Williams was in town as the featured artist for the 21st Annual October Gallery Philadelphia International Art Expo, held at the Liacouras Center at Temple University. This year’s theme is “Connecting People With Art.”

By the time the show ends today, 40,000 people will have visited the Liacouras Center to see about 140 artists from the United States, Africa, Canada and the Caribbean. About 50 percent of the artists this year exhibited for the first time.

Williams, who has donated his artwork to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington and the Schomburg Center in New York, said he had been painting and drawing all his life.

“My whole life has revolved around creativity,” said Williams, who considers himself a “lucky person” to be able to do what he loves. “It is a wonderful, satisfying way to live one’s life.”

The event is the largest African American art expo in the country, according to Stephanie Daniel, spokeswoman for October Gallery.

“This is one of the few places where you can see so many black artists and their work,” said James Stewart, who, along with his wife, Caryl Sheffield, came from Pittsburgh for the exhibit. The two liked to interact with the artists and get to know them.

“We just bought three Frank Fraziers,” Sheffield said.

Frazier, 63, of Dallas, grew up in New York but ran away to Philadelphia as a teenager.

“They found me lying in the gutter in front of The Inquirer, hustling and trying to survive,” Frazier said, recalling how his family came and got him.

Later, Frazier, who started painting at age 15, joined the Army and sent sketches on the back of matchbooks and C ration wrapping back from Vietnam to his family.

Now a noted artist who is working on a series of paintings on the civil rights movement, Frazier sees the art expo as a place for new and established artists to meet.

“We get a chance to socialize together and pass the torch on,” he said. Frazier has been coming to the exhibit for 18 years and noted that some of the artists exhibiting this weekend, such as Robert Carter and Paul Goodnight, are “living legends” in their field.

Carter, an artist and professor at Nassau Community College on Long Island, said the exposure to African American artists and the practical aspect of selling art are a “pragmatic” part of the art expo.

“If no one is in the audience, you can’t produce a play,” said Carter, who was wrapping up two prints of some of his work for a buyer.

Contact staff writer Mari A. Schaefer at 610-892-9149 or mschaefer@phillynews.com.

Art Expo Information

The 21st Annual October Gallery Philadelphia International Art Expo continues today, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Liacouras Center at Temple University, 1776 N. Broad St. Admission is free.

About 140 artists will be exhibiting fine arts, crafts, books and jewelry.

“It’s just a beautiful landscape,” said Daniel. “It doesn’t say, ‘African-American.’ I just think African-Americans have now matured and become more confident as art collectors.”

Daniel is helping promote the 21st Annual October Gallery Philadelphia International Art Expo, Friday through Sunday at the Liacouras Center at Temple University, an event expected to attract more than 40,000 current and potential collectors of art of all kinds made by African-Americans.

To accompany the expo, Redcross and the October Gallery have produced “Connecting People with Contemporary African American Art,” a 500-page, full-color coffee-table book chronicling the rise of art and art collecting by African-Americans.

Daniel, for her part, thinks that rise came not from a push in formal art appreciation but from a less highfalutin form – the TV shows “Good Times” and “The Cosby Show.”

‘Image of sophistication’

The main character on “Good Times,” which ran from 1974-79, J.J. Evans, played by Jimmy Walker, was an artist, but the art displayed on the show was mainly done by a seasoned painter, Ernie Barnes.

Then, from 1984-92, sets for “The Cosby Show” often had art of all types hanging on the walls in the family house.

“It became mainstream in African-American homes after that to have something on the wall, even if it was just a $15 poster,” said Daniel. “It was an image of sophistication we suddenly wanted to have.”

Still, people who wanted to buy original African-American art, particularly in Philadelphia, would have had a little trouble back in those days.

“Three months after going into business nearly 40 years ago, a gallery owner called to welcome me to the community,” said Sande Webster, whose eponymous gallery is at 20th and Walnut streets. “She said she had heard I was going to display black artists, and she warned me that if I did and black people would come to the gallery, then white people wouldn’t and I would go out of business.”

Webster said she ignored the advice and that when she has shown black artists – her gallery now is featuring Moe Brooker, an impressionist – she has had no problem attracting buyers.

“I would defy anyone coming in, year after year, to tell me what works were done by white artists and which ones were done by black artists,” said Webster. “I’m of the opinion that while art is surely the sum of the artist’s experience, it isn’t ‘black’ or ‘white,’ per se.”

Supporting the community

There are those who disagree with Webster, though, and prefer to spend their collecting money that way.

Cheryl Oliver-Knight, a Philadelphia School District administrator, went to an exhibit of African-American art with a friend nearly 20 years ago and decided that she, as an African-American, should support that community.

“I had moved into a house instead of an apartment, so I needed to put things up on the bare walls,” said Oliver-Knight. She liked several small paintings of black angels, which went up around the house. Then, little by little, she started buying more colorful and larger works.

She has prints by national figures such as Californian Charles Bibbs and locals like Sam Byrd.

An executive’s decision

It was that sentiment that got Hal Sorgenti to start collecting African-American art.

When he and his wife, Lyn, were married, his father-in-law gave them two paintings by an unknown black artist titled “Wooing of the Twins in Blackville” and “Coaching Season in Blackville.” As much as he loved the paintings, Sorgenti, at the insistence of his wife, taped over “Blackville” on the paintings’ labels because she thought the term offensive.

“It was the times, so we wanted to be sensitive,” said Sorgenti, but as the 1970s and 1980s progressed, the Sorgentis sought out more African-American art. When he was CEO of ARCO Chemical Co. in the 1980s, and it moved to a new campus in Newtown Square, he insisted on putting art by African-Americans throughout.Because the art was not in demand, the company paid about $250,000 for 100 pieces.

When ARCO was sold to Lyondell Petrochemical in 1998, the new company didn’t want the art, so Sorgenti bought it himself for the original price and donated it to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. It has recently been appraised at more than $3 million.

“Clearly, people appreciate African-American art more these days,” he said. Though he is white, Sorgenti said, the main buying public is black.

“Especially for the pieces dealing with the African-American experience, the crowd at the gallery will be black, and that is a good thing. Eventually, it won’t matter, but I am happy I invested in it long ago.”

IF YOU GO

Philadelphia International Art Expo, 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday.

Liacouras Center, 1776 N. Broad St. Admission is free. For more information, call October Gallery at 215-629-3939, Ext. 17, or go to www.octobergallery.com.

Either way, what observers call a rising class of art-savvy African Americans could be seen inside Temple’s Liacouras Center this weekend at the 18th annual Philadelphia International Art Expo. The expo is said to be the largest venue for black artists in the United States, attracting 40,000 to 50,000 visitors from Friday to its closing last night.

“We came from the paradigm that art was for the museum,” Redcross said. “It was for white people. We couldn’t afford it.”

“When Bill Cosby had his show, you suddenly saw African American art hanging behind the sofa, instead of European art. . . . [African Americans] have our Picassos, we have our Miros, we have our Chagalls. But we had to get African Americans to put buying art in the same league as going to Bermuda, buying a BMW or a Louis Vuitton bag.”

So while Cosby was ruling prime time in 1985, Redcross, the owner of Old City’s October Gallery, launched the expo in a hotel conference room and prayed for a day that, by this weekend, had clearly arrived. Yesterday afternoon, the 150 artists’ booths were so thronged with eager buyers one could only barely walk between them.

But what, exactly, were they buying?

One answer came from the 77-year-old Philadelphia artist the others call “the godfather,” Cal Massey. His claim to fame says much about the direction of African American popular art today.

“In 1987, I did the first black angel sold commercially in America,” Massey said. “Through Essence magazine, it sold 10,000 copies. I’ve sold another 5,000 myself since then.”

Massey’s Angel Heart is a straightforward portrait of a female angel floating in space, with an expansive halo of kinky black hair, feathery wings, and one arm extended in a benediction.

“None of the great Renaissance or other European painters ever did a black angel,” Massey said. “So I just did one.” Demand for the piece – sold in $20 black-and-white prints or $350 framed versions – has never let up.

“This was my son’s favorite picture,” said Freda Vickers, 47, of Yeadon. Her son, Coy, died some years ago in an automobile accident. The artistic young man even drew his own version, which still hangs in Vickers’ home. Yesterday she bought an $85 print of the Massey original.

“There was something about her hair that he just loved,” Vickers said.

Massey, Redcross and other artists agreed yesterday that, much like Vickers’ son, the typical African American art buyer seeks out depictions of black life.

“In the 1950s, black women did not know how beautiful they were,” Massey said. “The only way you could tell them was through art. Through the eyes of the artist, this new sense of pride comes about.

“That is why they buy my work.”

Said Redcross: “With the African American buyer, there is one word: culture.”

Indeed, certain images were ubiquitous at the Expo: Muhammad Ali, buffalo soldiers, alluring Egyptian palace women, the black Jesus Christ, the black Last Supper, Oprah Winfrey and Tupac Shakur.

But there were also Bisa Butler’s striking and inventive fabric collages. Others artists worked in abstract shapes or with shimmering computer graphics.

Towering above the booths was a tree-like African mask sculpture hewn from wood, with chain links dangling to the floor from two slender horns. And an artist called Kolongi sold dense prints of hip-hop stars – Notorious B.I.G., Snoop Dogg, Missy Elliott, Jay-Z – as many as 60 faces crammed on a single canvas so tight the total image was halfway to abstraction.

It is all evidence, Redcross said, that his hard work over 18 years to build an art-buying community in Philadelphia has paid off.

“If 40,000 or 50,000 African Americans are willing to take time out to come to an art event, it is not a coincidence,” Redcross said. “It shows people are ready to claim their culture.”

Contact staff writer Matthew P. Blanchard at 610-313-8120 or mblanchard@phillynews.com.