Samella Lewis

Continued from above

Lewis, 72, has never ceased redrawing the lines of conventional thinking and art. Her career as a painter, graphic artist, author, sculptor and educator has spanned more than 50 years. She is a retired professor of art history at Scripps College.

"The Word" (1995)

She also is founder and publisher of the Hampton University-based International Review of African American Art.

Her stay at Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in the 1940s was a pivotal stage in that career. She came to Hampton from Dillard University in New Orleans with her mentor, well-known African-American artist Elizabeth Catlett.

Lewis often has said ''Coming to Hampton saved my life.'' She brought a rebellious, anti-establishment attitude with her to the school. ''I didn't like teachers and I didn't like anybody to tell me what to do and I didn't like administrators most of all,'' she said.

Five Decades: John Biggers and the Hampton Art Tradition by Rebecca E. Ritter African American Art for Young People by Samella Lewis

Lewis' attitude soon changed. She continued to study under Catlett and developed an abiding respect and friendship with another instructor, Viktor Lowenfeld, a Jewish refugee from Austria. Lowenfeld ''taught his students not to feel they had to produce art to please anyone, but to paint from the heart.''

She graduated from Hampton in 1945. After a one-year teaching stint at Hampton, she entered Ohio State University where she was the school's first dual-doctorate major in fine arts and art history.

She taught around the country, studied Chinese art history and language on a Fulbright Fellowship, helped found the Museum of African-American Art in Los Angeles, produced four films on African-American artists, and wrote several important books, including ''Art: African American,'' the first textbook on African-American art history.

During the 1960s and '70s, Lewis' work reflected the struggle for humanity and freedom among people of color. She said that 20 years before the Rodney King incident she had drawn it, because she had seen police brutality and harassment of black men so many times before.

Lewis said she only recently has been able to produce work from beautiful things. ''But it has been a long time coming,'' she added.

In 1975, Lewis co-founded Black Art: An International Quarterly as a way to ''help get African-American art, even if in a printed way, in the homes of people who ordinarily wouldn't have it.'' In 1984, Black Art Quarterly became the International Review of African American Art. In 1992, the management and operations of the magazine were transferred to Hampton University.

Says Lewis in the journal's recent 20th anniversary issue: ''There were other people that I could have gone to but Hampton was my only choice. It was either Hampton or it would have been the demise of the magazine.''

Lewis said she continues to create art, write, exhibit her work and explore artists on other shores because she has to.

''I can't stop,'' she said. ''All of it is a work of art.''

SOURCES: Samela Lewis; Hampton University Museum; The International Review of African American Art; The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Five Decades: John Biggers and the Hampton Art Tradition by Rebecca E. Ritter
ILLUSTRATED BY MARTIN RHODES/TIMES-DISPATCH