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 Baltimore's Unique Folk Art
 

What are Painted Screens?

Literally canvases with holes, a painted screen is just that— woven wire, fiberglass, polyester or other porous mesh material stretched and framed to cover windows and door openings of homes and commercial establishments for privacy and ventilation during the warm weather months. Colorful scenes are painted as not to cover the holes. The visual image stops the gaze of passersby from penetrating a non-illuminated interior, while the screen permits breezes to pass through and prevents insects from entering. Brightly colored pictorial landscape scenes, and particularly the “Red Bungalow” were the trademarks of William Oktavec, screen painting’s inventor in Baltimore.

William Oktavec in his home studio. c. 1950

History of Screen Painting in Baltimore

William Oktavec, an artist trained as a butcher in his native Czechoslovakia came to America in 1909. He made his home first in New York and then in Baltimore. He learned the nature of wire and paint while working at Western Electric in New Jersey and painted his first screen there. In 1913, he opened a corner grocery on the corner of N. Collington and Ashland Avenues in the heart of the neighborhood known as Little Bohemia, directly across the street from St Wenceslaus Church, the spiritual heart of the Czech emigre community. http://www.bcpl.net/~czslha/ He painted his first screen for his shop’s screen door--a scene of fresh fruits, vegetable and meats—the very produce he sold but was unable to display outdoors in the oppressive summer heat. A neighbor took note of his fine artwork and its additional quality of preventing the gaze of passersby from peeking inside. Her interest in keeping “bums from rubbernecking in her rowhouse window” caused her to ask Oktavec to paint a screen for her front window. She presented him with a mill scene from a calendar. Once the neighbors witnessed the new privacy maker, they all clamored for their own—for every window and door of the house. Each ethnic neighborhood in turn had its own enterprising painter to accommodate fellow countrymen. By 1922, Oktavec left the grocery business and was able to open the Art Shop of his dreams where he taught regular art classes, screen painting and specialized in church restoration. One of his students, Johnny Eck http://www.johnnyeckmuseum.com/ assisted three generations of Oktavecs when business was especially brisk. In the heyday of painted screens in the 1940s and 50s, resourceful men and women plied the streets of every neighborhood, by foot, by car and from modest storefronts, supplying as many as 100,000 screens to eager homeowners. Over the years, the popularity of painted screens ebbs and flows. First the World Wars dealt a blow, then air conditioners, then changing demographics. It is time again to reinvigorate this singular folk art form.

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