Where do you go when you want to see colorful paintings - museums, art galleries, art classes at your school? These are good places to see works of art, but there are many more, maybe even in your own community. You can take a walk down streets of many Eastern Baltimore neighborhoods and see brightly painted window and door screens.The tradition of painting door and window screens for decoration and privacy began in 1913 in Baltimore when William Oktavec moved to the city from Newark, New Jersey. He had painted his first window screen while on the job at Eclipse Air Brush Company in New Jersey for a secretary whose work was often disturbed by people on the sidewalk outside her office. With the newly-painted screen, the secretary could see out, but no one could see in.
In Baltimore, Oktavec painted a screen to shade the fruit at his corner grocery store at North Collington and Ashland Avenue. Before long, he began to get requests for painted screens, and others in neighboring ethnic communities started to join in the tradition. By the 1930s, East Baltimore row houses sported almost 100,000 painted door and window screens. Today this folk art tradition is declining. It is estimated there are less than 3,000 painted screens in Baltimore.
Picture ideas for Baltimore screen painting come from many places: comics, greeting cards, calendars and customer requests. Favorite designs include a red-roofed bungalow out in the country, maritime images like ships and lighthouses, religious scenes, and even paintings of entertainers like Elvis Presley. What picture would you paint on your window or door screens?
Now is your chance to make your own painted window screen. Just follow these directions to make a painted window screen like those you would find in East Baltimore.
HOW TO MAKE A PAINTED SCREEN Materials:
12 in. x 12 in. piece of charcoal screen wire
(this inexpensive fiber- glass does not have sharp
edges and can be purchased at most local hardware stores)
piece of dark construction paper
tape
crayons or colored chalkInstructions:
1. Applying tape at the corners, attach the piece of construction paper to the screen wire as a protective backing.2. Using crayons or colored chalk, draw a picture on the screen.
3. Remove the construction paper backing. You now have your own painted screen!
When you visit the MHS, you can learn more about the Baltimore folk art tradition of screen painting in the exhibition, Celebrating the Baltimore City Life Collections.Information from Maryland Folklore, by George G. Carey, published by Tidewater Publishers in 1989.
