NC ARTIST HIGHLIGHTS - JAMES C. MCMILLAN
James McMillan, highlighted this week, is one of ten artists currently represented in GreenHill's inaugural exhibition at the Tanger Center: Greensboro Portraits.
James C. McMillan was born in Sanford, North Carolina on December 23, 1925. In 1941, at the age of fifteen, young James McMillan graduated valedictorian from his high school and moved to Washington, D.C. to attend Howard University.
He was Head of the Art Department at Guilford College from 1969-1988. In 1991 he co-founded the African American Atelier and served as its first President.
McMillan served in the United States Navy during World War II from 1943-1946. He returned to Howard for a final year and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1947. In the fall of 1947, McMillan became the Chair of the Art Department at Bennett College. In 1950, he attended Catholic University in Washington, D.C. where he pursued his MFA in Sculpture (completed in 1952).
He was one of the original co-founders and first president of the African American Atelier, which originally opened in 1991. His work can be found at Bennett College, North Carolina Central University, Guilford College, The Weatherspoon Art Museum and Virginia State University.
Interview
James C. McMillan spoke with GreenHill curator Edie Carpenter about his work and the state of the world.
EC: Tell me about your portrait of James Ephraim McGirt that is in the collection of the McGirt-Horton Branch Library in Greensboro and will be on view at the Tanger Center for the Performing Arts:
JM: That portrait was done for Bennett College. Bennett was originally connected to the Methodist Episcopal Church (now known as St. Matthew’s Methodist Church). Young men and women both studied at Bennett in the 1880’s. McGirt attended Bennett and edited an early African American art journal.
EC: You taught at Bennett College early in your art career?
JM: I was working on fresco painting at Skowhegan when President Jones of Bennett asked me to head the art department in 1947. I had to come down from a scaffold to take the call. That sparked a real history in terms of my academic career-- starting the art program there.
EC: What was your experience during World War II?
JM: I was drafted during my second year as an undergraduate at Howard University. I was already in ROTC and wanted to serve either in the Air Force or Navy because I liked airplanes. Unfortunately I was not old enough to fly like some of my friends who became Tuskegee pilots. I was a member of the Navy and was stationed at Barbers Point in Hawaii during the war. The war allowed for an expansion. When you were drafted in the war you were thrown into various groups that were a part of the execution of the war with everyone including people from across the country. An integration, particularly in the Navy’s air force existed. When you meet new people you get ideas particularly by meeting people who had already been involved in the arts. When I was stationed in Hawaii I was part of the art group at the base who had their own little newsletter. Those of us with experience were hired to teach returning GI’s. I was teaching and that is where I first learned and got the feel for what it was to be a teacher.
EC: What did it mean to you as a young emerging artist to be in a situation in which you realize, once you are in it, that the whole world will be different after it is over?
JM: As I look over my shoulder at the choices I was making at that point one of the things that drove me was my enjoyment in making things, and this carried me through. My enjoyment creating things began early in my life. I was born in a small town—Sanford, North Carolina. In middle school I already had an interest in art and I remember one of my teachers who had studied in New York City called me in one day and said she had something for me. I looked in the box and it was a box of charcoal—I had never seen drawing charcoal before and at first did not know what to make of it. But I think that she had seen that I had an interest in the arts even then, and that is where I think it may have started, back in those days. I graduated from high school early and at 15 moved to Washington DC to begin my education in the arts. At Howard, Lois Jones, my dear mentor, took me under her wing and encouraged me to get my degree in art.
James C. McMillan, sketchbook drawings, 1970’s Sanford, North Carolina
EC: Did the war change the way you thought about the world?
JM: That’s another part of that expansion at that age too—and the war made me realize that there was more to the world than what was happening to this guy from a small country town. I’m sure that was a great driver in terms of expanding my vision of who I was and what I was really interested in and why it is that people do such interesting things in this wider world. After the war it was the beginning of the McCarthy era in the federal government. So all those things made a difference—but my art gave me the release and the opportunity to do some of the things that I really enjoyed doing. That was the setting that preceded the civil rights works I produced in the 1960’s.
EC: At the end of the war you also began working in sculpture as well as drawing and painting?
Afro Thinker, 1953-6, carved wood, 27 x 6 x 6 inches
Untitled, 1950’s, ink on paper, 14 x 10.5 inches
JM: I wanted to expand my interests in the arts. I received a grant to study sculpture and would receive my MFA in sculpture. I guess this could be seen as connected to my childhood interest in fabricating model airplanes.
EC: Today people have to stay apart from each other instead of being thrown together. The Presence exhibition that you were scheduled to participate in at GreenHill has been moved due to COVID19. We planned to exhibit some of your works treating civil rights.
JM: This thing (racial inequality) still exists so deeply and so profoundly—it has to be said, and it has to be demonstrated if we are going to create works that evoke the respect for humankind that we are born with and should cherish if we are lucky enough to be alive in this country.
EC: Would you like to add anything for our readers?
JM: In order to know where we will have to be to move forward, out of this world we are trapped in at the present moment, we will need an understanding of who we are. And hopefully this moment will have a plus—and make us look at things collectively, in terms of humanism—and gain a larger perspective of who we all are together.