As always, all images unless otherwise noted copyright Deep Fried Kudzu. Like to use one elsewhere? Kindly contact me here.
Affiliate links are sometimes used. That means that if you purchase something via one of the links, it costs you nothing extra, but may generate a commission, offsetting the cost of DFK… e.g. as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Also: remember that Bookshop is fab because they’re giving orders to indie booksellers. Grateful for your support. xoxo!
Amelia Biewald’s Perfect From Now On, from a visit to the Bentonville AR 21C in 2014.
Nonprofit Artadia is teaming up with 21c Museum Hotels for a $10k grant in those cities the hotels reside; they’re calling these the 21c Artadia Awards, and the prize includes lifelong access to the Artadia Network so that the artists may continue to make connections. From The Observer:
Additionally, the cities where the grants will be offered are thankfully not the standard coastal city favorites that the art world has come to expect. The inaugural grant will be offered to an artist in Louisville, Kentucky, and further awards are set to be offered in Kansas City, MO, Durham, NC and Nashville, TN.
High School Football Game, 2020
Not sure where to even start with this, but the NYT runs a piece on the Valdosta football team this week that includes lots of southern high school football drama in which Bear Bryant and Nick Saban’s names are taken in vain, Rush Propst (who went eastward after reality-tv & coaching at Hoover) espouses how-this-all-really-happens conspiracy theories, and one paragraph goes like this:
That would be Michael Nelson, the recently deposed (meaning both fired and placed under oath) executive director of Valdosta High’s Touchdown Club. Nelson boasts that he is one of the fiercest Wildcats fans in town history and calls himself a “one-armed white Jihadist.” He lost his right arm at 13 and since then has used his other hand to sign his name as “Nub.”
Greenville MS’s Hebrew Union Temple’s sign for their annual corned beef deli luncheon in the window at McCormick’s Book Inn, from a visit in 2006.
Tallahassee has a new indie bookshop — Midtown Reader. Publisher’s Weekly on part of the inspiration:
Bradshaw, a lifelong reader, grew up in Greenville, Miss., a community that celebrated books. There, McCormick’s Book Inn was a draw for local writers and political figures like Ellen Douglas, Shelby Foote, Walker Percy, and former assistant secretary of state Hodding Carter III. Though Bradshaw ended up in politics, she always harbored the dream of stepping away and opening a bookstore.
haha, not Eggleston, but Ginger, from a 2006 visit to Graceland.
Lot 67 from a Phillips auction earlier this month was William Eggleston’s Graceland, a set of 11 dye transfer prints, approx 14-3/4 x 22″, in a gilt-titled linen clamshell box. They were signed in ink and numbered with date and edition stamps on the verso. These, #10 from an edition of 31 plus four artist proofs, sold at a respectable $226800, as the estimate was $180k-280.
From the piece the Telegraph ran:
Eggleston was given access to every part of the 23-room mansion except Elvis’s bedroom. “Nobody’s allowed there,” said Eggleston, “even the people who run the place. It’s bolted, locked, the stairwell’s walled off. It’s exactly as if someone had left the day before.”
The review of Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts at Slant calls it a “beautiful film with a sense of swing and soul”
The official trailer:
strawberry pretzel salad
The new Jeni’s ice cream flavor with Dolly Parton, Strawberry Pretzel Pie (the sales of which is benefitting Imagination Library), is described on IG as “a throwback to the triple-decker classic of the potlucks of our youths. Layers of salty pretzel gravel, subtly sweet and effortlessly sweet-tart cream cheese ice cream, and lipstick red strawberry sauce.” — to me that sounds not like a pie but like strawberry pretzel salad. Do they mean strawberry pretzel salad and just thought pie sounded better?
Garden & Gun with Walter Anderson’s Murals Sing Out: Across time—and art forms—Mississippi roots musician Luther Dickinson brings the artist’s famed Ocean Springs murals to life
His Seven Climates of Ocean Springs captures the natural identity of the region in an exposition of harmony between nature and art, linking celestial bodies to the seasons. Venus, a focal point, is an illustration of duality in which two eagles interlock at the center of a radiant swirl of energy that draws in fish and birds from sea and sky. “At one point he summarized everything he was doing throughout his artistic career in one sentence,” John Anderson says: “‘In order to realize the beauty of man, we must realize his relation to nature.’
front yard azaleas, 2007
At Garden & Gun, The Last of the Southern Girls, on Barbara Howar. Her daughter recollects:
“In ninth grade I was out smoking dope with my friends,” Bader recalled. “When I came back in, there was Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Nora Ephron, and Mom. They were all pretty deep in their Scotch. I told them I had to go to my room to write a basic composition for class. Well, they all got into a big competition and they wrote my homework for me, a group effort. All these great writers. I handed it in—and got it back from the teacher with a C minus.”
Safdie Architects, who designed Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art 10+ years ago, has released their plans for an expansion that will double the museum’s size.
The High Museum, from a visit in 2015.
The High Museum of Art is being gifted by collectors Harvie and Charles “Chuck” Abney 47 works of Southern self-taught artists, including Lonnie Holley, Howard Finster, Ronald Lockett, Minnie Evans, and Nellie Mae Rowe.
Old Monroe County Courthouse, Alabama, 2006.
The American Library Association’s newest list of 10 Most Challenged Books has just come out and, yes, To Kill A Mockingbird is there.
The Cabildo, 2019
Clementine’s Imitators: the FBI’s Investigation of Clementine Hunter Forgeries will take place over Zoom 4/22
In conjunction with the current exhibition, “Marking Pictures”: the Life and Work of Clementine Hunter, author and scholar Tom Whitehead, FBI Special Agent Randolph Deaton, and museum historian Joyce Miller will discuss the life and legacy of artist Clementine Hunter and share the riveting story of how they identified William Toye, one of Hunter’s most prolific forgers, and eventually brought him to justice. The exhibition, now on display at the Cabildo, includes an example of these forgeries along with more than fifty of Hunter’s artworks.
The Cabildo will keep the exhibit up into 2022.
Super random.
“Thank You for Coming”: A Remembrance of the Gratitude and Gorgeousness of Public Readings by Matthew Daddona at McSweney’s: Thanking an audience member for attending a Zoom is not the same as thanking them in the same physical place. For the latter, people took care and time to get there. They fought through crowded subways or postponed dinner plans or braved inclement weather, or, maybe hired a babysitter so they could have an extra drink and prolong their freedom from familial obligations.
This writer for Golf Australia wrote an entire column about how he didn’t like the pimento sandwiches at The Masters. The WSJ mentioned that The Must-Have Fashion Item at the Masters Isn’t a Green Jacket and yes it’s the pimento cheese t-shirt
Bless James Jeffcoat for opening a grocery store — the only one — in Quitman County, Mississippi
Flipping through the pics of the 2021 Kips Bay Decorator Show House Palm Beach
Thorncrown Chapel in Arkansas
The TVA has signed a long-term power purchase agreement (pending environmental reviews) for a solar facility close to the Jack Daniels Distillery, supplying them with 20 megawatts of solar energy
DW on a seven-volume set on African architecture: Sub-Saharan Africa: Architectural Guide by Philipp Meuser (Editor), Adil Dalbai (Editor) (here at Bookshop // at Amazon). For now clicking through here
Duke’s Mayonnaise sent out a press release on their new flavors, including ‘hint of lime’ mayonnaise, habanero garlic, fire roasted red pepper, cucumber dill, bacon & tomato — and three potato salad dressings: creamy, Southern style, and spicy
RR is embracing sitting on a tailgate
Maybe we’re back to embracing rooms instead of open plan, houses-as-giant-studios
There’s a Funko Moon Pie
A bill to make Dolly Parton’s singing of ‘Amazing Grace’ the State Hymn has passed the Tennessee House
The Hemingway documentary on PBS by Ken Burns — the tl:dr or tl:dw, actually, is something like this: he hit his head, new woman, hit his head again, new woman, hit his head again, new woman, and on & on. But his mother had beautiful handwriting
Partners for Sacred Places has announced the 2021 folk art grant recipients of The Nordic Churches Project. Gorgeous
Read this week: Wabi-Sabi Welcome (at Bookshop // at Amazon), New Americana (Bookshop // Amazon), Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (Bookshop // Amazon), Red Black White: The Alabama Communist Party 1930-1950 (Bookshop / Amazon), Welcome to Buttermilk Kitchen cookbook (Bookshop // Amazon)
What I’m cooking next week: Black Pepper Beef and Celery Stir Fry // chicken & dumplins // meatballs // chicken lasagna florentine // maybe a carrot cake
Oxford Treehouse has these great linocuts, and laser-printed wood pieces by Laurin Stennis of Welty and Faulkner quotes. “In writing, you must kill all your darlings”
Tracie Noles-Ross has an exhibit going on now (uncertain about what the last day is) at the Gadsden Museum of Art, From the Brambly Thicket
mint julep, 2017.
Kentucky Derby 147 At-Home Menu and Cooking Classes has been released, and the recipes include deviled eggs with country ham, burgoo, pulled pork sliders with peach & vidalia onion chutney. Also, Woodford Reserve has a recipe for Kentucky butter cake.
Turnrow Books, 2016.
Sweet Lee Harper was photographed with her miniature of Po Monkey’s for the latest Turnrow Books newsletter; her book, Tiny Oxford vol 1, is now available here at Turnrow, signed
The new Tennessee Library and Archives building has opened on Bicentennial Mall, there by the Capitol. From The Tennessean:
There, a reading room offers seating for 100 people, along with tens of thousands of books and genealogies for browsing and a microfilm area featuring newspapers from around the state dating back to 1791 and county court records. The library has nearly every book written about Tennessee and its counties.
But the volumes housed on the shelf of the reading room are just the beginning. Another 350,000 titles — which could include more than one book each — are stored in a massive robotic retrieval system that has space for 150,000 more. Another 38,000 boxes of documents are also kept there.
The trailer for the new Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation film is out. It’s in theaters June 18.
Immordino Vreeland tells T&C: “I love the idea of being able to listen in on an intimate encounter between two sharp and creative minds operating at the height of their powers, and this is the very experience I created.”
Delano Park, Decatur AL, 2018.
WSM on-air sign, 2013.
The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville has opened two new, free online exhibitions, made exclusively for their website: Suiting the Sound: The Rodeo Tailors Who Made Country Stars Shine Brighter and Dylan, Cash and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City.
The documentary “Far East Deep South” premieres on “America ReFramed” on the PBS/World Channel on May 4. It’s “a new 76-minute documentary that follows the Chiu Family on a surprising journey through Mississippi in search of their lost family history.”
Made a *ton* of snacks for Shug’s school this week — some of the kids have nut allergies, so I made chocolate chip cookies, white chocolate party mix, M&M cookie bars, and Biscoff boiled cookies (just boiled cookies substituting the nut-free Biscoff for peanut butter and ohmygoshhhhh they were so fudgy and good). Looking over what we’ll be doing to keep the kids busy over the break, too. Heading into summer feels good. Hope you’re making fun plans and looking forward to the warmer weather, too. xoxo!