Herbert D. Massie, a self-taught artist, has taught art classes in the Baltimore area for most of his life. Massie’s work is now a permanent part of the Walters Art Museum collection, which calls him “a long-treasured gem of our local arts community.” Photo courtesy of Maryland Citizens for the Arts

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Today, a former Baltimore mansion where enslaved people once toiled houses part of the Walters Art Museum. Inside, a huge mirror-and-ceramic mosaic honoring one of those workers has become part of the permanent collection.

The Walters announced two major acquisitions last fall, one of which is this collaborative mosaic created by celebrated Baltimore artist Herbert Massie, 64.

The three-part work consists of two massive ovals, each 10 feet across and five feet high, and a slightly smaller third oval. They are framed with an array of ceramic plates, each decorated by a different person and arranged by Massie. No two plates are alike, yet they all somehow fit together.

The artwork, called Reflections of Sybby Grant, celebrates enslaved cook Sybby Grant, who once lived in the mansion at 1 West Mount Vernon Place. While doing research for the museum, students from the Baltimore School for the Arts found an 1861 letter from Grant addressed to her enslavers, the Thomas family.

When the Walters discovered Grant’s letter, curators decided to honor the workers who had been enslaved by the Thomases. The museum approached Massie and commissioned the piece in 2018.

“They wanted me to be the artist to do the work,” Massie said. “I’ve been known around the state and city as a community activist.”

The completed piece is made largely of mirrors, stained glass and broken ceramic plates decorated by 400 members of the community.

Massie facilitated the project over the course of a year, working at Jubilee Arts, the Walters and Baltimore City recreation centers and schools.

“For me to work on a project like this [with] all the aspiring young minds and older adults who wanted to be an artist — to actually work on something that would be shown in a museum, I thought would be a novel idea,” Massie said.

A Baltimore native

Massie was born and raised in Baltimore, where he has lived his entire life.  He gravitated to the creative arts since he was a child, and is a self-taught artist.

“I never graduated from an art school,” Massie said. “I took a couple classes up at CCBC…then I went to Clayworks to take classes to improve on my talents.”

Before he began teaching art, Massie worked a variety of jobs, from baker to a laborer to salesman.

The first place Massie taught art was as a volunteer at Mary E. Rodman Recreation Center in Edmondson Village. He rearranged his work schedule to go there twice a week.

From there, he started teaching painting, drawing and other classes at different schools. He went to Baltimore Clayworks to enroll in a class and landed a job that lasted decades.

Massie “showed up at the doorstep at Baltimore Clayworks,” he recalled, and they quickly hired him as a teacher. “I went there as just a clay teacher in their community arts program, and I wound up managing a couple of studio sites off campus and co-running the community arts program.”

After more than 25 years of experience as a teaching artist, in 2016, Maryland Citizens for the Arts awarded Massie the Sue Hess Maryland Arts Advocate of the Year Award.

Massie has brought the arts to city recreation centers, private, public and county schools, and numerous arts organizations.

“I’ve been working with communities through art for the last 20 to 30 years,” Massie said. “I’ve worked with almost every art agency here in Baltimore.”

Massie has brought the arts to people of all ages and circumstances. He has worked with teenagers, adults and community elders. He has hosted workshops for people recovering from addiction and people released from prison.

“Herb has a way of inspiring students, whether they are elementary-school-age students or senior citizens,” said Nicole Fall, who was community arts manager at Baltimore Clayworks when Massie was first hired as a teacher.

Starting the mosaic project

When Massie started on the mosaic, he began the creative process in Baltimore at the Jubilee Arts studio on Pennsylvania Avenue — the city’s center of African American history and culture.

“At some point, the museum sent some folks [to ask] how they could assist because they knew the work was heavy,” he said.

They decided to take the pieces over to the museum’s studio site in Woodberry, and Massie continued to work on them there, affixing one- and two-inch mirrors as a border, then stained glass, broken pieces of mirror and later the plates.

Massie premade hundreds of plates for people to decorate and illustrate. He also created clay stamps so people could imprint different textures on the plates.

Community members worked on decorating the plates during a series of drop-in workshops at the Walters Art Museum, a few schools, and a couple of rec centers.

“I did workshops everywhere,” Massie said. “I can’t even count them.”

The workshops at the museum were open to the public, well attended and busy.

“My biggest problems with the workshops was that adults would come in with kids, and they were so consumed with making sure that their son or daughter got it exactly right and not working on their own,” Massie said.

“When it comes it comes to art, [I say] let a kid express themselves through the art. As we get older, we start having opinions, and our thought process is different. We spend too much time thinking ‘What am I going to do?’ instead of just doing it.”

Some of the mosaic workshops were exclusively for staff at the Walters Art Museum. Massie thought it was an excellent opportunity for the workers, who spent most of their time in an environment where art is displayed, to be able to participate in the process of creating art.

Massie may lead more workshops at the Walters in the spring.

The mosaic’s ceramic plates and mirror fragments are mounted on large ovals that represent turtle shells, a nod to Grant’s letter, in which she writes about preparing turtle soup.

Massie brought food to all of his mosaic workshops — no turtle soup, but lots of barbecued ribs, collard greens with smoked turkey necks, macaroni and cheese and crabcakes.

“One of the things I like to do when folks work with me is I always like to feed them,” Massie said.

Gwynn Oak artwork

Another of Massie’s community art pieces was unveiled in August 2023, at the Gwynn Oak Park Unity Festival, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the desegregation of the now-closed amusement park.

Massie created the artwork with his 19-year-old nephew Darean Barrett and a handful of others. The work was truly a community project because a website was established as a platform for the public to upload personal images.

Massie used the personal photos as a unique, detailed overlay he created on top of a photograph he bought from the Baltimore Sun of 11-month-old Sharon Langley, the first black child to ride the merry-go-round at the park. [See our cover story “Author made history as a baby,” February 2022.]

Massie enlarged the Sun photo to five feet and essentially re-created the photo from images of community members in a photographic collage and mosaic.

Massie’s new place in the Walters’ permanent collection is a tribute to his lifelong commitment to art.

“I was always interested in art,” Massie said. “That was always my goal. I’ve had friends who jokingly but seriously say that back when we were in junior high when a teacher asked what you want to be, I always knew I wanted to be an artist. So, a lot of folks that grew up knowing me aren’t surprised that I wind up full circle.”

Massie’s work can be found on Instagram at #HerbMassie and @break_and_make_mosaic.

“Reflections of Sybby Grant” is on view at the Walters Art Museum at 1 West Mount Vernon Place. The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday; closed Christmas eve, Christmas day and New Year’s day. Admission is free.