Month: January 2011

Last weekend, we were in west Alabama and along the way visited St. Andrew’s Church (or St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church) in Prairieville on County Road 12, not too far from Demopolis.  It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Landmarks — and it’s easy to see why:

Gorgeous Carpenter Gothic.

According to its application to the National Register, it:

“is a country church believed to be designed by Richard Upjohn” and “was built in 1853 by slaves belonging to members of the church working under the direction of Peter Lee and Joe Glasgow, Master carpenters, who were slaves of Captain Henry A. Tayloe.”  Episcopal services were held in Prairieville in 1834 and the church was consecrated in 1858 by the first Episcopal Bishop of Alabama.

It “served the planters of Perry, Hale, and Marengo counties of the Canebrake area and many baptisms of white families and slaves are recorded in the church annuals. After the War Between the States the number of parishioners steadily decreased because of removals, deaths, and a decline in the population of the community.”

“Around about 1950 the bishop of the diocese and suffragan bishop, in alternate years, began holding a service in St. Andrews’s Church on the fifth Sunday of a month late in the summer or early fall. These services are attended by people from far and near and, weather permitting,the congregation usually fills the church to capacity. As many more people, seated outside the building, hear the services through loudspakers. After worship is concluded, a picnic dinner is enjoyed under the shade of the trees in the church yard.”

“The dimensions of St. Andrew’s Church, Prairieville, are approximately as follows: overall length, 62 feet; the nave (west), 42 feet by 24-1/2 feet; the vestibult (at the southwest corner), 11 feet square, entered through
large double doors hung on massive iron hinges which were hand-wrought in a plantation forge; the chancel (east end), 20 feet by 15-1/2 feet; the vestry room, 6 feet by 9 feet, attached to the north side of the chancel beginning where it joins the nave.”

“A stain brewed from the stems of tobacco plants was applied to the interior wood walls. No change has been made in the tobacco stain finish and it remains in an excellent state of preservation and has a mellowed appearance. The symbols and figures on the altar rail and elsewhere in the chancel were hand carved.”

“The exterior of the church, painted a red-brown color, is made of long wide boards with battened joints fastened vertically to the framework, and buttresses made of thick wooden boards spaced at appropriate intervals; its lancet windows and high pitched roof are features of the Gothic style of architecture.”

“There is some evidence that the present Gothic entrance replaces a high tower which was removed because of damage caused by decay and woodpeckers.  With the exception of the removal of the tower and the construction of a chimney on the south side of the nave, the edifice stands exactly as it was when built.”

In this collage, bottom-middle pic, this is the monument for Mrs. Mourning Bocock — on November 1, 1886, she established a trust fund (that was increased with the bequest of a granddaughter of Captain Taloe) that the application states has kept the church building in repair and maintained even still.

The Washington Post just ran an article this week about how there is only one place of business in D.C. with the word ‘Dixie’ in the name.  It goes on to talk about a further shift South in ‘Southernness’ and thus, the ‘Sweet Tea Line’:

(I’m interspersing some pics I’ve taken of businesses with the name Dixie in this post.  Clicking on any of them will take you to their Flickr page.)

“The cultural Mason-Dixon line is just moving farther and farther south as more people from other parts of the country move in,” said H. Gibbs Knotts, a professor at Western Carolina University who, with a colleague, conducted a survey of Dixie-named businesses as a way to measure the shifting frontiers of the South. …”From what we’re finding, D.C. and Virginia are not appearing very Southern at all these days,” Knotts said of the survey, published last year.

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That’s about right, said Sharon Ash, a University of Pennsylvania linguist and co-author of the 2005 Atlas of North American English. A 1941 study placed the Washington area in the South for pronunciation purposes. But her atlas now draws that line about 45 miles north of Richmond, which was the capital of the Confederacy.

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“That whole area feels more metropolitan than it does Southern,” said Watson, who is based in another evolving corner of the South: Chapel Hill, N.C. “Down here, we make jokes about occupied Northern Virginia.”

To northbound Interstate 95 lovers of Southern food, Northern Virginia used to mark the “sweet tea line,” beyond which diners could no longer expect to find the hyper-sugared version of the South’s national beverage.

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In his own attempt to quantify the shifting sands of regional identity, Knotts and a colleague last year reproduced a 1970s study that looked at what names businesses choose for themselves (they excluded the widespread Winn-Dixie grocery stores so as not to skew the sample). The “Dixie” that once proudly figured on signs throughout the region has largely receded to a pocket of the old South in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

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But Greg Carr, who grew up in Nashville, sees Southern markers here. Carr, chairman of Afro-American Studies at Howard University, said he recognizes the fading signs of the Old South in this region.

“For black folks, this is still very much a Southern city,” Carr said. “D.C. has very little in common with a stereotypical Northern city.”

Carr cited the presence of an entrenched black elite in Washington as a characteristic of Southern cities, along the lines of Atlanta and Charlotte. Its still-living history of sharply segregated neighborhoods is another sign, as well as the paucity of white ethnic neighborhoods, such as Italian or Irish sections of Baltimore, New York and Boston.

“Even the architecture is more Southern,” Carr said. “You have no concrete canyons in Washington.”

Even as black residents from other states and countries move to Washington in greater numbers, the cultural feeling of African American communities remains Southern, he said.

“Anacostia, that’s the South over there,” Carr said. “Folks with their shirts off washing their cars, waving at you as you pass by. That’s Southern.”

And at least one major retailer still views Washington as a Southern market. Although Safeway has no stores in the deep South, the supermarket chain says its cluster of stores between Culpeper, Va., and Frederick, Md., posts the company’s biggest sales of such regional offerings as fried chicken, ham hocks and other “country meats,” collard greens and sweet potatoes, spokesman Greg TenEyck said.

Adrienne Carter, 66, is a big buyer of such ingredients. Along with her husband, Alvin, Carter owns the Hitching Post, a soul food restaurant on Upshur Street NW. To her, Washington remains Southern, but the feeling is fading.

Av, who was born and raised in Alabama but went to the University of Virginia for college (as did both his parents), is not going to like hearing that the school he loves, Mr. Jefferson’s school, isn’t really in a state that’s so Southern anymore.  But I think he was already realizing that.

One of the most interesting things about the article was the graphic content that the Washington Post put online. After doing their scoring, the researchers put states in three categories, “Southern to the Core”, “Pretty Darn Southern”, and “Sorta Southern”.

Southern to the Core: Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

Last weekend at Pie Lab, Shugie drank his tea out of a Mason jar.  Can’t get any more Southern than that!

A couple of weeks ago, we were in Gadsden (I do family cemetery visits several times a year) and I found in my WPA book a mention of the Turrentine / Argyle Circle / Haralson Avenue neighborhood.

It’s a wonderful section of town with such gorgeous homes.

The house top-right here is for sale.  Tour here.

One of the things I like best about this neighborhood is all the diversity of architectural styles:

The home top-left in this pic is for sale here.  The home bottom-left in this pic is for sale here.  That kitchen hurts, but otherwise, it seems very nice.  And would you ever in a million years look at that house and think $79,900?  Me either.

A couple of the homes on this street that are for sale even have elevators.

Earlier this month when we were in Georgia, we found these two buildings south of Carrollton (close, or in Roopville), each with great Coca-Cola signs:

The R.E. Ringer General Merchandise store:

(not too long ago, it looked like this)

Tin detail:

…and the W.E. Johnson Sweet Potato Curing & Storage building:

Congratulations a million times to my sweet friend Bethanne Hill on the *glowing* review she received in today’s B’ham News by the arts critic.

With this show, Bethanne Hill gracefully eludes labels such as folk artist, regionalist, primitive or naive painter. Her work has reached a maturity and focus that gives her mastery of her unique style of painting.  Every work, from the smallest rendering of a twig to large, complex paintings, serves its intent perfectly.

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There is a strong likelihood that Hill’s works will find homes in some of the better collections — locally, regionally, and quite possibly, nationally.  Charming and insightful, they have a singular and memorable quality that approaches a level of hypnotic power that provides the viewer with a great sense of comfort…

We have two paintings by Bethanne; one is this little bottle tree surrounded by cotton that she did for me (the other is a crazy-great possum):

Bethanne is on FB here.  Her current show is at Monty Stabler Gallery in Homewood AL (slideshow here) and her next festival showing is at the 2011 Magic City Art Connection.

Back in November, the NYT ran an article entitled “Pie to Cupcake: Time Up“.  

Pie had been lurking below the radar in recent years: taking cover during the ice cream trend, perhaps waiting to see which way the macaron tide would turn. (For proof that the cupcake craze has gone too far, consider the new turkey cranberry cupcake with gravy in the batter from Yummy Cupcakes in Los Angeles.)

Suddenly, New York and San Francisco are national centers of pie innovation. In Brooklyn, a pair of sisters from South Dakota are integrating sea salt and caramel into their apple pie and inventing aromatic fillings like cranberry-sage and pear-rosewater. In the East Village, at Momofuku Milk Bar, the pastry chef, Christina Tosi, has transferred the buttery, caramelized flavors of apple pie into a layer cake, with apple filling between the layers and crumbs of pie crust in the frosting.

(I just have to interject here: in Alabama we have Pie Lab.  Since 2009.)

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“We were the only game in town,” Emily said of the Calico Kitchen, which served breakfast, lunch and dinner. “But even a small town in the Midwest can get through a lot of pie.”

When the sisters opened their shop in a post-industrial corner of Brooklyn, the pair expected to make 10 pies a day to keep up with demand. Already, on each weekend day, they need 40.

Last weekend, the sisters also made extra pie for 200 people: a wedding pie, an increasingly common alternative to wedding cake. (Emily recommends “slab pies” for large gatherings: double a normal recipe, use the crust to line a sheet pan with sides, and cover the filling with more crust or a crumble top.)

I admit, too, I’m a little over the cupcakes.  Not that they aren’t fantastic, but they’re overexposed now.  Plus, that Spencer Shoults Cupcakes! exhibit at Space One Eleven where they were artfully rotting…:

It’s time to get back to pie.

Earlier this month, NPR ran a segment called Cupcakes Are Dead.  Long Live the Pie! which was actually more about food trends for 2011 than anything else, but still:

Every year, I predict the death of the cupcake. I’m always wrong.

But this year, they’ll have real competition from the humble pie. Trend-spotters are calling pie the food of the year. Texas and New York restaurants offer pie happy hours. Pies are showing up at weddings, and pie shops are opening in a neighborhood near you. Pies come in sweet and savory, maxi and mini, deep dish and deep-fried.

Pies *really are* showing up at weddings.  Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and ten thousand other places.  Av is still kicking himself for not thinking of the Krispy-Kreme groom’s cake trend when we got married, I’m sure.

One new-ish thing I’m ready to embrace: mini king cakes.  People have been making them at home for a while (the cheat is to put icing/sugar on a cinnamon bun) but this year  Cochon is making them, and *Hubig’s* is doing it too – reformulating the one that came out last week so the icing stays on better.  Ready for that.

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Hurts that Zapp’s sold last week to Utz.  Or Utz’s.  Or whoever they are.  Make sure to leave those Cajun Crawtators the same!

A couple of years ago, the Lyric Theatre in downtown B’ham had an open house and I was able to take some pictures (with the low light, it was hard to get any great images):

Wendy Jarvis, who was the owner, and then artistic director of Bare Hands Gallery once it went 501(c)(3), emailed to let me know that Dia de Los Muertos will continue even though the gallery closed in December.  She said that Bare Hands is narrowing its mission to the DDLM festival/holiday and will become “Day of the Dead Alabama”.  It will continue to be held on November 2nd in the parking lot and section of 1st Ave S between Arlington Blvd and 22nd Street in B’ham.

Some pics I took at previous DDLMs:

Everything that was inside the gallery as part of each year’s DDLM will be incorporated into the outdoor site.

Wonderful!

Sunday’s NYT Style Section featured an article entitled Outsider Art Finds Its Place in Fashion.

Turns out, the Missoni family toured the Museum of Everything in London, a compilation of Peter Blake’s findings from all over the world, and its inspired their latest collection.

If Peter Blake’s name sounds familiar, he’s the artist who, among countless other things, created the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album cover.

Here are pieces from the article:

“I said ‘no’ to every other fashion brand, as well as magazines,” Mr. Brett said. “I was afraid they would turn the museum into a film set and the art into a bunch of props. But this was different, with every member of the family modeling, from 19 to 80. It all made sense and has been more like an artistic collaboration than a traditional campaign.”

The Museum of Everything’s exhibition of artifacts from historic fun fairs, old amusement arcades and folk art using taxidermy to create surreal scenes of human domestic life is the backdrop of Missoni’s latest fashion campaign — with their extended family and friends modeling the spring collection from the Italian house.

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For all the energy of photographer Juergen Teller’s images, it is the face off between the family and the weird and wondrous art that creates the artistic tension. There are fairground games, line ups of meticulously painted (if now politically incorrect) Punch and Judy puppets, model railways or seaside boxes smothered in shells. Then there is the fascinating, but creepy, woodland dioramas from the Victorian Walter Potter, who used stuffed squirrels, mice and birds playing cards or cricket or holding tea parties, in scenes created in glass cases.

“It’s amazing isn’t it? When you see something separately it becomes extraordinary,” is one of Peter Blake’s comments written beside the objects.

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Outsider art was the starting point for Mr. Brett’s collection of work, which he describes at being “made by mediums and mystics or people with disabilities” and from environments “in the middle of nowhere.”

“I’d been looking at lots of Southern folk art from the United States — odds and ends found in nooks and crannies across the deep south — strange and brilliant, immediate and unpretentious,” Mr. Brett said.

“The best work seemed to be made by farmers and preachers and laborers — blue-collar folk,” he adds. “I guess what attracted me was the purity and directness. There was a connection to other homespun American art forms like jazz — not quite naïve, but vernacular — made by people without formal training and made for its own sake rather than for sale or career.”

*Love* that last part.  Love-love.

Not sure I see exactly how “Outsider Art Finds Its Place In Fashion” as the NYT put it, meaning when I look at the Missoni collection how it relates back to the inspiration, but it’s fantastic that the museum and this genre (and Peter Blake’s mention of Southern vernacular art) are getting recognition this way.  Yes.