Years After Being His Muse, She Hid a Proposal in His Lunch

New York Times

19 hours ago

When Julia Anne Chance met James Walter Greene in February 1996 at her close friend's Valentine's Day dinner party in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, his reputation preceded him.
'Oh, you're Jimmy James Greene,' said Ms. Chance, the name he goes by as an artist — a painter, collagist, muralist and stained glass artist.
These days, his tile mosaic, 'Children's Cathedral,' installed late that summer, using drawings by local children, can be seen anytime at the Utica Avenue A/C subway station in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
Mr. Greene, 67, who grew up in Xenia, Ohio, graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design. He retired as an art instructor in 2016 from PSMS 108 School of Authors in East Harlem.
'The Exchange,' his 'striking collage' of a Black woman laborer seated against a page of newspaper stock market quotes, especially moved Ms. Chance three years earlier at a Kwanzaa pop-up art sale in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where she met his wife at the time and baby daughter, who were at the party.
'We're all friendly and party-like,' said Mr. Greene, whose two previous marriages ended in divorce.
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