At home with Artist Barbara Ward Armstrong:
Like the art she creates, Barbara Ward Armstrong’s apartment in the Piano Factory reflects the past, present, and future, and each is a bittersweet mix of beauty, joy, and loss. Since the early 1960s, Ward Armstrong has been a dancer, choreographer, musician, fabric artist of life-size soft-sculpture figures and masks, and now a children’s book author.
But she is best known for her relationship with acclaimed jazz and blues musician Howard ‘‘Louie Bluie’’ Armstrong, who died in 2003 at 94. She was 30 years younger than her husband. Their relationship was part of a 2002 PBS documentary, ‘‘Sweet Old Song,’’ which focused on the outpouring of art and music produced during their 20-year partnership. Their last project is an autobiographical children’s book that she wrote, he illustrated, and she is now seeking to publish. Ward Armstrong’s apartment is her second in 23 years in the historic Piano Factory building in the South End, a colony to artists and musicians. She and Armstrong decided to move into this unit with its wider space when he fell ill and expected to be in a wheelchair temporarily, she says. He died three days after they moved in.
‘‘He didn’t have a chance to celebrate this lovely place,’’ she says. However, she says she is re-creating his spirit in a sculpture. Already, ‘‘Howard’’ sits on her couch wearing his favorite stage shirt and hat, wearing jewelry he made, and holding his cane. Eventually, he’ll be life-size.
Although most of the home’s furnishings remain a mix of his items and hers, the obvious thread throughout are touches of Ward Armstrong’s heritage as an African-American whose maternal relatives hid their Native American blood for many decades because they were ashamed, she says.
Once she understood why Native American artifacts had always filled her aunts and grandmother’s homes, she, too, began decorating with a Native American theme, apparent in the incense she burns, the blankets neatly folded on her black velveteen couches, her striking cobalt glass and vase collection, and her color choices. As she relaxes at home, Ward Armstrong wears an oversize shirt with an animal print that her husband often wore onstage. Large earrings frame her face with black, red, turquoise, and magenta, the same Native American colors she uses throughout her home’s decor.
Each unit, she says, in this building differs from the next. Some are ‘‘like closets; some have unfinished steps in the middle.’’ This one is spacious with one big open area. It also has an alcove devoted to her husband’s piano, mandolin, awards, and trophies.
A stairway leads to a combined bedroom and workspace. Because the apartment is an open design and she lives and works here, Ward Armstrong uses dividers she made from wood blocks covered with laminate to create a sense of two rooms in the kitchen and living room.
In the kitchen, aside from the sink, stove, and slate gray cabinets, the main item is an oversize table made from Home Depot doors, also covered in laminate and resting on several filing cabinets. She entertains friends here and sometimes offers art classes for children and senior citizens.
The filing cabinets serve as containers for everything from ‘‘underwear to art supplies to purses to light bulbs,’’ she says, laughing at herself.
Atop the kitchen table she displays pieces from her cobalt collection and dramatic Mexican dishes.
On the living room side of the divider, a red Turkish rug her nana and aunt left her ‘‘started my color pattern,’’ she says. The room is packed with her brightly colored masks and small couch replicas that she uses to display her soft sculptures, when she is working. ‘‘Right now my life is at home,’’ she says. ‘‘I kind of hide in here a little bit. It’s where I feel absolutely the best because I’m sad.’’
She says that the year after she lost her husband, her mother, whom she was estranged from most of her life, also died. ‘‘I don’t have the same light in me yet.’’
‘‘I really truly love it here, and I’m blessed. It was almost like a gift that he left me this beautiful home.’’