Salon Artists Gallery exhibit features Scratchboard Art
At first glance Dixmoor artist Victor Simmons’ work may appear to be paintings, but upon closer inspection one can see the technique involved in his scratchboard pieces.
Approximately 12 of his pieces are on display in Scratchboard Art by Victor Simmons Oct. 1-31 at Salon Artists Gallery in Park Forest.
“Scratchboard is a subtracted art. Unlike drawing where you add to the paper with pencils, pens or whatever, scratchboard is where you take off from the board,” said Victor Simmons, a member artist of Salon Artists Gallery since 2019.
“It’s usually a board or paper covered with a white clay and then covered with a black ink. You can use whatever you want to use — different tools, knives, etc. — to remove color or remove the top layer.”
Scratchboard Art by Victor Simmons, which is his first exhibit at Salon Artists Gallery, features subjects ranging from animals such as a pelican, an owl, a swan and a zebra to a bicyclist, a Pont Alexandre III lamppost, tango dancers and a trombone player.
“It’s a variety of subjects. I do not only stick to one subject. I like to look at how light plays with things. Scratchboard is a good medium for using light and shadow and colors,” Victor Simmons said.
“Most of them are newer pieces. There are a couple of pieces that are years old. The trombone player is 14 years old.
“There’s one of my dog Ginger on my Ural motorcycle. She’s gone. I have a motorcycle with a sidecar and she used to ride with me in it.”
Victor Simmons said some of his favorite pieces in the exhibit include a recently finished piece featuring a man sitting in the park and a piece titled “Willie” that was done of his father, Willie Simmons, of Freeport.
It was in Freeport, where Victor Simmons grew up, that he discovered scratchboard.
“They had passed out some scratchboards and I fell in love with them,” he said of beginning to work with the art form circa 1976 when he was a student at the former Freeport Junior High School.
According to Victor Simmons, it was hard to find materials to do scratchboard in Freeport so he took a break from working in the medium until 1985 when he was attending the American Academy of Art in Chicago.
Since graduating from the American Academy of Art in 1987 with an associate’s in illustration, he has shown work in the Field Museum’s 1991 Harlem Renaissance exhibition in Chicago and multiple times in the annual Black Creativity Juried Art Exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
“I work in other mediums too. I do a lot of pencil drawings. Every now and then I’ve done watercolor,” said Victor Simmons, who has been a board supervisor at Citgo Lemont Refinery for 15 years.
“I just want to get better with the scratchboard. I want to get more expressive in my lights and darks. That’s what I want to get better at.”
Victor Simmons works on pieces and also exhibits at Dionne Victoria Studios Inc., which he shares with his daughter Dionne Victoria, at Zhou B Art Center in Chicago’s Bridgeport community.
“For the most part it’s been on hold,” he said about creating new art amidst restrictions to stop the spread of coronavirus.
“The only thing COVID-19 has really held me back on was I was planning to use my camera this summer to grab a lot of subjects.”
People can find out more about Victor Simmons’ artwork during a Meet the Artist event from 2 to 4 p.m. Oct. 10. Wearing masks and maintaining social distancing are mandatory. Only 10 people are allowed in the gallery at one time.
Other upcoming events at Salon Artists Gallery include the annual holiday sale opening from 1 to 4 p.m. Nov. 21 and continuing to Dec. 22.