Jessamine Shumate
Ada Jessamine Shumate (born March 31, 1902, as Ada Jessamine White in Horsepasture, Virginia – died on December 16, 1990, in Greenville, North Carolina) was an American artist, historian and cartographer, winner of the "Award of Distinction" in 1955 from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
"Her work covers a broad range of media including silk screen-printing, pastel, transparent and opaque water color, oil, collage, batik and serigraph.
They often concentrated only on traditional southern art paintings, such as family portraits, landscapes, or simply decorating utensils.
Few other people in the region had the scope and range of Jessamine Shumate's efforts, and she received much local criticism and disapproval for some of her modern art projects and accomplishments.
A still controversial series of art works was done showing the Broad Street Christian Church in Martinsville, Virginia[2] of which she was a member.
Sharing the paintings with the public is a fitting tribute to her work and a good way for people to get a sense of what went into creating the dam.
Sharing the paintings with the public is a fitting tribute to her work and a good way for people to get a sense of what went into creating the dam.
Other paintings are pastels showing scenes of student housing and life in Greensboro, North Carolina, from the late 1940s.
"Mrs. Jessamine Shumate... is perhaps the only local artist to use a burned cookie sheet and a blow torch to do some of her painting.
"[6] And another writer from Roanoke said: "When it come to experimental material it is quite possible that Jessamine Shumate takes some kind of cake for painting on a cookie sheet.
Jim Yeatts, gallery owner, tells us that the artist left the cookie tin in the oven too long one day and tried desperately to get it clean.
Every month during the school session, she would ride the train to New York City and stay for a week.
She learned a great deal from these classes, and enjoyed her painting and experimenting with many different kinds of medium.
