An­ge­lo Mar­celle

Muhammed Ali, Barack Oba­ma, The Hon­or­able Eli­jah Muham­mad, (leader of the Na­tion of Is­lam) and Jesse Jack­son. These are on­ly a few of the scores of pow­er­ful and in­flu­en­tial black lead­ers in Amer­i­ca that he has had the ho­n­our of meet­ing and in­ter­view­ing. Born and raised in T&T, Yusef Sim­mons is now the man­ag­ing ed­i­tor of the Los An­ge­les Sen­tinel, a week­ly pub­li­ca­tion in Cal­i­for­nia. It is, how­ev­er, not his ed­i­to­r­i­al abil­i­ty that has been mak­ing the waves re­cent­ly. It is his artis­tic abil­i­ty. He says for as long as he can re­mem­ber, art has al­ways brought him some form of joy. Start­ing with reg­u­lar pen­cils, col­ored pen­cils and wa­ter col­ors, the fa­ther of five de­cid­ed to try his hand at oil paint­ing.

It was in his teenage years while still liv­ing in Trinidad, that he had been for­tu­nate to meet an el­der­ly man who lived in Aranguez. The man, he said, made pic­tures from sheets of cop­per, and to a less­er de­gree with alu­minum sheets. His skill was a unique form of art that Sim­mons had nev­er seen be­fore. "Just watch­ing him work, I learned the ba­sic skills. And when he re­alised that I was in­ter­est­ed, he be­gan to teach me," Sim­mons said. The el­der­ly man al­so taught him how to do pro­files, still life, and mov­able ob­jects. Sim­mons ex­plained that an im­por­tant part of mas­ter­ing the skill was mak­ing his own tools.�"The idea was be­cause I made them my­self, I would be more pro­fi­cient in us­ing them. They would be an ex­ten­sion of my artis­tic skill," he ex­plained.

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LEFT: A sculp­ture of Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent, Barack Oba­ma. RIGHT: Yusef Sim­mons proud­ly stands next to his Por­trait of US pres­i­dent Brack Oba­ma that is dis­played at the li­brary.

The process

Sim­mons said he would heat the cop­per to fa­cil­i­tate the rais­ing process. Then the fin­ished prod­uct would be cleaned with acid, wa­ter, a scrub­bing-brush and Ajax. He said col­or­ing it in­volved two process­es; black­en­ing it (ox­id­tion) with liv­er of sul­phur, and eras­ing por­tions of the cop­per from dark to shades of bronze. He said the fi­nal act was to lac­quer the fin­ished art work to achieve a glossy and pro­tec­tive coat­ing. "Dis­play­ing cop­per art was rel­a­tive­ly easy, in that it trig­gered an im­me­di­ate con­nec­tion with view­ers.

Al­though they may have un­der­stood or even ap­pre­ci­at­ed the sub­ject mat­ter, the process and the end prod­uct is al­ways mind-bog­gling. It is unique as it is dif­fer­ent," he said. He said he de­cid­ed to leave for the US at age nine­teen, and con­tin­ued his craft even while at­tend­ing Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty in Los An­ge­les. He has nev­er had any for­mal aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing in art, but has pro­duced some of the por­trait­sthat are dis­played at the In­gle­wood Pub­lic Li­brary in Cal­i­for­nia.

A par­tial list of por­traits and projects in­cludes:

US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma

Thomas Bradley, for­mer May­or of Los An­ge­les

Mervyn Dy­mal­ly, for­mer Lt Gov­er­nor, State of Cal­i­for­nia

Au­gus­tus Hawkins, for­mer con­gress­man

Yvonne Brath­waite Burke, for­mer con­gress­woman

An­drew Young, for­mer UN Am­bas­sador

Dan­ny J. Bakewell, Sr, Pub­lish­er of LA Sen­tinel

Bish­op Richard Allen Award, AME Church

The Hon­or­able Eli­jah Muham­mad, leader of the Na­tion of Is­lam

Bill Greene, for­mer State Sen­a­tor

Lo­gos for the LA Sen­tinel, Broth­er­hood Cru­sade & City of In­gle­wood

Torch­light for Amer­i­ca for the Hon­or­able Min­is­ter Louis Far­rakhan

Kwan­zaa Ki­nara for Dr Maulana Karen­ga Mal­colm X