ABOUT

Gloucester Caliman Coxe (1907 – 1999), more commonly known as G.C., was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and lived in Louisville, Kentucky from his late teens until his death. Coxe was born into a large family; his father, Reverend Paul John Augustus Coxe, was a Presbyterian minister and moved the family to Tennessee, North Carolina, and eventually, Kentucky, as his congregations grew. In addition to pastoring, the senior Coxe was also a woodcarver who filled his home with furniture embellished with acorns, grapes and cupids. As G.C.’s interest in painting grew, he would come to rely on his father’s knowledge of vegetable and mineral dyes – concocting earthy pigments squeezed from berries, crushed from certain weeds, and mixed with clays, lard renderings, and resins. His mother, Ama Della Caliman, had attended Oberlin College and “was an artist with a needle” who designed dresses and worked as a seamstress to help make ends meet. Almost inevitably, Coxe would become an abstract painter who often experimented with form, process, and materials. 

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Coxe’s father Reverend P.J.A. Coxe was close with Reverend William Henry Sheppard (1865 – 1927). Because of his notable achievements regarding missionary work in Africa, particularly in the Belgian Congo, Dr. Sheppard was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1893. As a youngster, Coxe grew up with access to Sheppard’s extensive knowledge and personal collection of Kuba art and material culture.  

After graduating from Central Colored High School in 1929, the Great Depression began. Coxe found work designing set pieces for the Lyric and Grand (Colored) Theatres in the 1940s. And later, he transitioned into sign painting and was noted for his store front designs and movie displays. By the 1950s, Coxe began his longstanding career as a technical illustrator at the Fort Knox Training Aid Center. Similar to his responsibilities as a sign painter in downtown Louisville, Coxe’s job at Fort Knox Kentucky required mastery of line and perspective.  

While working at Fort Knox, as a mature adult, Coxe pursued further academic training at the University of Louisville, where he was one of the first Black students to be awarded a Hite Art Scholarship. While there he studied under professors Ulfert Wilke (1907–1987), Mary Spencer Nay (1913 – 1993), and Louis Block (1895 – 1969). Coxe graduated in 1955 with honors, at age 47, in UofL’s second integrated graduating class.

Alongside former classmates, Robert L. Douglas (1934 – 2023), Sam Gilliam (1933 – 2022), Bob Thompson (1937 – 1966), and Kenneth Young (1933 – 2017), G.C. Coxe participated in the Gallery Enterprises (1957-1961), a visual arts collective in the city dedicated to creating opportunities for Black artists to share and discuss their work with one another and build audiences for their work. Gallery Enterprises created opportunities for emerging artists to experiment with style and technique, receive critical feedback, and organize exhibitions.  When some of the founding members of Gallery Enterprises left Louisville to pursue careers elsewhere, the remaining members along with some new recruits organized a new collective.   

The Louisville Art Workshop was formed by artists who wanted to create a permanent space to exhibit, teach, and sell art from 1966-1978. Housed and led by Louisville artists Fred (1931 – 1986) and Anna Bond (1937 -1997), this space became a significant place for artists in the region. Coxe was a founding member of, and important presence at the Louisville Art Workshop. He taught classes in silk-screening and painting at the Workshop, and while there he earned his nickname as “The Dean.” The Louisville Art Workshop offered children, emerging creatives, and visual artists the opportunity to explore dance, painting, sculpture, and writing classes, as well as visit exhibitions by artists in Louisville, Nashville, and beyond. Coxe’s first public exhibition took place in the West End in 1966 with the Louisville Art Workshop exhibition, “Designs in Space.” Two years later in 1968, he earned a solo exhibition there.   

The Louisville Art Workshop dissolved when more of the founding members left Louisville (Douglas moved on to pursue his doctoral studies at the University of Iowa, and the Bonds left for Nashville and Cincinnati). Those that stayed, like G.C. Coxe, Ed Hamilton and William M. Duffy, created a new collective in the 1980s called the Montage. This collective, like the ones before it, continued to foster community and create opportunities for African American artists in Louisville.

In 1987, Coxe was awarded the Governor’s Arts Award by Gov. Martha Layne Collins and the KY Arts Council for outstanding contributions to the Arts. In 1995, the Allen R. Hite Art Institute and the Pan African Studies Department co-sponsored a retrospective exhibition titled, “Rags and Wires, Sticks and Pantyhose Too,” curated by Dr. Robert L. Douglas. In addition to teaching and mentoring Louisville-based artists in and out of the studio, Coxe enjoyed lasting relationships with New York-based artist Robert G. Carter (b. 1938) and Washington D.C.-based artist Sam Gilliam. Bringing his wealth of experience to bear on his creative output and artistic practice, Coxe was a prolific genius whose innovatively organized studio space and playful experimentation inspired many. Over the decades of his artistic career, Coxe explored many different styles and materials to great effect. Family and friends frequently recall that Coxe always mixed his own colors, stretched his own canvases, and made his own frames; in fact, he never bought anything before attempting to make it himself first. Ed Hamilton and William Duffy (b. 1953) described him as an inventive and irreverent spirit, and a generous mentor.    

In 1987, he married Jodie Hill and her family became his, welcoming her three children - Sharron Miller, James Hill, and Jodie Journey - and their spouses (William Journey) and children into his family as his very own.  He was as much of a husband, father, and grandfather as he was an artist, taking the same commitment to time and attention with his family as he did with his artwork.