowledge that he was acquiring in school. So this went on for a couple of years, and we decided that we had to find some way better to equip ourselves other than just through one person because there was enough talent in our organization to warrant other people going to art school and had an opportunity to go to art school.

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