Honorary Member Bios
MacArthur Fellow, Joyce J. Scott, examines the extremes of human nature to create artworks that not only mine the fabric of our complex existence, but also redresses history to reveal truths. Best known for her use of off-loom, free-form bead-weaving techniques, Scott merges lush materials with autobiographical, sociological and political content to unapologetically confront themes of racism, sexism, violence, inequality and oppression, while embracing splendor, spirituality, nature and healing.
Born to southern sharecroppers who were descendants of enslaved people, Scott hails from a long line of extraordinary craftspeople. Early in her practice, Scott worked with textiles before expanding into printmaking, performance, music, comedy and finally solidifying eminence through sculpture.
Scott and her work have been the subject of countless scholarly books and articles. She is the recipient of myriad commissions, grants, awards, residencies and prestigious honors including the National Endowment for the Arts, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Anonymous Was a Woman, American Craft Council, National Living Treasure Award, Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for the Arts, Mary Sawyers Imboden Baker Award, MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2016), Smithsonian Visionary Artist Award, National Academy of Design Induction, Moore College Visionary Woman Award, among others.
She earned a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and a MFA from the Instituto Allende in Mexico. In 2018 she was awarded an honorary fellowship from NYU, as well as honorary doctorates from MICA and the California College of the Arts. In 2022, she received an honorary doctorate from Johns Hopkins University. Ms. Scott’s work is included in many important public and private collections including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, National Museum of African American History and Culture, Detroit Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Smithsonian, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Reginald F. Lewis Museum in Baltimore, Speed Museum in Kentucky, Yale University Art Gallery, National Museum of American Art in DC, The Mint Museum in North Carolina, The Toledo Museum of Art and the Seattle Art Museum, among countless others.
Scott’s wide-ranging body of work has crossed styles and mediums, from intricate bead work to large scale outdoor installations. The contradiction between the burden of her complex narratives, compared to the brilliance of her materials, powerfully reveal the equality in “craft” and “fine art.”
Joyce J. Scott
Bead weaver and Textile artist
A native Washingtonian Lavenia Nesmith has performed locally and nationally, including Blues Alley, Twins Jazz, Bohemian Caverns, LaPortas, Jazz Night at Westminster, Oakland Mills Jazz Series, Henley Park Hotel, Ritz Carlton Hotel, Mandarin Hotel, Tuskegee Airmen Gala, The Arch of The Capitol, The Hart Senate Office Building, The Library of Congress, the Gaylord Hotel at the National Harbour and The Martin Luther King, Jr. International Chapel in Atlanta, Georgia.
A promising musician since early, Lavenia suspended a professional musical career after college to start a family, raise two sons and follow a successful career path dedicated to public service, inspired to help others. Today, Lavenia is renewing the pursuit of her passion as a vocalist full-time.
Festival credits include the Maryland Museum of Africa Art Jazz Festival, the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, the DC Jazz Festival, the 2012 National Cherry Blossom Festival, and The Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival, where she has been invited to perform for three consecutive years to sold-out audiences. She has been accompanied by the phenomenal music artistry of Pianists Eric Byrd, Chris Grasso, Janelle Gill, Bob Butto, Jon Ozment, Stephen Key; Bassists James King, Michael Bowie, Zack Pride, Bhagwan Khalsa, Wes Biles, Harry Jackson; Saxophonists Paul Carr, Lyle Link; Trumpeters Thad Wilson and Kenny Rittenhouse; and Percussionists Lenny Robinson, Terron Whitehead and Alphonso (Al) Young.
Lavenia is also the Creator, Executive Producer, Actor, and Vocalist in two original productions: Sista’s Can Sa-ang — A Tribute to Female Legends in Jazz. This production is a poignant, soul-searching, handclapping, toe-tapping journey down memory lane; and A Tribute to Mahalia Jackson, a one-woman show told in dialogue and song where Lavenia weaves historical information with praise, humor, seriousness, and humility.
Lavenia Nesmith
Musician
Samantha McElhaney
Samantha McElhaney is an American Soprano whose voice has been described as “one of those dramatic, heroic, and epic, full-throated voices that come along once in a lifetime.” Samantha is an accomplished Performing artist, Teaching professional, Vocal coach, and Musical Director who has traveled the worked with an array of distinguished musicians and groups.
Samantha is classically trained and uses her classical training and technique as a base while fusing its principles with other genres such as Jazz, R & B, Musical Theater, and Gospel, just to name a few.
Her authentic, powerful vocalism, sophisticated stage presence, and thrilling abilities allow her to pursue a wide array of operatic depictions and enchant audiences in concert and recital appearances worldwide. Operatic audiences have largely celebrated her for notable roles that brought Samantha to The Washington National Opera Company, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera Chicago, Toledo Opera, Ft. Worth Opera, Royal Danish Opera, Carnegie Hall, The Citadel in Cairo, Egypt, and the White House in the nation’s capital: earning her numerous press acknowledgments and remarkable performance reviews.
Samantha McElhaney released her debut CD, appropriately titled “The Coronation” in the Spring of 2019. She is also preparing to launch World Stage Performing Arts Education Foundation (WSPAEF), a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering and advancing music education programs in schools and communities throughout the USA.
Ms. McElhaney graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, and a Master of Music degree from the University of Maryland College Park in College Park, Maryland.
Musician
Karen Abercrombie
Karen Abercrombie is an award-winning actress, Parents Choice Award-winning storyteller, singer-songwriter, and motivational speaker. She recently received the Movieguide Grace Award for her performance in the Kendrick Brothers' film War Room. Karen played the spicy 80-year-old prayer warrior, Miss Clara, in the film. She has guest starred on several television shows, her most recent roles included playing the character Zelda Molskey on the CBS show The Inspectors, playing Aberdeen in the AMC hit show Turn, and playing oncologist Stephanie Briggs on Vampire Diaries. She also appeared on Beverly Hills 90210, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Ally McBeal, Saved By The Bell, Judging Amy, and Strong Medicine.
Karen recently formed her own production company, Tapestry Entertainment, LLC, where she creates and produces uplifting, thought-provoking entertainment and positive film projects with good role models for children and teens.
An avid jazz lover, Karen pulled together some of the jazz music she had written over the years and recorded it. She released her debut album Matters Of The Heart to favorable reviews.
Karen has also written a children's book about manners. She is beyond thrilled to have the book illustrated by gifted artist Leah Visbaras, a student of hers when Karen was the artistic director of Angels Take Flight, A Children's Theatre Company that she founded in Mooresville, North Carolina.
Karen grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh and currently resides in Atlanta. She studied at the University of Pittsburgh and trained under honorary member Dr. Vernell Lillie through the Kuntu Reparatory Theater. She also is a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.
Actress/Musician
Beverly Adams Thomas
Beverly Adams Thomas is best described as a noteworthy participant in the fields of music and the visual arts. Ms. Thomas resides in Detroit, Michigan. She received a B.S. in Music Education, an M.A. in music in organ performance from Wayne State University, and pursued course work toward her Ph.D. in Educational Administration. Ms. Thomas was an educator in Detroit Public Schools and as an administrator, rose to the position of an Assistant Principal, achieved as an Intercultural Coordinator, and then was appointed Principal of the award-winning Renaissance High School. She performed with distinction as Department Head of Fine Arts and Foreign Language at Mumford High School. She is now retired. For many years she served as the Minister of Music at Methodist and Baptist churches. Her service on Executive Boards and Boards of Directors of various national organizations has been exemplary. She is a Golden Life Member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Currently, Ms. Thomas enjoys popularity as a professional artist, exhibiting her paintings throughout this country, South Africa, Namibia, and Canada. She has traveled extensively in South Africa, where her talent as a visual artist excelled. The sale of prints from her original paintings helped establish The Beverly Thomas Scholarship Trust in South Africa. In 2010, she re-established the Beverly Thomas Fine Arts Institute at Camp Baber in Michigan, which enrolls more than one hundred talented students annually. The summer arts program is her vision. She is a multidisciplinary artist who has established herself as an educator, performing artist, and visual artist. She continues to perform as an organist, choral director, and artist. As a role model, she has mentored and encouraged countless children and adults to develop the gift within them to the fullest degree possible. She continues to encourage young artists by providing multiple performance opportunities and exposure to the fine arts.
Music and Visual Artist
Kay Joy Ballard Peters
Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Joy attended public school. She studied at Howard University and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Design in June 1969, with minors in Art History and Graphics. She received the Ceramic and Watercolor Painting Award; Howard University Annual Student Exhibits 1966, 1967, and 1968. She participated in an exhibition with mother/teachers/artist E. Loretta Ballard. The “MOTHER-DAUGHTER SHOW”, in 1969, took place at the Margaret Dickey Gallery, D. C. Teachers College.
Joy moved to Boston Massachusetts in January 1969 and taught art in the Brookline Public School System for three years. She studied at Boston University, and received her Master of Fine Arts in Art Education in 1974 with a minor in Education. She became Co-Director of the Children’s Art Centre in 1973. Her works were shown in the D.C. Art Association Annual Exhibits from 1971-1976. First appliqués showed in 1973.
She relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, in August 1973 and became a founding faculty member in the University System of Georgia’s Atlanta Metropolitan College (formerly Atlanta Junior College) from September 1974 – February 2001. She retired as a Professor of Art but remains active in the visual arts community on neighborhood, city, county, and state levels serving on all arts councils for a period of time.
Her first major exhibition showing appliqués was "THREE D.C. ARTISTS SHOW,” Smith –Mason Gallery, 1974, Washington, D.C.. Her group shows included Atlanta Artists Club Traveling Shows and Black Artists/ Atlanta Annual Exhibitions. Her juried Shows include “Artists in Georgia,” “Atlanta Life Annual Exhibits,” “Atlanta Arts Festival.” Her One Woman Atlanta Exhibits include: “Expressions of Joy,” 1977, Handshake Gallery; “Quiet Fire,” 1979, Phoenix Arts Cultural Center; “EXHIBITION OF RECENT APPLIQUES,” 1981, Phoenix Gallery, Bishop College Collection, Texas; Georgia Art Bus, Fulton County Arts Council, Apex Museum, Bellsouth in Atlanta, Georgia; other corporate and private collections, including Brown & Company CPA, P LLC (Maryland) and Andrea Young.
Ms. Peters is highly acclaimed for her work in “appliqué collage” and has dedicated her career to art education and appreciation. For more than 28 years, she pursued a career as an art educator at all academic levels. Her work with elementary school children in the classroom and through community-organized projects demonstrates her commitment to bringing the elemental aspects of art appreciation to our youth. She continues to remain active in the visual arts community on neighborhood, county, city, and state levels. As a visual and commercial artist, she has demonstrated exceptional innate talent, imagination, and creativity, most notably through her unique appliqué collages, which are created from fabric and depict a broad range of American life. As creator and coordinator of the National Black Art Festival’s Artists Market, a national event, she has promoted community awareness of art and generated a greater interest in the collection of art and the careers of emerging artists for more than 15 years.
Visual Artist
Dr. Vernell A. Lillie
Dr. Vernell A. Lillie was an artistic director, theatre producer, drama, lecturer, and writer. She served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Her vita was long and featured experiences in psychodrama, theater teaching, ancient Egyptian history, and a myriad of artistic endeavors.
Dr. Lillie held a doctorate and master’s degree from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. She studied drama and speech as an undergraduate at Dillard University in New Orleans. She has further graduate study in Egyptology with Asa Hilliard of Georgia State and English Texas State Certification for Teaching at Texas Southern University. Additionally, she has a long, diversified list of training experiences.
In 1974, she founded the Kuntu Repertory Theatre to present the works of Rob Penny (Playwright-in-Residence) and other African American writers. Its initial intent was to examine Black life from a sociopolitical-historical perspective and to use the theater to educate, entertain and move both performers and audiences to social action. Later, Kuntu broadened its scope to provide an arena for the black writer to develop a supportive, intellectually stimulating environment for cultural reflections and to enable its members to work as a group for the cultural and social development of the community. Since 1974, the Kuntu Repertory Theatre has sponsored many outstanding activities to give visibility to the African American presence at the University of Pittsburgh and involve diverse groups in examining the black experience in America and worldwide.
Dr. Lillie's other artistic achievements included over 80 productions, such as The Evolution of Jazz, in Edinburgh, Scotland; direction of Little Willie Jones and Profiles in Black. She has produced three National Black Films and Filmmakers Festivals with Sears, Roebuck, and Company, and the Afro-American Museum of Philadelphia. Her work as a workshop leader covers an impressive range of subjects: psychodrama approaches to training, Afro-American literature, and arts education, visual and performing arts for the deaf, and cross-cultural relationships.
Dr. Vernell Lillie passed away on May 11, 2020. It was her 89th birthday.
Theatre
Leslie King-Hammond
Leslie King-Hammond was born and raised in New York. In 1962, she began her collegiate studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo. A few years later, after working for General Electric Company and teaching art on the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant, she received a scholarship at the City University of New York, where she majored in Fine Arts. She studied with notables and, concurrent with her studies, became chair of the Art Department for the Performing Arts Workshops of Queens College. Upon graduation, she was accepted to The Johns Hopkins University Horizon Scholarship to work on her doctoral studies in art history.
While at Johns Hopkins, Ms. King-Hammond taught art history at the Maryland Institute, College of Art. In the summer of 1973. she traveled to Scandinavia to work on her dissertation: The Life and Works of William Henry Johnson. After graduation, she was appointed Dean of Graduate Studies at the Maryland Institute. There, she administers six majors and three-degree programs. Concurrent with her administrative responsibilities, she taught in the Art History Department. In 1985, she won the Trustee Award for Excellence in Teaching. Also, during the 1980's she received Mellon Grants for Faculty Research. In 1985, in response to a decline in students of color at The Institute, the Ford Foundation Fellowships for Minorities in the Visual Arts were initiated, and Ms. King-Hammond became its director.
Dr. King-Hammond is an art historian, educator, and fiber installation artist. Her involvement in the arts has been continuous and expansive. Some of her exhibitions and publications include The Intuitive Eye; Art as a Verb; Masters, Mentors and Makers, Masks and Mirrors: African American Art. One of her works, Barbadian Spirits, pays homage to her grandmother. King-Hammond maintains an active profile in the civic and professional arts community. she sits on juries, boards, and art commissions, including a position as President of the College Art Association; Board of Overseers, Baltimore School for the Arts; Vice President, Jacob Lawrence Catalog Riasonne Project; Trustee, Baltimore Museum of Art and the Advisory Board, Edna Manley School for the Visual Arts, Kingston, Jamaica. She has chaired major conferences.
It is clear that this dynamic artist does not intend to lose momentum. She says "Scientists tell us we only use at best, 10 percent of our brain capacity. I want to exercise a little bit more of that mental muscle and step beyond the typical ten percent."
Art Historian
Eva Anderson
Our 2001 honoree dedicated her life's work to "the beauty of the survival of the human spirit of those Africans who shaped the American character at the beginning of this country's experiment in democracy and the continuing contribution to what the world knows as American." She stated in 1999 that "...these 25 years have been interesting, challenging, and rewarding. I look forward to another 50."
Eva Anderson, daughter of a Presbyterian minister, grew up during the1930s in Chester, South Carolina. After seeing a 1943 touring company production of Porgy and Bess, Eva knew what she wanted to be. However, she recognized that there was no place for a black girl to take dance lessons. So, formal training was deferred until she received a dance scholarship to Bard College in New York, at age 16. Her first studies followed the style of Martha Graham, but she did not want to be restricted. She studied classical ballet with teachers from the American Ballet Theater and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and African dance with Olatunji, a noted Nigerian.
In 1975, when her husband was promoted, they moved to Baltimore, where she immediately became involved in local dance activities. She joined the Baltimore Dance Theater as a teacher and soon became its assistant director and later director. Also, she taught dance at Adelphi University, Goucher College, and Howard Community College.
Eva Anderson always spoke at her concerts because, for her, dance was about communication. Ms. Anderson said, "everything I create comes from a black experience because I am a black woman with a black mind. But there are no limitations." She had certain criteria for the dances she choreographed. "...Each dance must have some spirituality, it must have some humor, it must come from everybody's life experience, it must have elements of blues, it must have audience participation, and it must have call-and-response."
Eva Anderson passed away on October 7, 2017, in Columbia, Maryland.
Dance
Dr. Vivian Davidson Hewitt
Dr. Vivian Davidson Hewitt, and her husband John, began a collection of art fifty years ago as newlyweds. Their first original work was acquired from Dr. Hewitt's cousin, J. Eugene Grigsby. From this purchase sprang the plethora of the Hewitt Collection of Art. Dr. Hewitt has spent half a century as art collector, art aficionado, and patron of great American artists.
The Hewitt Collection is regarded as one of the most important and comprehensive collections of art produced by artists of color during this century. Among the artists represented in the collection are: Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Jonathan Green, Jacob Lawrence, Henry Ossawa Tanner, and Hale Woodruff. The fifty-eight works in the collection range in style from straightforward representation to total abstraction.
The Hewitt Collection was recently purchased by The Bank of America as a promised gift for the African-American Cultural Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. After a three-year national tour, the Collection will find its permanent home at the center. Dr. Hewitt is an inspiration, teacher, benefactor, and advocate of the Arts who embodies the essence of The Pierians, Incorporated.
Dr. Hewitt passed away in 2022.
Art Collector
Dr. Eileen Cline
Dr. Eileen Cline was born in Chicago to parents who encouraged their children not to accept imitations. She excelled at ballet, piano, and sports. She held teaching and administrative positions for three decades at university, public school, and community music school programs in Colorado, Indiana, and Connecticut.
From 1983 to 1995, Dr. Cline served as Dean of the conservatory of Music at The Johns Hopkins University, then as Senior University Fellow in Arts Policy at the Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies, where she oversaw major developments in the quality of students, facility and curriculum. She was a mentor to a long list of young African American musicians active on the national and international scene today.
An award-winning author and educator, active for nearly half a century in a broad range of professional and civic enterprises, Dr. Cline was a resource fellow at the Aspen Institute Executive Seminar and served as Board Member and advisor to numerous organizations, including the American Symphony Orchestra League, Marlboro Music Festival, Institute for Theology and the Arts, North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance, and was a juror for the 2001 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Dr. Cline wrote our beloved Pierian Hymn. A wonderful biography of Dr. Cline is available on History Makers.
Musician and Educator
Selma Burke
Sculptor
Every American is probably carrying sculptress Selma Burke's work in their pocket; it's a replica of her most famous creation -- a dime bearing the profile of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Ms. Burke taught art in Pittsburgh and ran the Selma Burke Art Center from 1972 to 1981. She was chosen in the 1943 competition to design President Roosevelt's profile. Before the profile was unveiled, it had to be approved by the Roosevelt family. Mrs. Roosevelt said, "Oh, it's well done, but you've made him too young." Mrs. Burke replied, "I've not done it for today, but for tomorrow and tomorrow."
Selma Burke was born in Mooresville, North Carolina and studied in Paris under French sculptor Aristide Maillol. She was a member of the Harlem Renaissance, a noted artistic movement in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. Her first husband, Claude McKay, was a well-known black poet who died in 1947.
Dr. Burke did busts and bas-relief sculptures of other famous people -- Booker T. Washington, Duke Ellington, President Calvin Coolidge, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mary McLeod Bethune.
At age 83, she took a tour of Greece. On climbing to the Parthenon, she said, "I have taught this building so many times. I never thought I would live to see it." (Tom Barnes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) Comments from Dr. Selma Hortense Burke at the 1991 Pierian Assembly during her Honorary Membership Induction:
"I am forever grateful to The Pierians and the Pittsburgh chapter...you have tied your arms around me, and it makes my heart cry inside. Thank you for sharing the last days of my life. It gives me great joy and satisfaction to know you are with me. Thank you."
Selma H. Burke, 94, died on August 29, 1995, in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
Etta Moten Barnett
Actress/Singer
Etta Moten was one of the first American singers with an international reputation to concertize in the thirties. She played Bess with Todd Duncan on the Broadway stage in George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess.
After her graduation from the University of Kansas, Ms. Moten set out for New York City and, more specifically, Broadway. She went on to achieve stardom in the theater, performing in legendary Broadway productions of Sugar Hill, Lysistrata and Porgy and Bess, joining the ranks of African America's most elite talent. Etta Moten also appeared in many films, including Flying Down to Rio, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
She hosted radio programs in San Francisco and at NBC in Chicago. She toured Canada, Argentina, Brazil, England, and West Africa as a concert artist.
In 1934 Etta Moten married Claude Barnett, founder of the Negro Associated Press. Barnett and her husband focused on more philanthropic efforts. Together they enjoyed a special bond, traveling during the late 1950s as members of a U.S. delegation to Ghana. She also represented the United States at the independence ceremonies of Nigeria, Zambia, and Lusaka. After her husband's death in 1967, Etta Moten Barnett became more active in domestic affairs, including working with Chicago's DuSable Museum and the Lyric Opera. Her many distinctions included honorary degrees from Spelman College, Lincoln University, and the University of Illinois. In addition, she received an award for her contributions to American Music from Atlanta University; and establishment of a scholarship in her name for minority students at the Chicago Academy for the Performing Arts.
Upon her induction as an honorary Pierian at the 1991 Pierian Assembly, Mrs. Moten Barnett stated: “In the final decade of the 20th century, I am delighted to join you in your efforts to discover and encourage the young people. I want you to continue to dream big dreams, for what would we do in this world of ours were it not for the dreams ahead, for thorns that reach through the blooming flowers, no matter what path we tread? Each of us has this golden goal stretching far into the years."
Barnett passed away on January 2, 2004, at the age of 102.