Her name was Mary Elizabeth Onley, but everybody called the Eastern Shore folk artist Mama-Girl.
A retrospective of her work on view at Old Dominion University’s Baron and Ellin Gordon Art Galleries titled “MAMA-Girl” shares the papier-mache sculptures and paintings that celebrate her delightful, humorous lens on the rural community where she lived and worked.
A cup of crab soup, for example, contains piles of the crustaceans still in their shell. A sculpture of workers conveys their distinct expressions while shucking oysters. Watermelon – so many vibrant slices of the colorful fruit – is easily the most bounteous aesthetic element in her art. Raised in Painter, Va., Mama-Girl didn’t shy from the racial stereotype often associated with watermelon.
“Mama was a watermelon fanatic, and instead of running away from the stereotype, she ran straight to it,” said her son David Rogers. “Growing up, all the African American farmers around her had watermelon fields. Her fascination came from when they used to bust the watermelon open to eat it and spit the seeds back on the ground. In a few weeks, she would see new watermelons growing. Out in the field, through her conversations with God, he told her the watermelon was important. She believed we have the same amount of seeds in us that the watermelon has in it. We transfer the seeds by conversation.”
His mother’s most meaningful piece, which hung over his bed before it was added to the exhibition, shows a woman standing on top of a globe, her arms stretched to the heavens, watermelon vines on both sides of her.
The first time he saw the painting he told her, “Mama, that’s you in your dress. You’re standing on the Earth, and you’ve given birth to me. You’ve always given me the whole world.”
Mama-Girl, nicknamed by her grandmother, was a late-blooming artist and preacher. She began picking the fields up and down the Shore at age 12 and rose to be a crew leader until that livelihood ended after she began having seizures.
She made her art in a trailer that also housed a chapel. The exhibit contains several of her sermons, handwritten on notebook paper.
Her original pulpit has never been found; a model of it in the exhibit left David’s brother, Alvin Reid, nearly speechless.
“This – this is everything I remember growing up,” he said.
Cullen Strawn, ODU executive director for the arts, curated the exhibit, which was especially gratifying because he was drawn to her work years ago.
“I experienced her art along with her personality,” he said. “I immediately felt kinship with her. I appreciated the way she used the cheapest possible materials – used newspaper and Elmer’s glue – to make something that lit people up.”
Mama-Girl largely relied on primary colors. She rolled paint-blotted paper towels with a toothpick and filled containers with them, rolling newspapers into dowels, so when one piece was complete she could tackle the next.
Her instruction, she said, came from the spirit. Other memorable pieces from the exhibit of 150 items include cats in varying poses, the Obama family in front of the White House and female faces of varying skin colors underneath a tree.
When Mama-Girl no longer had the strength to sculpt, she took up drawing. She died in August 2018 at the age of 64.
If she could see the exhibit named for her, “She wouldn’t say a thing,” Rogers said. “She would just cry.”
“MAMA-Girl” will be on display through May 10, 2025. The exhibit is free and open to the public at the Baron and Ellin Gordon Art Galleries, 4509 Monarch Way, Norfolk.
