By Marley Seaman
In time, he refined his craft. He graduated from toothpicks to pins and traded the Styrofoam for sturdier compress board. His ambition grew, and in addition to taking requests from friends, he began attempting more complex abstract designs. Still, he didn¹t see himself as an artist.
³I didn¹t call myself an artist unless I [was] selling something,² he said. And he didn¹t begin selling his work until he moved to New York in 1961, after college. A fellow churchgoer approached him and talked him into joining an outdoor show in Roosevelt.
³I sold one or two pieces,² he said ‹ practically giving them away at the cost of his materials, $5 or $10. But it made him a real artist, and that only encouraged him to show his work to more people.
Soon he was going to shows every weekend, entering competitions and winning awards. People started recognizing his art as something unique, and artists began calling him ³the thread man.²
Winslow has won more than 50 awards in competition, and his work has been shown in New York, Maryland, Texas, California, North Carolina, Connecticut and Virginia. Most recently, his work was showcased at the Garden City Public Library throughout February in honor of Black History Month.
In 1968, he helped found the Long Island Black Artist Association. He is now the group¹s president. A number of the group¹s members have gone on to achieve fame, including Romare Bearden, one of the most respected American artists of the 20th century. LIBAA meets every other Sunday at Woodfield Park, and now has about 50 members. Winslow organizes group and individual shows to expose their work. Despite the name, membership is not limited to African-Americans.
One pin at a time
Winslow develops his works of art in the same careful, gradual way he developed his career. Once he knows what his subject will be, he begins sketching it. He takes commissions, often from fraternities who want to see their letters in his unique style, but when he¹s working on his own, there¹s no set process for picking a subject.
³Whatever strikes me, what mood I¹m in, what challenges me² will go into a piece, he said. Many of his thread art pieces have African and African-American themes; he also frequently depicts musicians and dancers, gospel choirs and drummers. He expanded his repertoire to include portraits only a few years ago. Since then, his subjects have included Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ray Charles, Malcolm X and Dizzy Gillespie. He also has a sense of humor: A few of his works display punning messages like ³Nosmo King.²
³I tried to do things where people had to stop and look,² Winslow said.
When he¹s satisfied with the design, he¹ll pick up a piece of compress board and put in the pins. Even a fairly simple work may have hundreds of them, and larger pieces have used thousands of pins. And that¹s the easy part: the hard work doesn¹t start until he breaks out the Nymo nylon thread.
³I work like an architect or a bricklayer,² he explains. ³You¹ve got to know how many bricks you need.²
The work is painstaking. To completely cover up the compress board behind it, the Nymo thread must be wrapped around the pins 40 to 50 times ‹ some thinner threads require twice as much work ‹ so it takes Winslow four to six months to complete a typical piece. If a single pin bends or comes out, he has to destroy the entire thing and start again.
The company that made the Nymo thread, the basis for almost all of his work, went out of business some 30 years ago. After Winslow struggled to find it, he went to the factory and bought everything they had left. ³I¹ve got enough to last me till I¹m 90,² he said.
Winslow began attempting larger and larger designs because of requests from patrons. The effort that goes into his largest works can be staggering: ³Space,² which he completed in 1972, has more than 3,000 pins in it. His largest piece, ³Together,² is made up of curves covering four 30-inch-by-30-inch compress boards. The boards can be repositioned to create, in effect, a different piece of artwork.
Often, Winslow finds himself returning to works he had considered finished. For example, ³Space² gained a huge border after it was completed. It¹s the same tirelessness and desire to get each piece perfect that has gained him international respect for his art.
³When I make a picture ... I sit for a week or two and watch the picture I just made, to see if I like it,² he said. ³If it don¹t turn me on, if it isn¹t moving for me or working to my satisfaction, I¹ll add something.²
Comments about this story? Mseaman@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 282.
