Reared by a West Indian grandmother in Ft. Apache, the South Bronx, Carl Lewis’ career as an artist began as a member of the Cathedral Choir School of St. John the Divine’s last boarding class. This internationally renown all-male choir regularly performed at the Philharmonic, Carnegie, and Radio City Music Halls. After graduation he was selected for the choir of Little Church Around the Corner – known as The Actors’ Church – where Carl performed with them in numerous Broadway shows and operas.
Enlistment in the USAF took him away from singing, but the gift of a camera from his younger brother became his doorway into the visual arts world. As a histopathologist an integral aspect of his job was mixing the chemicals to stain specific cell constituents, and photographing the slides and anatomical specimens. Returning home from overseas he honed those skills at the Tucson Museum of Art School translating them to photographic art.
While living in Tucson he photographed the jewelry of Randy Kavarik, a third generation silver and goldsmith, and was offered the opportunity to learn design and smithing techniques. This was the beginning of a path which has led to a number of mentorships. These relationships drew him into a sea of other design disciplines, indigenous iconography, surface treatments, color theory and pattern recognition.
Co-Founder of the Crown Family Unity Programs, Mr. Lewis designed and executed programs for youth-at-risk in Dallas which were nationally funded through Federal, State and City resources. He oversaw and was intimately involved in all aspects of CROFA, from grant-writing, vendor and sponsor interaction to accounting. The programs garnered recognition from the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. In 1995 he assisted Humphreys Fellow and Master Kente Designer and Weaver, Ghanaian Kofi Owosu Bempah in the Design of a ZipCode, and Identity Card Program for Ghana. He traveled to Jamaica in 1996 to assist Kingston’s Hardanga women in turning their cultural heritage of tatting lace into an international product.
“Forward thinker” Carl has been involved in a broad range of industries and business models. He’s been a consultant to creatives, non-traditional businesses and non-profits for the last three decades. In the 1980s he shot stock photography for Black Star, ran his Grey Scale photo studio with clients such as Hartford’s Black Republican Party, United Technologies, and Aetna, and was a member of a group of inventors, designers, scientists and artists conceptualizing solutions to issues such as clean and available water, sustainable power generation and energy efficient lighting. During the 1990s he served on the Board of D.A.R.E., a Dallas artist non-profit, and 5 years on the Texas Commission on the Arts’ Arts and Education Roster and Dallas’ Public Art Committee. From 1997 to 2001 he was mentee to and marketer for fine arts furniture designer Jose Marmol’s studio, Marmol Designs. One of six artists selected, his work was part of a curriculum guide for the Smithsonian Institution’s African American American Museum Project.
Moving to California in 2003 he’s served on the Board of the Bay Area Blues Society, and currently is Treasurer of Marcia Migét’s Miraflores Music Academié.
As Carl begins 2017 – his fortieth year as a photographer and designer – his career encompasses having photographic work in five major institutional collections, references in several photography and art books, and documented as the only photographer known to have, “captured,” twenty by forty foot, “live”, laser imagery with an analog camera and slow film.
The facets of his work recount his “walkabout”, a universe in, as Dr. Donald Byrd said it, “‘ … places and spaces I’ve been'”.
“If you’re waiting on me, you’re backing up.” – Carl E. Lewis