Untitled (black and gray abstract)

Lowell Gooch Jenkins

After retiring from a career working in Madison for the state of Wisconsin Lowell Gooch Jenkins begin doing a series of small drawings and watercolors using the spontaneous, organic forms which had intrigued him in his earlier sculptures and painting. These works were preparatory to what he hoped would be larger works which never materialized.

This drawing was done with ink and watercolor. The composition could represent an entrance (or exit) - a path that leads from chaos and indecision through a woods to a clearing in the distance.

African-American artist Lowell Kent "Gooch Jenkins was born in Racine, Wisconsin on April 5, 1936. Gooch got a football scholarship to the University of Wisconsin at Madison and was on the 1960 Rose Bowl team. He passed up offers from professional teams to pursue a Master's degree in art with a major in sculpture and a minor in printmaking, one of the first to be given to an African-American student at the university. He studied sculpture with Leo Steppat and Italo Scanga and printmaking with Alfred Sessler, Dean Meeker and Warrington Colescott.

After graduation Gooch worked for a while as a sculptor in Chicago. After moving to San Francisco in the early 1960's he taught art in an inner-city youth program and worked as an architectural sculptor in Berkeley. He moved to Sonoma County in 1969 and worked as a sculptor in residence with WPA artist and sculptor Bernard Zakheim (1896-1985) at his Farm Arts Ranch outside Sebastopol, California.

In the 1970s Gooch returned to Wisconsin to raise a family. With the combination of his artistic and athletic talent, his physical presence and engaging personality, plus his experience working with troubled youth he was hired by the Addiction Center of Racine, Wisconsin to develop the state's first comprehensive drug abuse program for youth, based on offering artistic and athletic activities as an alternative to drug use. With the success he had training his own staff to use the methodology, he became a counselor/trainer for the Wisconsin Substance Abuse Center, a trainer for the National Drug Abuse Center and then State Substance Abuse Coordinator for the Sate of Wisconsin in Madison.