In 50+ years as an artist, Carvelle has consistently demonstrated immunity to intimidation. Her father “taught me not to whine or be afraid,” says Sharon of the Irishman who worked on a riverboat, wired bookie joints, bootlegged, gambled and ran for mayor. Inexplicably, he once coaxed his little daughter to “Jump, baby,” from the top of a roof, and she did just that, also inexplicably, unharmed.
Mary, Carvellé’s mother, worked at a nuclear plant in Tennessee building the first atomic bomb and organizing for labor rights: two grandmothers and five aunts raised the young artist and proudly self-declared “heathen." Asking “questions about evolution that no good Methodist girl should ask,” Carvellé was expelled from Catechism; a third-grade teacher broke a ruler against the bold child’s knuckles for drawing a naked woman. The die was set for an unbending loyalty to the truth of sensuality and the sensuality of truth.
At 17, the woman-child ran away from home, married and found herself at a military service location in France where she studied art and architectural history for three years during the 1950s. Picasso—“an arrogant little bastard”— commented briefly on her drawings: “Not bad for a woman.”
“It was in Paris I learned more about everything . . .I saw a drag queen for the first time. When I saw a biracial couple, I thought, ‘My God, they’re beautiful. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing Josephine Baker’s voice. Jazz and blues, America’s original art forms, often ignored in the States, resonated on the streets of Europe. I’d never see the world the same way again.”
Carvellé also could not look away from the agonies of social injustice and war evident in the bullet scarring of Parisian buildings from the Nazi and Allied occupations, or from the orphaned, illegitimate children, abandoned by soldiers and impoverished by racism.
Despite her introduction to dark social realities, she was abruptly immersed in life with her first and only pregnancy, delivered a la Lamaze long before Americans heard of natural childbirth.
"We lived in Châteauroux next to a butcher's shop, which made even the baby's diapers smell like blood despite washing them in the river," she muses. "I raised Debra on goat's milk diluted with wine and pabulum. We visited the open market every Monday, a place like Carnival, brimming with community—a joy to the senses."
It was the beginning of the Cold War, when capitalism and communism vied for dominance and the Berlin Wall illustrated the ideological divide. On May Day, Communists offered Carvellé a taste of violent bigotry. As she pushed her daughter in her stroller through the market, neighbors and townspeople began throwing stones. Recalling her father's encouragement in the face of fear, she calmly continued, head up, back straight. On Bastille Day, the same folk dressed her home in garlands and serenaded her with the village band. It was a lesson in the power of nonviolent resistance and the efficacy of familiarity over prejudice.