Stars-are-out-tonite, 11.5″ x 23″

This project gave me a feeling of black history in the grandness of Harlem, New York. During the early 40s, it began when I fully recovered from my self-mutilation and I started hanging out at the world-famous cotton club in Harlem, New York, which was once owned in the beginning by Owney Madden, a prominent bootlegger, and gangster, took over the club after his release from Sing Sing in the 1930’s,

But now is owned by a black man named John Beatty, who became my friend in-which I did paintings and prints to be sold to his client base; The beautiful Lena Horne. “Stormy Weather” was one of her signature songs. It was first written in 1933 and popularized at the Cotton Club in Harlem, where Horne performed in the mid-1930s.