Remembrance: Acclaimed Atlanta artist, educator, writer Larry Walker (1935-2023)

Atlanta-based artist and educator Larry Walker died on December 25, 2023. A memorial service will be held at MOCA GA on January 28 at 2 p.m.

Walker donated his extensive archives to MOCA GA, as well as numerous paintings and drawings, some of which will be on display for the memorial.

Following is a personal remembrance by Stacey Savatsky, MOCA’s archivist and director of collections and exhibitions, who in 2015 helped Walker catalog his works.

::

In 2001, while working at Atlanta’s Bureau of Cultural Affairs (now the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs), I was walking through the old City Gallery East, deep in thought, when a clear, soft voice pulled me to my senses. A group of visitors stood mesmerized by a large painting — and by the voice of Larry Walker.

I had been focused on a current project, the Public Art program’s first art collections database, and was not cognizant of Larry’s newly installed Master Series exhibition at City Gallery. But Larry’s voice caught me as I walked through the galleries. I stopped. I listened, and I, too, was enchanted. Too shy to introduce myself after his talk, I continued to my office, remembering his work from the collection of the Clark Atlanta University.

Many years later, in July of 2015, Kara Walker’s studio contacted me. They had procured my name from the High Museum of Art as a possible contractor to help with Larry’s upcoming retrospective at New York’s Sikkema Jenkins & Co. gallery. Kara, Larry’s daughter and a New York-based artist, had organized this exhibit and was looking for an archivist to document his artwork.

So in the fall of 2015, I showed up at Larry and Gwen Walker’s house, a bit nervous but ready to document and sort through 50 plus years of Larry’s artwork. Fifteen years had passed since I had seen him at the City Gallery. I had forgotten about the Master Series exhibition there and the work in Clark Atlanta University’s collection until I walked through his front door and once again heard that soft, clear voice.

Maybe it was because, like Larry, I am the daughter of a professor and there is a sort of common “academic culture” around educators and their families, but I immediately felt at home with the two of them. There was a sense of familiarity and comfort, as if I had always known them — as if I was visiting relatives.

For the next several months, Larry and I worked in his terrace studio, diligently pulling out artwork after artwork, photographing and recording series, titles, dates, measurements and medium. We eventually had a rhythm, he on one side of the studio, me on the other. He would pull out a work, recite all the particulars, and I would measure and snap a photo for identification.

A few of the works he titled on the fly, which was amusing to both of us — but how could anyone remember the titles of 50 years of work? Larry grouped his artwork into stylistic and thematic painting series, which sometimes overlapped, but it was very helpful in organizing the well over 300 pieces catalogued.

By the end of those months, I could expertly identify his Wall Series pieces from the Figurative Series, and his Metamorphic Series from the Transitions Series. I picked up on his hidden spirits, birds and shadows and understood just how significant both he and his life’s work were.

I learned so much from this incredibly kind man, not only about his work but about his life. He clearly loved to engage people through art. He taught with questions, not answers, and not only in a classroom. It was an incredible experience, listening to stories, music always playing in the background. Sting’s “An Englishman in New York” remains for me the audio memory of that period in 2015.

We worked about six hours each day and took a nice lunch break, the three of us around the kitchen table. We shared stories, and I learned about the Walker family and Larry’s experiences from New York to Detroit to California and back to Atlanta, impacting the art scene in each of these places as teacher, writer, curator, artist.

Larry’s Life in Art

Born in Franklin, Georgia, Larry moved with his mother and siblings to Harlem, New York, at the age of 6. His interest in drawing and painting began shortly thereafter, and he eventually graduated from New York’s renowned High School of Music & Art.

With a bachelor’s degree in art education and a master’s degree in drawing and painting from Wayne State University, he taught in the Detroit school system for six years, the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, for 19 years and at Georgia State University for 17 years. Retiring from Georgia State in 2000, Larry continued his art practice and his support of local artists and arts programs.

Throughout his academic career, Larry was an active member and board member of numerous local and national arts organizations from the Hammonds House Museum, Art Papers and MOCA GA to the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and the National Council of Art Administrators.

His works are in the collections of the High Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. In 2020, Larry had a solo exhibit at the Marietta Cobb Museum of Art and in 2023 Mason Fine Art honored him with the solo exhibit Enigmatic Messenger.

In 2007, MOCA GA was honored to select Larry as one of three inaugural Working Artist Project fellows. His Working Artist exhibition, Surface, Spirit Voices and Other Secrets, The Wall Series in Transition, was the first Working Artist Project exhibition, a project that I now help administer.

It was Larry who introduced me to MOCA GA. I will miss him.

::

Stacey Savatsky is archivist and director of collections and exhibitions at MOCA GA.