Gone but not Forgotten
Kathy Carlson
Kathy Carlson drew heavily on the natural splendor of the Caribbean islands. Working full time as a high school math teacher in the States, she looked forward to her annual summer sailing trips through the islands, where she sought out landscapes untouched by seaside resorts. Wherever she went, she sketched. The sketches became oil paintings.
On one of her many trips to St. Thomas, she was hired to teach at Antilles School. In 1994, after two years at the school, she concluded her twenty-five years as an educator. The Virgin Islands became her home to explore daily.
Carlson had studied life drawing and painting at the Arts Student League in New York and at the University of Buffalo. Carlson remembers dreaming of retiring from education and the freedom it would give her to devote to her first love–painting. After more than a decade in St. Thomas, Carlson described her life as “living my dream.”
Her debut exhibition was held at Sunny Caribbee in Tortola. While we were framing the pieces for that show at Mango Tango Art Gallery, we immediately recognized her talent — and invited her to participate in our next show six months later. That success led to annual exhibitions. Later, when Courtney Devonish was presenting his own show at Mango Tango, he invited her to exhibit with his gallery in Anguilla.
In 2013 she passed away, but she lives on through her engaging artwork.
Smokey Pratt
Smokey Pratt called St. Thomas home from 1980 on, expressing his creativity as a chef, musician, and cartoonist. He cooked at beloved restaurants like Parkside, Williams and Daniels, and the Green Parrot—places now gone, but still remembered by locals who often ask for his recipes.
In 1988 he left the kitchen to help run Mango Tango Art Gallery, quickly mastering picture framing. By night, he played music—first folk and rock with Harold McDonald, then blues with John Brittain in the band Blue Shoes, later becoming “2 Blue Shoes.” Betsy of Frenchtown didn’t just hire them—she “adopted” them, and they filled her Friday nights for over 13 years.
At home, Smokey drew constantly. I (his wife) remembers leaving space on cards for him to write something; instead, he’d instantly sketch a cartoon. Relaxing meant cartooning his life.
Artist Don Dahlke captured his spirit best: “Everything he draws or paints comes from the heart. Money is the last thing on his mind.” After watching Smokey bounce between songwriting and cartooning with effortless joy, Dahlke insisted he deserved a show—and that endorsement launched Smokey’s first exhibition at Mango Tango.
He enjoyed many more before his passing in 2013. Today, his humor—and his heart—live on through his cartoons.
Max Johnson
When I was teaching at the College of the Virgin Islands and Adult Education on Garden Street, I supported my island explorations by selling larimar from the Dominican Republic, art cards by the Lynn family in St. Martin, and Italian sarongs. On a sales trip to St. Croix, I discovered a folio of four art prints from Many Hands Gallery—two nautical, reminiscent of Winslow Homer, and two figurative, including a lively market scene and a street view featuring a man in a turban. Each was signed simply, “MJ.”
Years later, in 1988, when my husband and I opened Mango Tango Art Gallery, I contacted Many Hands and learned “MJ” was Max Johnson, a Connecticut artist who had spent twenty summers sailing from St. Thomas to Trinidad. His market scene combined sketches of people from islands across the Caribbean. A later, more colorful version was chosen for the Virgin Islands Census poster.
Max studied at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, the Art Students League of New York, and the Grand Chaumière in Paris. During World War II, he illustrated Air Force manuals in Spain; his paintings of the Berlin Airlift and Strategic Air Command still hang in the Pentagon and Air Force Academy. In another period of his career, he was one of the early advertising globetrotters. As a senior executive for J. Walter Thompson and Lennen and Newell Advertising Agencies in the late 1950s and 1960s, he traveled the world supervising the creation of advertising for Pan American, Iberia, and American Airlines among others. During much of his career, however, he split his days between painting at the Art Students League in the morning and commercial assignments at his Murray Hill Studio in the afternoon.
He became one of Mango Tango’s first featured artists in 1991. Though new to the business, we watched his figurative oils—priced around $5,000—sell rapidly to locals and visitors alike. His advice on curating stayed with me:
“There’s a place for local scenes, but ask yourself—would this still be a great painting in Malta, Paris, or Buenos Aires? A great painting shines anywhere.”
The day before he left, he invited us up for a toast with Jameson. Sketching my husband playing flute below, he used only coasters and napkins. “I predict a great future for Mango Tango,” he said. When Max passed in 1999, his family entrusted us with his art estate. As I unpacked each piece, the first I purchased for myself was that same scene—my husband playing flute—born from those impromptu sketches years before.