Episode 32: Amaza Lee Meredith
Amaza Lee Meredith was born on August 14, 1895 in Lynchburg, Virginia. Amaza’s dad Samuel was a carpenter and her mother Emma was a seamstress. They both stressed the importance of education to their children, and Samuel taught Amaza about building and got her interested in design and construction. After high school, Amaza wanted to become a teacher and enrolled at the Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute in Petersburg, Virginia to get her primary school teaching certificate. It was here that she met Edna Meade Colson, who she would have a relationship with for the rest of her life. After getting certified, Amaza taught in Botetourt County, Virginia for two years. In 1926, she moved to Harlem, New York to live with her sister Maude and attend Columbia University Teachers College where she specialized in fine art and art appreciation and received a bachelor's degree. She returned shortly to Virginia in 1930 to begin teaching at her alma mater which had been renamed Virginia State College for Negroes, only to return to Harlem and Columbia to get a masters degree. Finally in 1935, she returned to the once again renamed Virginia State College (today Virginia State University) and founded the Art Department which still exists today. When she returned she also designed and built a house for her and Edna to live in near campus called ‘Azurest South’. She willed the house to the university in order for it to become the Alumni House after her and Edna’s deaths. In the 1940s, Amaza and her sister Maude founded Azurest Syndicate Inc. and helped develop the Sag Harbor neighborhood of ‘Azurest North’ on Long Island as a vacation community for black families. Amaza served as secretary for the organization and even designed a few of the homes in the development. Amaza retired from teaching in 1958 and passed away in 1984.
Caryatid: Kymberly Pinder
Kymberly Pinder has just been named the new Dean of the Yale School of Art. She is the first woman of color to hold the position. Pinder received her masters and PhD from Yale and then went on to have an extensive career in academia working for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of New Mexico to name a few. She has also written a book Painting the Gospel: Black Public Art and Religion in Chicago. She has been lauded as a scholar of race, representation and murals.
References
“Amaza Lee Meredith.” Docomomo US, docomomo-us.org/designer/amaza-lee-meredith. Accessed 12 July 2021.
“Amaza Lee Meredith (1895–1984).” Virginia State University Alumni Association, www.vsuaaonline.com/azurest-south/amaza-lee-meredith-1895-1984. Accessed 12 July 2021.
Brown, Julia. “Kymberly Pinder Appointed Dean of the Yale School of Art.” Yale Daily News, 5 July 2021, yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/06/05/kymberly-pinder-appointed-dean-of-the-yale-school-of-art/#:%7E:text=On%20June%201%2C%20University%20President,approval%20by%20the%20Yale%20Corporation.
Kautz, Sarah. “The Founding and Future of Sag Harbor’s Azurest Subdivision.” Preservation Long Island, Feb. 2019, preservationlongisland.org/the-founding-and-future-of-sag-harbors-azurest-subdivision.
Rtmadminadw. “Kymberly Pinder Named Dean at Yale School of Art.” Atlanta Daily World, 3 June 2021, atlantadailyworld.com/2021/06/03/renowned-scholar-and-educator-kymberly-pinder-named-yale-school-of-art-dean.
Taylor, Jacqueline. “Amaza’s Azurest.” Suffragette City: Women, Politics, and the Built Environment, edited by Elizabeth Darling and Nathaniel Robert Walker, 1st ed., Routledge, 2019, pp. 32–56.
Wikipedia contributors. “Amaza Lee Meredith.” Wikipedia, 9 July 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaza_Lee_Meredith.
