BLACK LIVES REMEMBERED ‘She was living art’: One of KC’s oldest artists, Juanita Gibson, dies at 102
Natasha El-Scari grew up watching her grandmother, Juanita Gibson, live a long life that she filled with love, laughter, family and art. This upbringing set the foundation for El-Scari to develop a life-long appreciation for artists that inspired her to open the Natasha Ria Art Gallery in 2018. The gallery was home to many Black artists looking for a place to display their work.
It was El-Scari’s grandmother who laid the foundation for El-Scari’s love and appreciation for being a Black creative. Gibson encouraged her granddaughter to support and uplift the Black arts community.
“She was living art, said El-Scari. “You could bring all your joys and all your pains to her and nothing was ever too much for her.”
Gibson died April 26 from natural causes. She was 102. El-Scari said the family is holding up “as best as can be possible” without the matriarch of the family. El-Scari is thankful that Gibson never lost her sense of who she was.
Growing up the daughter of a carpenter, Gibson was encouraged from childhood by her father to go out and discover who she was. El-Scari calls her great-grandfather, “a man ahead of his times,” who pushed his daughter to speak her mind and to seek out what made her truly happy.
“I think he was definitely a feminist the way he encouraged her to find her freedom, her independence and self-expression,” said El-Scari.
Seeing her father create things with her hands inspired Gibson to explore various mediums to find where her passions resided. Over the course of her life she picked up skills in sewing dresses and quilts, gardening and painting. Gibson used charcoal, pencil, water colors and oil paint to create her works of art.
El-Scari was able to exhibit her grandmother’s work at a showing at her gallery in 2016. There she saw the impact of Gibson’s legacy in art. Artists throughout various age groups came to show their respect.
“When I think of the artists who met her through the gallery, I think of how she inspired people that art never stops despite your age,” said ElScari. “I didn’t really know the magnitude of her impact until I saw what a big part she was in a lot of people’s lives and experiences in art.”
Gibson, widely known in the Black community as one of the city’s oldest artists, had a long life she filled with the things and people she loved. A mother of five and grandmother to 21, Gibson would outlive all of her five siblings and all but one of her own children.
April Flowers, though not a biological grandchild of Gibson, has been apart of the family since her mother married Gibson’s son. Since then she remembers nothing but love and acceptance from the the woman who touched so many with her work.
“She lived a glorious, beautiful, life and was a champion for creativity,” said Flowers. “She was a person who made everyone’s lives better and she was such a light. We miss her because of how beautiful of a person she was but how she made us all feel.”
Flowers is thankful for the time she had with Gibson and the love that was poured into her own life by the artist. Flowers said she felt that Gibson possessed a unique gift for seeing the good in people and bringing out the best in those around her.
Flowers, an administrator for Frontier School, believes that family is what truly made Gibson the happiest in life.
“Once you met her you would never forget her because she made you feel seen, heard and appreciated,” said Flowers. “I will miss everything about her and she just knew how to make us want to be our best selves.”
OTHER REMEMBRANCES
Jackie CheadleJackie
Cheadle, Sunday school teacher and youth choir director, died April
24. She was
81.
Cheadle was born on Feb. 26,1937 in Osawatomie, Kansas, to John and Helen Wells. She graduated from Lincoln High School in 1958 and married Lee Cheadle that same year. The couple remained married for 65 years and had two children.
She worked first as a nurse and later became a teacher. Cheadle was a member of Centennial United Methodist Church where she taught Sunday school and directed the youth choir.
She is remembered by her husband, Lee Thurman; her children, Mark Cheadle and Helen Cheadle; siblings, Bernadine Adams, Helen Wells, Phyllis Moore and George Wells; and a host of nephews, cousins and friends. Oscar Tindal Jr.
Oscar Tindal Jr., retired Air Force veteran and father, died April 22. He was 89.
Tindal was born Dec. 23, 1934, in Savannah, Georgia, to Janie and Oscar Tindal Sr.
After Tindal graduated high school in Georgia he married Mary Benson in Montgomery, Alabama. Tindal enlisted in the United States Air Force where he achieved the rank of Master Sergeant. Tindal retired from the
Air Force in 1978 and pursued a career as a submarine pipe fitter at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California, where he worked for 10 years.
He will be remembered for his love of spending time with his friends and family, music, and dancing.
He is remembered by his son, Rueben Tindal; siblings. Richard, Hercules and Willam Tindal; and a host of nieces, nephews and cousins.