The 40-year history between Willie Stokes Jr. and The Fabric Workshop and Museum remains one of the most notable, symbiotic relationships the institution has developed to this day. His name and work can be seen all over the Workshop, ranging from several pieces in our collection to an array of artist- designed gifts sold in our museum shop. Stokes’ talent has a unique and vibrant presence, of which our founder, Marion Kippy Stroud, recognized promptly upon their meeting.
In a project predating the Fabric Workshop, Stroud began her career as part of Prints in Progress, a program facilitated by The Print Center providing printmaking workshops to local high school students and bringing creative opportunities to neighborhoods in need. There she met Willie Stokes, Jr., a young artist who impressed many of the instructors with his artistic originality and knowledge of color. Stroud described him as “the Picasso of self-taught artists,” and the two developed a personal and professional friendship that led to Stokes’ close and sustained relationship with the Fabric Workshop (later becoming The Fabric Workshop and Museum).
Stokes worked in the studio for decades, observing and working alongside the wide array of Artists-in-Residence invited over the years. He became a permanent part of the institution’s everyday life, witnessing some of FWM’s most pivotal moments and projects while collecting and channeling these influences into his own distinctive work. Working primarily as a painter, Stokes has also experimented with assemblage and sculpture throughout his career, and screenprinting would become an important tenet of his practice as a result of his experiences and observations in the studio. Many of his works depict loosely drawn, naked humans and animals surrounded by grass and flowers. His fearless style and dream-like imagery portrays a sense of freedom and carefree joyfulness.
The artist has assembled and printed numerous drawings for various yardage designs, later transformed into or printed on a wide range of objects—including stuffed animals, clothing, and ceramic mugs—to make his work more accessible for the public. Along with showing his work in several of FWM‘s group exhibitions, including Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit, A Riot of Color: The Fabric Workshop and Museum in collaboration with Ruth Fine, a major survey of Stokes’ work was presented in a 2007 solo exhibition with an accompanying publication telling his story. Stokes has work in the FWM collection as well as the Free Library of Philadelphia’s print collection. He remains a dear friend of FWM and travels back and forth between Baltimore and Philly in order to visit.
