James Washington Jr. (1911-2000) was a sculptor and painter who became associated with the Northwest School of artists in Seattle. He grew up in Mississippi and moved to Seattle in 1944 to work for the Navy during World War II. Washington was largely self-taught and he believed this lack of formal training was essential to his artistic success. In the 1950s, Washington became interested in making sculpture from stone after being inspired by a piece of volcanic rock he found among the ruins of the pyramids at Teotihuacan in Mexico; he later carved it into his first stone sculpture, “Young Boy of Athens.” Washington’s work in both mediums often expressed spiritual feelings and used symbols from Christianity, freemasonry, and the animal world.

This image shows James Washington Jr. (left) discussing one of his sculptures with musician and poet Lee Carnett, who received the James Washington Jr. Award for achievement in fine arts from the Seattle chapter of Links, Inc. Links is a nonprofit organization of Black women who spotlight Black artists and work to improve access to education and the arts to youth in the Black community.

Caption information source: Washington, James Jr (1911-2000), HistoryLink.org Essay 5328, reprinted from Deloris Tarzan Ament's Iridescent Light: The Emergence of Northwest Art, 2002.
Caption information source: "Event to aid Black students," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 30, 1972, page D8.