authentic art visions: A Celebration of Art and Life....

On Wednesday, Creative Artisans and co-sponsors Authentic Art Consulting, Visual Echoes and a host of friends, family, artists and others gathered for a special auction in support of deceased artist, "Nzaba" Robert Richardson (1944-2006). Beginnings: A Charity Art Auction was held at the Smith Farm Center for the Healing Arts in Washington, DC.

Although a native of Virginia and christened Robert Lee Richardson, Nzaba (an African name he adopted in the 1970s which means "beginnings or daylight") grew up in Brooklyn, NY, where he developed his inborn talent as an excellent artist, particularly as a pastel painter. His ideas and opinions about art were shaped by the urban African American environment of the 1960s. His innate ability to draw and sketch won him a place at the competitiove High School of Art and Design in Brooklyn. He later pursued his interest in art history, color theory, and painting at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School, at SUNY Purchase, at the Art Students League, and at Brooklyn College. His association with portrait and figurative artists such as Jim DeLoach, High Harrell, Nat Pinkney, and Art Steward taught Nzaba how to work on the streets and make portraits. Nzaba was eventually awarded a scholarship to the Manhattan School of Printing where he studied commercial art and silk screening.

In 1973, he and his family moved to Washington, DC where he continued his independent studies and also developed a skill as a woodworking craftsman in restoration and refinishing of furniture as a way of making a living, for which he received much recognition. His success in this area is evident from his list of clients, including President George H.W. Bush, through Security Moving and Storage and political writer Joseph Heller, through Great Scott Moving Comapnay.

Nzaba founded the Gallery of Fat Dreams in the Washington, DC Brookland neighborhood in 1987, which was relocated to Hyattsville, Maryland in 1996, where he exhibited his own works and that of other artists. During the past two years, the Smith Farm Center for the Healing Arts, a non-profit health and arts organization, has done much to appauld his contribution as a gifted artist as well as encouraged him to keep going as he struggled with his life-threatening illness. On July 9, 2006 he succumbed to cancer while being cared for by family members in Richmond, Virginia.

We honored Nzaba with a successful auction that featured celebrity auctioneer, Marie Johns, DC Mayoral Candidate. Melvin Rogers provided jazz as an acknowledgement of Nzaba fondness for music and Shanti Norris, executive director of the Smith Farm Center provided a wonderful story of their association with Nzaba through the words of other staff members who knew him in the last two years before his death.

Special thanks to Ben's Chili Bowl, Brown Sugar Baking Company, Brown Sugar Restaurant and Cake Love for their donations of food for the event. A very special thank you to Smith Farm for hosting this event and for their support.

Below: Some of Nzaba's amazing work over his 30 year art career