Neva Byrd Sherman Graham, Tampa. Oil on canvas, 22 by 28 1/4 inches. Signed lower left Neva Byrd Sherman, 51.
For more than 60 years Neva Byrd Sherman Graham’s career as a Tampa artist changed, like the colors on a canvas of her life, from Neva Byrd, a green 17-year-old member of Tampa’s Jolly Art Club, to a sky-blue graduate from Hillsborough High, through marriage, divorce and remarriage, to a full pallet of colors and recognition as an accomplished artist, teacher, listed in Who’s Who in American Women and Florida Women of Distinction.
Neva Byrd was twenty-five when she married in 1940. Her career as Neva Byrd Sherman began in 1948 as a charter member of Tampa Realist Artists. In February 1951 her abstract watercolor won a prize at the Tampa State Fair. In March her work was accepted for a Sarasota Art Association exhibit. By August she was conducting a summer art school at her home on West Lambright Street. Sherman’s marriage ended in 1954. She continued to exhibit as Neva Byrd Sherman.
In 1955 Sherman worked with Myrtle Taylor Bradford of Miami as assistant state director of American Art Week for the American Artists Professional League and was elected to the board of directors of the Florida Federation of Art as publicity chairman. At the November 1956 convention of the Federation in West Palm Beach, Sherman’s press work in behalf of the Tampa Art institute and the Institute’s Beaux Art Ball received a National Citation Award from the Americana Artist Professional League.
Sherman was exhibiting in galleries throughout the state of Florida. The St. Petersburg Times, January 16, 1955, reviewing a Gulf Coast Art Center exhibit, said of Sherman’s now modernistic work, “‘Pisiform’ by Neva Byrd Sherman is one of the few successful geometric compositions seen locally. Decoratively conceived in uniform diamond shapes, the pattern is suggestive of a school of fish swimming as fast as they can.”
In 1958 Sherman was president of the Tampa chapter of the American Artists Professional League. She had a one-man exhibit at the Contemporary Arts Gallery in Pinellas Park in January. Her professionalism emphasized by being chosen as a judge for that years Sunshine Skyway contest along with Tampa’s Paul Tollefson and Guy Sanders, of the Ringling School of Art.
In June 1962 Sherman married a Texan and began exhibiting in Galveston as Neva Graham. The couple later returned to Tampa, and in October 1964 Neva Graham sponsored a party at her home to benefit the Tampa Realistic Artists. She would continue to exhibit as Neva Byrd Graham.
Graham served four times as president of Tampa Realistic Artists. Her paintings were accepted for exhibits for shows in New York, Atlanta, New Orleans and Houston. She gave art demonstrations all over the Tampa Bay area from Zephyrhills to Treasure Island.
The Hillsborough County Recreation Department employed her teaching art to children and adults. Graham is quoted by the Tampa Tribune, “I train children with pencil, then pastels and finally, oils…. I say when they have a burning desire for oils, they are ready…I just help them develop themselves.”
She was particularly proud of her tissue collages, using brightly colored Japanese tissues overlayed on canvas. Of her own work she said, “my style is neither non-objective, impressionistic, nor super realistic, but not realistic…my works are geometrical renderings of objects from nature, humanized and intensified by color.” (Tampa Tribune, November 15, 1968)
Neva Byrd Graham died in Tampa in 2005, age 90, a beloved member of the Tampa Bay artist community.
Born: August 14, 1915, Tampa. Died: April 25, 2005, Tampa. Education: University of Tampa with Alice Jean Small; Florida Gulf Coast Art Center with William Pachner; with Henry Gasser in New York and Edgar Whitney in New Orleans. Membership: Tampa Realistic Artists, charter member; Tampa Art Institute; Florida Federation of Art (Board of Directors); Creative Arts Group of Tampa Bay; American Artists Professional League; National League of American Pen Women. Exhibits: Florida State Fair, Tampa, February 1951, 1st prize, watercolor, still life; Sarasota Art Association, March 1951; Florida Southern College, Lakeland, March 1952; Tampa Art Institute, Municipal Auditorium, January 1953, prize, painting later in windows of O’Falk’s and Maas Brothers department stores; Pan American Art Exhibit by Tampa artists for tour of Latin America, March 1953, honorable mention; Florida Federation of Art, 27th Annual circuit, 1953-54; Sunshine Skyway art contest, Contemporary Arts Gallery, Pinellas Park, September 1954; Gulf Coast Art Center, Clearwater Chamber of Commerce Building, January 1955, Pisiform; Tampa Art Institute, May 1955, 1st prize, Anguish (pictured Tampa Tribune, May 22, 1955); Tampa Azalea Garden Circle, Florida Flowers, for American Art Week, November 1955; Florida Federation of Art, 29th Annual, Sea Gull Hotel, Miami Beach, November 1955, honorable mention modern, Innocent Victims; Tampa Art Institute, February 1957, three man exhibit with William Pachner and Don Dulin; Florida State Fair, Tampa, exhibited between, 1956-1962; Florida Federation of Art, annual Spring Board Meeting of Florida Federation of Art, Jacksonville, May 3-4, 1957, 2nd prize, portraits; Contemporary Arts Gallery, Pinellas Park, January 1958, one woman show including Pisiform (pictured Tampa Tribune January 5, 1958); Sunshine Festival Annual Art Competition, at Contemporary Arts Gallery, Pinellas Park, March 1958, judge; Artists Professional League, Grand National Competition, New York City, May 1958; Florida Federation of Art, 32nd Annual Exhibition, November 13-28, 1958, Daytona Beach, watercolor, Lakeside; Florida Federation of Art 33rd Annual Exhibit, Tampa, November 1959, mixed media, Bird Nest; Paul Dorfmuller Studio, Tampa, December 1959; Galveston and Houston, Texas, one-man exhibits, summer 1962; Southeastern Exhibition, Atlanta, Georgia; Leesburg Art Association, May 1968 (now exhibiting as Neva Graham) painting demonstration and exhibit; Latin Quarter Gallery, Ybor City, June 1969; Florida Federation of Art Centennial, May 1972; Florida Federation of Art 45th Convention, DeBary Hall, January 1973; Zephyrhills Art Club at Municipal Auditorium, Zephyrhills, lecture and demonstration of oil painting, February 17, 1977; Art Guild of Treasure Island Inc. at Treasure Island Civic Building, January 1981, judge; Pinellas Park Art Society, Pinellas Square Mall, September 11-12, 1981, judge; Glendale Federal Savings & Loan, South Dale Mabry Highway, April 1985, one-man exhibit.
