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A sustained critical assessment of southern folk art and self-taught art and artists
A fascinating examination of the Bible's influence on seventy-three self-taught artists and 122 works of art
Thornton Dial (1928-2016), one of the most important artists in the American South, came to prominence in the late 1980s and was celebrated internationally for his large construction pieces and mixed-media paintings. It was only later, in response to a reviewer's negative comment on his artistic ability, that he began to work on paper. And it was not until recently that these drawings have received the acclaim they deserve. This volume, edited by Bernard L. Herman, offers the first sustained critical attention to Dial's works on paper. Concentrating on Dial's early drawings, the contributors examine Dial's use of line and color and his recurrent themes of love, lust, and faith. They also discuss the artist's sense of place and history, relate his drawings to his larger works, and explore how his drawing has evolved since its emergence in the early 1990s. Together, the essays investigate questions of creativity and commentary in the work of African American artists and contextualize Dial's works on paper in the body of American art. The contributors are Cara Zimmerman, Bernard Herman, Glenn Hinson, Juan Logan, and Colin Rhodes.
Inspired by the sense of community forged by the millions of women who have gathered with friends to quilt throughout history, Around the Quilt Frame draws upon this common bond, connecting todays quilters in a more symbolic way. This unique compilation of essays and stories about quilts and quilting blends light-hearted tales with more philosophical pieces. From a variety of well-known quilting writers, including Helen Kelley, Ami Simms, Lisa Boyer, Patricia Cox, Jean Ray Laury, and Sandra Dallas, these pieces expertly stitch together a mix of contemporary and vintage pieces to create a patchwork of treasured and timeless tales.
My Soul Has Grown Deep considers the art-historical significance of contemporary Black artists and quilters working throughout the southeastern United States and Alabama in particular. Their paintings, drawings, mixed-media compositions, sculptures, and textiles include pieces ranging from the profoundly moving assemblages of Thornton Dial to the renowned quilts of Gee’s Bend. Nearly sixty remarkable examples—originally collected by the Souls Grown Deep Foundation and donated to The Metropolitan Museum of Art—are illustrated alongside insightful texts that situate them in the history of modernism and the context of the African American experience in the twentieth-century South. This re...
"Bill Traylor (ca. 1853-1949) is regarded today as one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century. A black man born into slavery in Alabama, he was an eyewitness to history--the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, the Great Migration, and the steady rise of African American urban culture in the South. Traylor would not live to see the civil rights movement, but he was among those who laid its foundation. Starting around 1939, Traylor--by then in his late eighties and living on the streets of Montgomery--took up pencil and paintbrush to attest to his existence and point of view. In keeping with this radical step, the paintings and drawings he ma...
Providing an excellent example of why folk artists can be appreciated as carriers of knowledge, even if they are unaware of it, this book could change the ways we understand and appreciate American folk arts. Connecting a sharecropper from Georgia in the Southern United States to a protector and healer in Touba, Senegal, West Africa, the holy city of Mouridism, and the final resting place of its founder, Shaikh Ahmadou Bàmba Mbàcke, it makes an interesting link while examining the cultural aspects of two very different and yet similar paths of life. Historians and art historians alike will find this investigation of African American art and folk culture both interesting and insightful. Not only does this book trace the characteristics of art through the African Diaspora, but it also traces Islam through those same diasporic transportations of colonial exploration and slavery.
What role does place play in the Christian life? In this STA volume, Jennifer Allen Craft gives a practical theology of the arts, contending that the arts place us in time, space, and community in ways that encourage us to be fully and imaginatively present in a variety of contexts: the natural world, our homes, our worshiping communities, and society.
Helena María Viramontes is a professor, scholar-activist, and renowned author of works of fiction and nonfiction. Her work has been anthologized and is read widely in the United States and abroad. For many of her readings and speaking engagements she arrives wearing a rebozo, a shawl worn by Mexican and Chicana women living on both sides of the US–Mexico border. Once, when asked about her rebozo, Viramontes explained that the pre-Columbian icon is her “security blanket,” which she embraces in order to find comfort. For her readers, her writing functions like a "rebozo de palabras,” a shawl woven with words that nurture. As Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs points out in her insightful int...
Given that slaveholders prohibited the creation of African-style performing objects, is there a traceable connection between traditional African puppets, masks, and performing objects and contemporary African American puppetry? This study approaches the question by looking at the whole performance complex surrounding African performing objects and examines the material culture of object performance. Object Performance in the Black Atlantic argues that since human beings can attribute private, personal meanings to objects obtained for personal use such as dolls, vessels, and quilts, the lines of material culture continuity between African and African American object performance run through ob...