In 1974, when John Harrod founded Market 5 Gallery and later the Arts and Craft Festival at Eastern Market, he created a space open to all artists to show and sell their work to the public.
Those of us who are artists at the market are often confound by the question did you make this yourself? Are you the designer, artisan, craft person, artist, maker, creator of this or that object? How many times--at Eastern Market, festivals, galleries, expositions--have we heard this question?
For years, I set up across from a textile artist, Jenae Michelle (Range of Emotion), who works on her pieces constantly. While she hand-sews facing to her bags or skirts in the dead of winter with a slight palsy in her hands, one can still hear the public asking that question even as they watch her work. In other years, I set up across from painter Stevens Jay Carter, who dressed the part with colorful cravats, a french chapeau and just one or two well placed dribbles of paint on his ironed and creased blue jeans; he was asked that question less. Even today one can see artists working at Eastern Market--for example Joel Traylor III, Jackson Collins, Sola Opa and Manatho Masani ,to name a few.
How are artists suppose to look, act, speak, talk, think, and be? How do you spot us on the street, in a crowd, across the way, at the market? Many of us are unlikely artists. Mostly we fit no stereotype.
Once I was told by a young man who had studied art in college that a professor had told him if you can't do anything else, then be a professional artist.
Being a professional artist is a vocation. A calling...
That sounds about right. The internal landscapes, the call, or drive, that pushes, inspires and coerces someone to create has yet to be defined, delineated, or exposed. But at times one can track its roots in autobiography.
For some, the need to create was present at the making of them. It was not a choice, but rather the mechanism by which they exist. It is simply what they have done from their earliest memory. The painter Andrew Shelton is one of these artists.
( Paintings by: Andrew Shelton, acyclic on board)
Mr. Shelton was born in 1951, in Montgomery County, Maryland. He went to Gaithersburg High School, and later trained in Job Corp in welding and learned how to box. At one time he worked for Geico.
In conversations with Mr. Shelton, he told me that he started to draw at about five or seven years of age. In sixth grade he was told by a teacher that he had the drawing ability of a twelfth grader. At thirteen or fourteen he drew cowboys on horseback. But he could not easily afford paper or pencil.
In a sense, he found his muse as a teenager with Marvel Comics and Superman. These images of of superheroes and heroines are staples of his current work. He says he adopted their style when he was thirteen years old . 
(Batman T-shirt by: Andrew Shelton)
The folks at Eastern Market and Andrew Shelton:
How does one build/create a community? By giving of oneself. There are those folks who, for undefined reasons, just touch the heart. Andrew Shelton is one of them.
Andrew came to Eastern Market about twelve years ago--a month, he says, before the fourth of July. I remember seeing Andrew around the market, which is an apt description: he is more around the Market than at his stand. He would come over and sorta hang out near Marta Vindiola (importer of Mexican pewter) and Jenae Michelle (textiles-Range of Emotion). I could not figure him out; in truth, he worried me. Marta and Jenae would talk to him, tease him, and go with him verbally on flights of fancy. Andrew speaks in metaphor, in wanderings and in demanding an answer to the question "why did..." He does not speak in linear narrative. A conversation with Mr. Shelton is not to be undertaken lightly. He was often heard asking Marta and Jenae to marry him. It was years before I realized he was a painter.
Andrew just liked being at the market, and the Market liked having him there.
I remember learning that portrait painter Simmie Knox had given Andrew some paints and a small easel. In his early years at the Market, Mr. Shelton would set up a very tiny display inside the market. Thus, not only did Mr. Knox (arguably the most renowned painter ever to come to Eastern Market) assist Mr. Shelton, but he was also often seen giving Andrew encouraging critiques of his latest work and they are still friends. Later, when that easel wore out, another artist, Daniel Kessler, "loaned" Andrew one of his older easels. Bernadette Mayo (BAMI-body products) has been known to bring acrylic paints, T-shirts, and sweat shirts to the market for Mr. Shelton, and recently Ms. Mayo decided that "Andrew just needed his own business cards. So she procured them for him.
When the market has been too crowded, exhibitors such as Diane Freeman (textiles) and Olivia Cooke(Peacock Botanicals-body products) have been known to carve out of their stands a place for Andrew to set up. And over the years many of us have bought his paintings, sweatshirts and T-shirts. In fact, it would be fair to say that an Andrew Shelton hand-painted comic-book-inspired T-shirt is one of the preferred garments of many Eastern Market exhibitors.
(Eastern Market Exhibitors: "sporting" the Andrew "Superhero T-shirts", Bernadette Mayo 'Zena', Sonda T. Allen 'Super Girl', Daniel Kessler, 'Thor')
On Friendship:
Witnessing is an act of being present--emotionally, physically, intellectually and spiritually.
Thus, for years at Eastern Market I have been a witness to the beauty... (beaute, caractere de ce qui est moralement admirable) of friendships...(amitie, sentiment reciproque d'affection ou de sympathie qui ne se fonde ni sur les liens du sang... Marque d'affection, temoignage de bienveillance) that were (dar luz) given light by/ given birth to at the Market. I cannot testify to which is more beautiful, or more unlikely, than the love that exists among Jesse Dunham's family (i.e. Jesse, Daniel Barker, Russel), Doris Little and family (Shelia, Angie), Pia and Mitch Phulsuksombat or Andrew Shelton and Daniel Kessler.
(Andrew Shelton with Daniel Kessler at Kessler's stand at Eastern Market--this is always a good place to start looking for Andrew.)
Andrew and Kessler:
When I went to visit Mr. Shelton's workspace in upper N.W. Washington, D.C., I asked Mr. Kessler to accompany me--first, as Andrew does not have a car and he asks Kessler to take him home on occasion, and, second, because I was shy of being asked by Mr. Shelton for my hand in marriage.
I know that they met at Eastern Market, but how they met is a mystery. These are two men who live in their worlds of painting. One lives in Maryland, the other in north west D.C. One has recieved international acclaim for his work, the other is seldom noticed. But they are friends. After the fire, on Sundays Kessler and I set up next to each other. We have both now been at the market for nineteen years. Back in the day, we stood in line together early on Saturday mornings. Andrew is always in conversation. So, on those Sundays when he would come over to have coffee with Dan, he would already have a question for him. It would start with, "why are you so...." "what does god mean by...", or just a "hey Dan..." I could not help overhearing their conversations; every week they spoke of women, painting and God--the essentials. At times, to avoid saying anything, I would walk away. When I came back, Andrew would ask me, "why are you so mean?" I would smile and tell Andrew that God had told me "thou shalt not smoke". He would reply as he puffed away on one of his innumerable cigarrettes, with a roll of his eyes, "God has never told me that."
On more than one occassion Daniel Kessler has said, "I have looked at some of Andrew's paintings and wished I could paint like that." After, my visit to Andrew's studio, I sent Mr. Kessler this picture of himself and Mr. Shelton. For me, this photo incapsulates some aspects of their freindship. He wrote, "There is something very timeless and pure going on with Andrew and somehow you can see it in his paintings. I see God's fingerprints all over the place with him."
Andrew has a manner of speaking, seeing and being that cuts through intellectual clutter. He tells you, whether you want to hear it or not, just how he sees you, just how he is feeling. Andrew told me once that he had been taken to see Rembrant's portraits of the Apostle's at The National Gallery. He said that he had understood how Rembrant was working. Mr. Shelton spoke in the language of painters, brush strokes, textures and underlying structures; he wanted to be understood.
It was quipped to me once that John Harrod (founder of Market 5 Galley and the Arts and Crafts Festival at Eastern Market) had a heart that was too big. Perhaps; but that is why he gave Andrew Shelton a show at Market 5 Gallery in 1998. I remember one of the paintings that Andrew exposed, it was an homage to Henry Ossawa Tanner's land mark work called, The Grateful Poor. It stopped folks; they wanted to know who painted that...Indeed, what do artists look like?
(Andrew Shelton in his 'bliss', painting at his stand at Eastern Market)
Mr. Shelton is not definable. Daniel Kessler said it best: "one cannot explain Andrew, one just needs to experience him."
Painting:
In Andrew Shelton's painting, the themes are Biblical and fantastic. He works at interpreting what he sees with his mind's eye, as well as paying homage to his favorite comic book characters. Hence, his work varies from divinely inspired images of Christ to Thor (who, as the Norse god of Thunder, is also a divine being.)
In a recent conversation with Andrew, I asked him to talk to me about painting. He said, "I see myself doing my better work when I am hungry." He went on to add that he waits until he finishes a piece before eating the pot of beans on the stove. He added, "I know what it is like to go without." On painting, he stated, "the most complicated thing on earth is the human body." He told me he likes working on paintings of the body. He said, "It is a joy to do an image." He said, "painting is 
not of this world...What is life itself but a miracle itself?"
not of this world...What is life itself but a miracle itself?"
(Andrew Shelton's painting of Christ. T-shirt worn by Daniel Kessler)
One can surmise that because of his early admiration for comic characters, he has created a manner of seeing the world through that language. He calls Jenae Michelle "Super Girl" and Bernadette Mayo he calls Zena. And me, Andrew Shelton calls me" Storm."
On Eastern Market:
As I was leaving his studio, I asked Mr. Shelton to talk to me about how he felt about ...the market. He pondered, "why God wants me to stay at the market for over twelve years". He said that he is amazed at "... the art work, the people I am around." As far as the other exhibitors at the market: "the people like me alot, they tease me, it is a good feeling. It keeps me coming back." He appreciates that by being at the market he has "money in my pocket and it teaches me responsibility."
There are those of us at Eastern Market who love Andrew Shelton, and I am one. He is a piece of the Market's soul.
Witnessing,
Sonda T. Allen
Turtle's Webb
Post Script:
How John Harrod and Tom Rall (co-founder and manager, The Flea Market at Eastern Market) built what they did, out of nothing, on a handshake and a few people into the National Treasure it is today is not fathomable. What is clear, is that they both had the grace, compassion, intelligence and wisdom to welcome the strange to "Entertain Angels Unaware" at Eastern Market.
"Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." Hebrew 13:2
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