On Nov. 7, disc jockey, artist, and art and music historian Jay Malls will present a retrospective on the work of Pittsburgh native Mozelle Thompson, an African-American artist who in the 1950s and 1960s created more album cover art than any other artist.
“There were African-American (album artists) before and after, but none as prolific,” said Malls. “No one produced as much as he did.”
Malls said he will have 100 of Thompson’s 122 album covers on display for “The Album Art of Mozelle Thompson; Cover Art Illustrations 1953-1969” exhibit at the Most Wanted Fine Art gallery in Garfield.
Technically, Malls said, there are more than 122 album illustrations because Thompson did work for collections of classical and international folk dance music labels that reused his art several times over. The exhibit will also feature some of Thompson’s theatrical posters, magazine illustrations, dress designs, department store ads, and book jackets, as well as several Teenie Harris photos of Thompson.
“I have the bulk of his jazz art, but I’m still trying to figure out how to display some of the magazine stuff,” said Malls. “And I’ve been busy doing some educational presentations. Last week I was at (Pittsburgh Obama 6-12) presenting to 9th graders about Mozelle and the history of cover art. We’re going to have them come to the gallery and we’ll read ‘The Pumpkin Seed,’ a children’s book he illustrated.”
Malls also has another book-related promotion tied into the exhibit: beginning with the Gallery Crawl opening and running through the duration of the show, visitors can enter a raffle to win a hardback copy of Ernest Tidyman’s “Shaft” with the original dust jacket illustrated by Thompson. The drawing will be held after the show’s last day, Nov. 30.
Since the New Pittsburgh Courier first reported on Malls’ efforts to curate the Thompson exhibit in July, he received an anticipated grant from the Sprout Fund that allowed him to acquire more than 20 additional items for the show.
As a result, He also received something even more valuable that he lacked, first hand accounts of Thompson’s life and history from family members still living in Pittsburgh, including his sister Greta Griffin and brothers Charles and Richard.
The retrospective opens Friday, Nov. 7 at 7 p.m. to coincide with a scheduled gallery crawl. A separate reception will be held the next day from noon to 6 p.m. with Roger Barber scheduled to play. The exhibit will have regular 12-6 p.m. gallery hours every Sunday through the end of the month. The Most Wanted Fine Art gallery is located at 5015 Penn Ave. For more information call 412-328-4737.
(Send comments to cmorrow@newpittsburghcourier.com.)
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