AT CSUN'S ART GALLERY, AN INSIGHTFUL GRAY AREA.

Byline: Sandra Barrera Music Writer

Before his death in 2000, Johnnie Lee Gray was a South Carolina folk artist who received little attention.

The whole of his artistic life was spent dabbing leftover house paint on scraps of plywood in the attempt to re-create childhood memories of cotton harvests, bookies taking bets in barber shops and country baptisms.

``This was an artist who ... was able to look into his personal experience and also the American experience to come up with these wonderful narratives that speak volumes about his memories and his hopes for us as a society,'' says Gwendolyn H. Everett, art historian at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

His work so comprehensively dealt with the era of Jim Crow and the segregated South that only now are people starting to discover his legacy through the traveling exhibit ``Rising Above Jim Crow: The Paintings of Johnnie Lee Gray.''

It is now on view through Nov. 15, its only West Coast showing, at the Main Art Gallery at California State University, Northridge.

The exhibit is presented in conjunction with the four-part PBS series ``The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow,'' which aired last year. KCET plans on rebroadcasting the program for four consecutive Fridays, beginning Oct. 31.

It was while putting together the documentary's companion Web site in 2002 that researchers stumbled across the work of Gray who, two years prior, had died from lung cancer at age 58.

He had left behind a considerable body of work, some of which was discovered in the home that Gray shared with his wife, Shirley Sims Gray.

Speaking about her husband, the 62-year-old widow described him as well-read, witty and artistically gifted - all of which comes through in his art.

Gray painted from memories of being raised in a family of sharecroppers after his father died. In the work ``Backbone of the South,'' he places himself as a child carrying a bucket of water to his grandparents picking cotton in the field.

Gray spent most of his time drawing, listening to the radio or reading. And he especially loved going to see Westerns.

Gray painted himself doing just that in ``Matinee at the Ritz.'' He appears in many of his paintings, such as the complex and richly detailed ``A Cloud of Witness'' in which he appears in the heavens alongside civil rights defenders Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bill Clinton.

In other works, he reflected on the experience of being part of an integrated Army unit in Vietnam and the contributions of black service men throughout American history.

The poignant ``Let Freedom Ring'' pays tribute to the World War II pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen.

In their planes nicknamed Sweet Pea and Brown Sugar, they swarm across the smoke-filled skies over a biracial Statue of Liberty wrapped in the American flag and waving the Liberty Bell.

``His stories really are American stories and there's so much that we can learn and appreciate from seeing them,'' Everett, who curated the exhibit, says.

In the three-part installment ``The Revolution,'' Gray shows the evolution of a downtown street corner from ``whites only'' businesses to police dealing blows on civil rights activists to a mixture of interracial families, homeless people and drug dealings.

Gray even places two surveillance cameras on top of corner street signs to suggest, with a wink, that big brother is watching.

``I think humor sometimes was like a shadow that would cover up the misery that you were really in,'' Shirley Sims Gray says, adding, ``Johnnie and I had a lot to laugh about.''

Not a day passed when Gray wasn't painting. In his lifetime, it's estimated he completed about 150 works.

``He didn't paint just to paint,'' Sims Gray says. ``You won't find a lot of still life landscapes. All his paintings are busy because he had a story to tell and this is the only way he expressed himself. On canvas.''

His last completed work is ``Saved,'' a bird's-eye view of a country baptism, commissioned by a friend for $300 - what many expect will be a bargain as time goes by.

``This is an art lesson about the passion and value of art,'' Everett says, adding, ``and how even within communities where people may not say, 'Well, this is a well-known artist,' or, 'This is an artist that perhaps museums have come to look for his work,' there are artists who have this vision that we should be proud of and respect.''

Sandra Barrera, [phone]

sandra.barrera(at)dailynews.com

Information: [phone].

RISING ABOVE JIM CROW: THE PAINTINGS OF JOHNNIE LEE GRAY

Where: The Main Art Gallery at California State University, Northridge, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge.

When: Noon to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday; though Nov. 15.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) In his work titled ``A Day in Vietnam,'' artists Johnnie Lee Gray reflected on the experience of being part of an integrated Army unit and the contributions of black servicemen. (2 -- color) In ``Backbone of the South,'' Gray - who was raised in a family of sharecroppers - places himself as a child carrying a bucket of water to his grandparents picking cotton in the field. (3 -- color) The artist painted himself and his wife into the theater in ``Matinee at the Ritz.''