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Inspiring youth through his art By Margaret Foster When Maryland artist Normon Greene was a child in southwestern Virginia, he watched his mother sketch and vowed to be just like her one day. “I was inspired by her drawings, so I started drawing,” the 69-year-old painter and sculptor said. “Then she gave me clay, and I thought, ‘Wow, I can draw three-dimensionally!’” Now Greene, a retired youth counselor and artist whose works are displayed throughout the D.C. metro area, is the one inspiring a younger generation. His work is being exhibited in the Sandy Spring Museum from May 2 through July 28. At the same time, the museum will present artwork done by school students from kindergarten to eighth grade at St. John’s Episcopal School in Olney, Md. As the museum prepared for both exhibits, its executive director “suggested the idea of having students examine [Greene’s] art work and explore his art style,” said St. John’s visual arts teacher Maggie Lewis. Lewis loved the idea. She showed Greene’s work to her students, and they created family portraits in Greene’s style of bold colors and simple shapes. Then she sent her students’ work to Greene. “I was so impressed, I asked if I could go to the class and introduce myself,” Greene said. Lewis arranged a March visit to her second-grade classroom. The students peppered Greene with questions: How long did it take to complete his artwork? What materials did he use? “I was really taken by how every one of them got into it,” he said. “As we get older, we don’t see young people as often. It’s really important that we learn from each other.”
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Normon Greene returned to his love of art after he retired from his career as a youth counselor. His paintings and sculptures — including the rooster shown here in Takoma Park, Md. — have been widely displayed in the years since. Now through July, some of Greene’s works will be exhibited at the Sandy Spring Museum, alongside that of local students who have been inspired by Greene’s signature style.
Greene has been creating art — first on the side, now full-time — for more than 40 years. You may have seen some of his work around town or even along major highways out West. Through a connection with an artist friend, Steven Weitzman, he has crafted reliefs for highways and bridges in Oklahoma and Arizona. Today, several of his public sculptures are on display in Maryland and D.C. His 2008 stone sculpture “Five in the Wind”
stands beside the Potomac River in National Harbor, and his bronze “Roscoe” statue, cast in 2000, depicts a beloved rooster in Takoma Park, Md. Other statues and reliefs are displayed in Wheaton and Scotland, Md. From his studio in Brentwood, Md., Greene even carved a stone sculpture in 2015 for the city of Charleston, S.C. All told, he has displayed his work in more than 90
venues, including galleries, libraries, community centers and public parks.
Tai chi is another passion Greene grew up in Lynchburg, Va., where he first glimpsed someone in a local park practicing tai chi, an ancient Chinese martial art. See ARTIST, page 46
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