Twenty-plus years of documenting the South's vernacular art, visionary environments and traditions….plus modern art exhibits, Faulkner and Eudora, and This Week's Various. Welcome.
As usual, we made tons of pies this year. Some for our family’s Thanksgiving supper, a couple go with us to Cullman for Thanksgiving lunch, and the rest go to a church that feeds the hungry on Thanksgiving (at the grocery store, it was the pie version of Bubba in Forrest Gump when they asked what kinds of pies I was making: pumpkin, egg custard, pecan, chocolate pecan, buttermilk coconut, chocolate meringue…).
What things looked like in 2005 — that may have been the first year I went all-out at Thanksgiving. I used to deliver 7-10 pies to that church every weekend too. I…I have a love for pie. How can you be anything but happy with a slice of pie? And even happier sharing the pie love. There are some apple pies in the mix here:
In 2011, I see some coconut meringue pies, chess pies, and hot fudge pies too Oh! See that big coffee urn on the marble table, there by the window? That has a plaque on it with the company’s name of my husband’s family’s old restaurant supply business, so it’s like this great reminder. We found it in an antique store where they were thinking about turning it into a lamp. Whew. You know how some families have a samovar that’s been handed down for generations? We have a giant commercial coffee urn:
In 2012, some Pawley’s Island pies were included — these are the favorite of my and Av’s BB/BS little brother, so we call that recipe ‘Danny Pie’ here at home:
This year’s pies — thirty-three! I think that’s a new record for us.
And we had the great good fortune of having Thanksgiving fall during Chanukah, so the boys helped me make some shapes with pie crust and we made a dreidel pumpkin pie for our family:
…and some others! Happy Thanksgivukkah!
— Hope your Thanksgiving is meaningful and delicious. xoxo!
“Life in the Mississippi Cotton Belt” is the Section work in the Hazlehurst, Mississippi post office — the artist was Auriel Bessemer, paid $700 for this oil on canvas work. It was completed in 1939.
Auriel Bessemer was a Columbia University grad from Grand Rapids, Michigan and was hired for two other works in post offices, one in Arlington, Virginia, and another in Winnsboro, South Carolina. Bessemer also completed murals for the American Museum of Natural History in NYC.
From the National Register application: Bessemer’s Hazlehurst mural is representative of the type of art work generated by the Treasury Department’s Section of the Fine Arts in the 1930s and early 1940s. It depicts in a realistic style “the American scene” as it would have been understood in Hazlehurst, a rural Mississippi community with a diversified economy. “Life in the Mississippi Cotton Belt” symbolizes the New Deal’s attempt to educate and inspire Americans…
further, in the application: The Hazlehurst Post Office and mural illustrate how the Federal government through Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s leadership transformed its role from one of “neutral arbiter to social welfare activist”, a role the government has retained down to today. Hazlehurst, along with the rest of rural Mississippi, suffered greatly during the Great Depression. The construction of Hazlehurst’s post office and the painting of its mural demonstrate how the Federal government sought to alleviate the economic hardships of an American community through work relief while also attempting to hearten and encourage that community through public beautification (Craig 1979: 343)
— The Crystal Springs post office has this 1943 oil on canvas by Henry La Cagnina, trained at Cooper Union, who also was paid $700 for the work. It is entitled ‘Harvest’. In 1992, the artist was contacted by phone prior to the the National Registry application, and stated that a restoration on the work was detrimental in that the work lost its ‘pearly gray tonality’. While many artists who worked for the Treasury in doing these ‘Section’ works lived in some other area of the country, La Cagnina was once in Florida and moved to Hattiesburg where he exhibited his work.
From the application: …Although local tradition holds that the farm workers depicted in the mural were residents of Crystal Springs, La Cagnina states that the people in the mural sprang from his imagination. Nevertheless, the mural was quite appropriate for a community which had once been known as the “Tomato Capital of the World”.
…”Harvest” is representative of the type of art work generated by the Treasury Department’s Section of the Fine Arts in the 1930s and early 1940s. The oil-paint-on-canvas mural depicts in a realistic style “the American scene” as it would have been understood by a community such as Crystal Springs whose livelihood depended on truck farming. Its appeal and significance to Crystal Springs is apparent due to the tradition among locals that Mr. La Cagnina made sketches of workers on the nearby experiment station grounds in preparation for the mural and that local people are portrayed in the painting. A mural disliked and unappreciated by its community could hardly have generated such a persistent rumor. Also, the restoration of the mural, though deemed inappropriate by the artist, is an indication of Crystal Springs’ continuing commitment to the La Cagnina work…
Inside the post office, Av ran into someone who took interest in him photographing the mural. She told him about how they used to wrap each tomato individually (which is why at first glace, it looks as though the workers are packing giant plums). She also said that the artist’s son brought him in to the post office one day to visit the mural and how upset he was at the restoration. Av mentioned that they must have one of the less controversial murals (there’s been discord at other post offices, one instance in Columbus and another in Texas, for example) and she didn’t see why anyone would have any problem with any mural depicting the cotton crop, that she picked cotton herself when she was young, and there’s no shame in that, no matter who you are.
— Both Crystal Springs and Hazlehurst have Robert Johnson museums (he was born on the outskirts of Hazlehurst and stayed there again when he learned and played with Ike Zinnerman, and Robert’s son Claude Johnson’s foundation runs the museum in Crystal Springs).
In 2007, the Commercial Appeal in Memphis wrote about this gorgeous ca. 1857 ‘Columbus Eclectic’ (because it has Italianate, Gothic, and Greek Revival elements) 8000 sq ft home that’s now furnished with many John Henry Belter pieces:
As a founder and co-owner of Crye-Leike Realtors, Dick Leike is used to seeing “For Sale” signs in yards. But there was no sign in the front yard of White Arches, a majestic 1857 home in Columbus, Miss., when Dick and his wife, Jo Anne, first saw it five years ago. “People in this town love these homes so much when they do put them up for sale they don’t put signs in the yard,” Jo Anne said. “If they really like you, they might sell you their house.”
— This NYT article from 1998 goes into the state of the house at that time, and goes on to mention Mallard beds (we should all sleep in a Mallard bed at least once, right?). For a time, it was a BandB with five rooms.
— Another historic Columbus home, the 1837 Temple Heights, is on the market right now at $782k. It is *gorgeous* and has a punkah (if you like those too, take a look at the punkah George Washington had in his study at Mt Vernon — he could operate it himself, with pedals) which some people simply call a ‘shoofly fan’ and an electric version, not particularly 1830s-ish, can be purchased here.
— And the large, unrestored LeBeau Plantation home in St. Bernard Parish was set ablaze this month, and is a total loss. It was once the largest plantation south of New Orleans. It now looks as though this arson was the work of several ‘thrill-seekers’. //player.vimeo.com/video/19149964
Market Noel in Birmingham is a few notches above the general holiday exhibitor show, and after hearing that my friends Kristin and Sulynn were going to be there, with Black Belt Treasures (BBT is the shop in Camden, Alabama that carries and promotes the work of artisans in the Black Belt, and one of my very favorite places in the whole state to shop, so having them here in Birmingham was not to be missed (plus I just love those girls)).
Well, there weren’t any big surprises about what would be on display from the other exhibitors — there was a chevron and monograms, and monograms on chevron. There were cheese straws and glittered banners and vintage jewelry pieces, and clothes, clothes, clothes. But it was so nice to walk over to BBT and have these terrific unique, handmade artisan pices.
Two of the best booths were/are (the market goes through Saturday) Black Belt Treasures (of course) where they have Gee’s Bend quilting — lots of potholders which, trust me, make great holiday presents — and Charlie Lucas art, and baskets, paintings, rustic pieces, and pottery.
Next, Favor Candles, which was started by sisters Marie and Susan, and *ohmystars* the scents of these. I asked why the name ‘Favor Candles’ and got this very hopeful, heartwarming reason, which is also in part on here: ‘…found themselves praying for favor for each other, friends, family, careers, in sickness, in health, and much more.’ Here, not only are the candles for sale but also the rustic fixtures which are made by another family member:
Some candles feature quotations from the Bible, and others from philosophers great and small. I came home with one scented as sandalwood gardenia. Other choices include red currant orange, citrus tarragon, brown sugar fig…
— From March 7 – August 15, 2014, the Misissippi Museum of Art will show ‘This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement’:
Four years in the making, This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement is a paradigm-shifting exhibition that presents the Civil Rights Movement through the work and voices of nine activist photographers—men and women who chose to document the national struggle against segregation and other forms of race-based disenfranchisement from within the movement. The core of the exhibition is a selection of 157 black-and-white photographs, representing the work of photographers Bob Adelman, George Ballis, Bob Fitch, Bob Fletcher, Matt Herron, David Prince, Herbert Randall, Maria Varela, and Tamio Wakayama.
Suddenly wondering how irritated Nelle Harper Lee’s lawyers get, and at what, these days. There’s a ‘Boo Radley’s Deli‘ at the mall in Decatur, Alabama and another ‘Boo Radley’s’ sandwich shop in Muscle Shoals, and Radley’s Fountain Grille right in Monroeville (unsure if these have permission to use the name). From a bar in Toronto to a bakery in Salt Lake, there are a few iterations of Boo (Boo = obviously taken as a multi-talented character) once or still in business.
Law360 from Lexis-Nexus reports that the Monroe County Heritage Museum, which Lee’s lawyers are suing on her behalf — Miss Nelle is not well and one wonders what and why this is all suddenly about — has asked a federal judge to dismiss the case: …said Lee’s claims were barred by the doctrine of laches because she “slumbered” on her right to sue for at least 18 years after the museum began operating in 1992. …Lee, who just wrapped up a separate lawsuit against her agent over royalties from the book, sued the museum last month, claiming it wrongfully uses her name and the title of the famed novel to advertise the museum, to sell souvenirs, and for the URL http://www.tokillamockingbird.com. In addition to merely waiting too long to bring those claims, the museum said Wednesday that Lee had visited the site on several occasions and had twice contacted the museum to object to certain products — meaning she was well-aware of the operation. “The defendant and the plaintiff have had a friendly relationship in the past,” the suit said… The museum also listed various other reasons for tossing the suit, like fair-use defense and the fact that Lee has no federal trademark registration for the name.
And *another* Heidelberg Project house (the record house this time) in Detroit fell to arson this week: “No, we won’t give up or give in,” Whitfield said. “We will continue to positively impact our community through art. When I stop and reflect on what 2013 has brought with these series of fires, I am convinced that we are on to something very powerful. If this were not the case, negativity would not rear its ugly head. However, we were not stopped by bulldozers and we will not be stopped by acts of arson. Instead we WILL become smarter, stronger and even greater… We cannot do this alone and are reaching out to our supporters in Detroit and around the world to help us secure and strengthen the Heidelberg Project, a legacy in the making for sure.”
— (above: still life at old Greenbrier, with the ever-present white sauce)
Eatocracy at CNN ran ‘5 Southern Dishes that Deserve a Comeback‘ — and while for many of us ambrosia, fried bologna, bread and butter anything, and benedictine never went out in the first place — the inclusion of ‘Alabama White Sauce’ as #5 is bewildering. When did the author think white chicken sauce was on the wane, and why is he not aware of its steady gain in popularity? Someone somewhere please do your doctoral thesis on the history and rise of the use of what many of us from north/central Alabama simply call ‘chicken sauce’ and why hushpuppies everywhere, especially those from old Greenbrier — were meant to take a little swim in it. And to make matters worse, to not even mention Big Bob Gibson’s (Big Bob developed white sauce in the first place) in that paragraph is a shanda.
Business Insider did a little feature on the best sandwiches in America, and Alabama’s was the chicken sandwich with white sauce. Mississippi = pig ear, Georgia = fried chicken sandwich, Louisiana = poboy, naturally. People in Idaho eat potato salad sandwiches with toasted bread.
Update: the Eric Etheridge book on the Freedom Riders has been published, and is available here at Issuu and at Amazon to purchase. Thank you, Tom!
—
The Thoughtbook of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Secret Boyhood Diary is out now. Anne Margaret Daniel writes for the HuffPo on ‘F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Sayre, and Montgomery, Alabama in 2013‘ and the 12th International F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference: …close to 200 Fitzgerald scholars, admirers, students, readers, and teachers from all over the world – though readers, and admirers, serves to define us all. There were papers and panels on all Fitzgerald’s major novels, his short stories, Zelda’s art and ballet, Montgomery during World War I, Baz Luhrmann’s new movie of The Great Gatsby (2013), and more. Lee Smith, author of a luminous new novel set at the Highlands Hospital near Asheville, N.C., where Zelda was institutionalized and died in 1948, and featuring Zelda as a character, read from that novel, Guests on Earth. Writer and music critic Will Friedwald, organizer of Tales of the Jazz Age: An F. Scott Fitzgerald Songbook, and Scott Donaldson, author of literary biographies including Fool For Love: F. Scott Fitzgerald, spoke at the conference. The new number of the Fitzgerald Review was published as proceedings began. The Fitzgerald Society, sponsors of the Review and of the Fitzgerald conferences, has convened biennially over the past three decades in sites significant to the Fitzgeralds: Baltimore, Nice, Princeton, and now Zelda’s hometown, where the young couple first met in the summer of 1918.
And at Penn State (from their press release): “The Art and Illustrations of Zelda Fitzgerald” runs Nov. 14 through Dec. 15 at the gallery located on the third floor of Pennsylvania College of Technology’s Madigan Library. The works are on loan from Fitzgerald’s granddaughter, Cecilia Ross, of Kennett Square, who will attend the opening reception, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 14.
The collection is not a touring exhibition, but on loan exclusively to The Gallery at Penn College.
— Rural Studio is really doing really well getting to their goal of raising enough money to build eight of their $20k houses. The deadline for fundraising is December 6 (give here) and here’s the progress.
— Does a 40-foot Godzilla-like creature need to be constructed here in the South and appropriately covered in kudzu? Well yes and surely there already is somewhere, but there’s a campaign started by someone in California to do, at Kickstarter:
— A documentary, ‘America’s Amazon: The Mobile-Tensaw Delta’ has premiered and will be at upcoming film festivals: //player.vimeo.com/video/50318885
Sorry to hear Fork and Pie in Chattanooga is closing — what a great place! Sounds like they’re going to keep catering out of the space though.
— Eric Etheridge (UPDATE: published, avail here — thank you, Tom!) a book to publish the portraits of 328 Freedom Riders from 1961, along with their photos now. They *all* agreed to help him. From the Montgomery Advertiser (linked to USA Today):
Etheridge’s photographic project was aided, in part, by the decision of the racist Mississippi Sovereignty Commission to collect and gather the mug shots of the jailed Freedom Riders.
“When members of the Sovereignty Commission got the mug shots, they didn’t realize what they were doing by saving this great record of the Mississippi phase of the Freedom Rides,” Etheridge said.
— Nashville Scene on Duke’s: But back to the mayonnaise: Hellmann’s, created in New York City, is closer in taste and texture to the mayos of Germany and the Netherlands, so it stands to reason that would be what’s favored in the North and Midwest, where those populations migrated from the old country. Duke’s is more like French or Spanish mayonnaises. In other words, it’s more like the original mayonnaise, which is credited to a French-occupied (at the time) Spanish city, Mahon. Again, this makes logical sense due to the French and Spanish influence in Southern cuisine.
Things have been so busy the last few weeks that I’m going to do a series of ‘This Week’s Various,’ one each day this week. Monday:
The Washington Post on the cult of Duke’s mayonnaise (I admit, while I have campaigned for them to switch to cage-free eggs a la Hellmann’s to no avail, I remain a faithful Duke’s cult member): There was the man on his hospital death bed who asked for a tomato sandwich made with Duke’s. There was the mother of the bride who, after the company made its switch from glass to plastic containers around 2005, demanded four glass jars with labels intact to use as centerpieces at her daughter’s wedding. And there was the elderly woman from North Carolina. She wrote in hopes of obtaining just three glass jars, saying she’d like to be cremated and have her ashes placed in the containers for her three daughters. Hatcher assured me that she followed through on that request.
— For any of us who have literally run out of their shoes (me, twice, from accidentally stepping in fire ant beds) and anyone else who’s ever wondered what the architecture of an ant hill might be underneath, it turns out to be ten thousand times more interesting, and would make a great piece of sculpture if you could ever square your use of lavalike molten aluminum to obliterate ten zillion ant beings with your taste in art:
— 86-year-old Georgia artist Carter Wellborn, brother in law of the late artist Annie Wellborn, passed away last month. From the Athens Banner-Herald: “He didn’t want a funeral service. That was his request,” Hanson said. “He wanted us to put him next to his momma.” Wellborn, who lived for many years in Oconee County, moved to the Statham area about a decade ago. Relatively unknown as an artist in the area, few people knew the wide market that existed for Wellborn’s work. …“A lot of people don’t realize Carter is in some really significant art brut and folk art collections,” …I probably shipped them to almost every state and I guess about 15 countries, but most of them went to Germany and France to serious art brut collectors,” Lowery said. …“He said, ‘Carter Wellborn is the only contemporary artist in my collection. I collect Australia aboriginal art, primitive art that is hundreds or thousands of years old. If you were sitting where I’m sitting, you would see that the way Mr. Wellborn draws his cows is almost indistinguishable from the way an Australian aboriginal drew a four-legged animal,’” Lowery recalled. — From the LA Times: ‘Tennessee Williams Receives a Production Worthy of Him‘ for the Broadway revival of ‘The Glass Menagerie’ and other critics are just *loving it*.
— ‘The Artist’s Eye’ — works that were gifted to Fisk in Nashville by Georgia O’Keeffe and stated in a will that they would never be sold, etc and were anyway (see Barnes Foundation, now in Philadelphia (!) for more in that vein)…will appear at Crystal Bridges beginning this weekend.
— (above, from the festival in 2008 — we saw the Col. Sanders lookalike contest)
The Alabama Chicken and Egg Festival in Moulton is no more.
— W Magazine on William Eggleston at his new ‘At Zenith’ gallery show in NYC: Eggleston made a brief show of protest—his eyes are not so great, and he did not have his reading glasses on hand—but soon he picked up the book. He cleared his throat, and began: “‘Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths/Enwrought with golden and silver light …’” As he continued on, Eggleston’s previously matter-of-fact voice took on a roguish warmth, as if he were regaling an entire Memphis bar with a story he knew was bound to kill.
“‘… I have spread my dreams under your feet/Tread softly because you tread on my dreams,’” he finished, his eyes crinkling, and the room broke into applause.
— The new Discovery Park of America museum in Union City, Tennessee is something of its own brand of Smithsonian, and expects 150k visitors/year: The centerpiece of Discovery Park is Discovery Center, a 100,000-square-foot building showcasing ten exhibit galleries: Children’s Exploration, Energy, Enlightenment, Military, Native Americans, Natural History, Regional History, Science/Space/Technology, and Transportation. In addition, a Special Exhibit Gallery features traveling exhibits.
Discovery Center’s multi-story atriums are filled with exhibits that invite visitors to open their minds to a greater understanding and appreciation of our world…past, present and future. Highlights include:
– A theater simulation of the 1811-12 earthquakes that shaped the land in this region as well as a planetary tour in the starship theater.
– A 20,000-gallon aquarium revealing the underwater life of Reelfoot Lake.
– A 60-foot replica of a human body with a 30-foot slide.
– Dinosaurs, fossils, Native American artifacts, military equipment, vintage automobiles, and dozens more hands-on experiences for children.
— (above: peanut soup we had at ‘Southern Kitchen Restaurant’ in New Market, Virginia)
Hugh Acheson in the National Post: “The truth of Southern food is that what started as Southern food was actually brought here by slaves. They weren’t from here, either.” Annnnnnd discuss. It’s not that easy. Southern food — which we can spend an eternity trying to define — was brought/developed here, started not with one point, not with one people (which is what makes it so strong). We are the diaspora of so many communities. It would be shortsighted to imagine that the South was a blank slate, that no one people were either already here without, or came here lacking foodways from their point of origin, whether it be the Germans, the Alsatians, the Africans of all nations, the French, the Italians, Greeks, the eastern Europeans, our brothers and sisters of every land who toiled as itinerant workers.
Bless the community cookbook. Bless dinner on the ground, and the black-sooted barbecue pit. Bless the roadside stand overflowing with tomato, crookneck squash, muscadine, peas (oh the peas!), watermelon, the jars of chow-chow, quarts of Brunswick stew, the fresh fried peach pie nestled in parchment. Bless Buford Highway and the shrimp truck man.
It started with us all, not just your people and not mine, or my people and not yours, his people and not hers. It is and was and always will be — L-rd willing — us all. Now *that’s* what Southern food is.
Sincerely, the girl who loves to eat boudin, Delta hot tamales, fried green tomatoes, curry-laden Country Captain chicken, stuffed mirlitons, crackers in buttermilk (love you PawPaw z”l!), and matzah balls simmered in potlikker.
— From the Red and Black: Weaver D’s in Athens is closing (really, this time). From the Red and Black: Weaver D’s Fine Foods became a famous Athens landmark when R.E.M used its slogan “Automatic for the People” as an album title — but now the landmark is closing its doors for good in the coming weeks. A staple of the Classic City since 1986, the restaurant, located on East Broad Street, has recently hit tough times, according to owner Dexter Weaver. “It’s part financial, part being tired, part the economy,” Weaver said. “We’ve been here so long that we’ve gotten tired. And business is not what it used to be.”
A half century ago, this stretch of Georgia Avenue housed French’s Ice Cream, Austin’s Grocery, and a dozen mom-and-pop stores. Now there are just two operating concerns: Joe’s Laundry and Cleaners—whose owners triple-barricade themselves behind steel doors, metal grates, and burglar bars—and Fuwah Chinese Restaurant, cash only, where you walk up to a glass-shielded counter, place an order, and wait until the server slides a Styrofoam container of house lo mein through a narrow slot like it’s a sheaf of lottery tickets or a fifth of Evan Williams. It’s said the Braves generate a $100 million economic impact on metro Atlanta. But it doesn’t take an economist to conclude that little of the team’s monetary power is felt in the neighborhoods around the ballpark. The story of Turner Field and its neighbors is one of stunted vision, cynical opportunism, halfhearted reform efforts, and misguided renewal schemes. Millions of dollars have been squandered and hundreds of acres left vacant. Around here, thousands of people live below the poverty line while just a handful—some legally, some not—cash in, because it’s more lucrative to park cars on an empty lot eighty-one days a year than to clean up that lot, open a business, and operate it year-round. — Crazy-happy about this: Nashville is building a two-block park named after William Edmondson! From The Tennessean:
The park next to John Henry Hale homes and the Youth Opportunity Center will be named for Nashville native William Edmondson, the first African-American artist to have a solo show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
When Edmondson Park opens in the spring, it will include a quarter-mile walking trail, two sculptures and limestone column fragments from the Tennessee State Capitol in a gathering area.
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