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Orange Show, from a 2012 visit
The Orange Show in Houston is gaining a new campus that will bring together the Orange Show Monument and Smither Park, and will put on permanent exhibit some Houston Art Car Parade vehicles
Galerie visits some Prospect.5 sites in New Orleans
grocery store pimento cheese display, 2013
Wright Thompson’s ode to tailgate pimento cheese:
Then and only then can the dish be enjoyed to its fullest: inhaled violently upon a stale Triscuit, whereupon it is kneaded through the esophagus into the boiling vat of bourbon stored in the stomach, at which point it will disintegrate and disperse throughout your body over the course of the football game, giving you an extra pleasant glow and a reminder to go back to the tailgating tent when you leave the stadium midway through the third quarter when the pimento cheese is unguarded and vulnerable.
The Georgia Trust has released its 2022 list of Places in Peril
sign at the Irondale Cafe, Irondale AL, 2015
A Coca-Cola logo on a Han-dynasty urn at the top of this review at Airmail for Ai Weiwei’s new book, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A Memoir (here at Bookshop, here at Amazon).
Old Courthouse Museum, Monroeville AL, 2015
The Old Monroe County Courthouse (the model for To Kill a Mockingbird) has been designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service
The house where William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi has been renovated and serves as an Inn
Annie Mae Young Quilt, High Museum of Art, 2017
Sanford Biggers mentions inspiration from the Gee’s Bend Quilters in this interview at the PBS News Hour
The Advocate on the new A. Hays Town and the Architectural Image of Louisiana (here at Amazon) book by Carol McMichael Reese
Baton Rouge architect Kevin Harris in an interview said Town considered the complete home — exterior, furnishings and landscape — as his professional responsibilities. He would tinker incessantly with paint colors, with materials, sometimes tearing out complete walls or fireplaces that didn’t suit him.
Harris recollected in one of the book’s interviews how he accompanied Town on a walk from his Stanford Avenue home to the LSU lakes. They walked to a stake planted by the lake; Town pulled it up and on a string was a moldy picture frame, meant for part of some home’s furnishings.
“Do you think it’s ready yet?” Town asked Harris.
“What do you mean?” Harris asked.
“I don’t think so either,” Town replied, re-submerging the frame.
The Rothko Chapel, from a visit this year
At PaperCity, From a Turreted Mansion to an Iconic Chapel, Houston’s Preservation Triumphs Get an Overdue Spotlight — Defying the Teardown Trend. Your Good Brick Award Winners Are. . . and among them, the Rothko Chapel (btw, Rothko at the Inauguration at Hazlitt)
In the NYT’s list of Best Art Books of 2021, Roberta Smith includes:
‘Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe’ catalog (here at Bookshop, here at Amazon) with essay by curator Katherine Jentleson at the High (the exhibit is through January 9) “…the great visionary Nellie Mae Rowe (1900-1982), painter, sculptor, doll-maker, environment-builder and Christian…Rowe is the fourth great American outsider artist to receive a major catalog since 2007, after Martin Ramírez, Bill Traylor and Joseph Yoakum. May the trend continue.”
The Bryant’s Grocery historic marker, Money MS, 2016
The latest, three-year-long federal investigation by the Justice Department into the 1955 murder of Emmett Till is now closed and no charges were filed. In this piece in the Washington Post, a note that’s particularly interesting is that the case was opened after the book The Blood of Emmett Till (here on Amazon, here on Bookshop) which was so groundbreaking because it included the interview with Carolyn Bryant (who made the accusation against Till) and they found:
But Justice Department officials said Monday that when the FBI questioned Bryant about those alleged statements to the book’s author, she said she did not make them, and the author’s interview tape and transcripts do not show her making such statements.
and
“Although the professor represented that he had recorded two interviews with her, he provided the FBI with only one recording, which did not contain any recantation.”
Troy University has unveiled the new ‘Mother of the Civil Rights Movement’ sculpture by Ian Mangum outside the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery.
our Greenberg Turkey, 2015
How Greenberg Smoked Turkey Rebuilt after the Fire that Ruined Thanksgiving, in Texas Monthly
Gumbo, Commander’s Palace, 2016
For hundreds of years, Louisiana Creoles have perpetuated Choctaw tradition by adding filé to their gumbos — a hefty pinch tossed in after the dish has cooked produces a thick broth and an aromatic finish. It’s still readily found in Louisiana gumbos, but hardly anyone harvests sassafras and makes their own filé. This cultural loss is what beckons Fuqua to Kisatchie each spring: to advance an Indigenous ritual, once venerated and now teetering, found at the very origins of the dish we know today as gumbo.
The new Walter Anderson: the Extraordinary Life and Art of the Islander available here at Square Books.
Staying South at Arts in America
After receiving her BFA from the University of Mississippi, Fussell began working as a server at a diner, a job she held off and on for the next twenty years while making quilts; running both a gallery and a textiles studio in the small town of Water Valley, Mississippi; and raising two sons. “I didn’t learn a whole lot [in college] that l later practiced,” Fussell said, laughing. “What I’ve done artistically has come from what my mom taught me about craft, what my dad taught me about what we would consider ‘fine art’ or whatever, and the work ethic that I got from being a waitress.”
pre-parade, 2012
Also at Art in America, Cherice Harrison-Nelson on her Mardi Gras Indian Suits and Family Traditions
At Art Basel Miami Beach, from the NYT:
Another New York gallery, Nicelle Beauchene, will be showing four works by Mattie Ross (1903-97) and Rachel Carey George (1908-2011), two quilters from Gee’s Bend, Ala. These works date from the 1960s, around the time of the civil rights movement. A number of Gee’s Bend quilters were a part of the Freedom Quilting Bee where, said Ms. Beauchene, “they would meet, they would plan their protests and their marches, they would gossip, they would sing.” She added that “so much amazing history” was happening “when these quilts were being made.”
Ray’s PeGe sign, Monroe LA, 2021
At 64 Parishes, No Place for Ketchup
The tradition began at Ray’s PeGe
Over the course of the past half-century, residents of Monroe–West Monroe have come to expect that roast beef po’ boys, French fries, and hamburgers served in many local restaurants will be accompanied by white Styrofoam cups filled with piping hot brown gravy. Ask three locals what to do with that cup of gravy and you’re likely to receive three entirely different responses
…and at the author’s personal website, this post title: 9 new restaurants that I can’t wait to visit once all y’all get vaxxed
Super random.
Lovinnnggggg this Yosemite Spectradome Polaroid Camera
A Mr Rogers statue was unveiled at Rollins College in Florida, where he attended
Zaha Hadid Architects’ NFTism experience
A Savannah Home Melds Georgian Architecture With ’60s Flair at the NYT Magazine
This Claude Lalanne crocodile armchair sold at Sotheby’s last month over estimate at $1.1M is beyond
Michelle Browder’s The Mothers of Gynecology monument in Montgomery named in Artsy’s Best Public Art of 2021 list
Um, the Untold Story of Sushi in America at the NYT is wow and I’m sharing that during a tiny window this summer when I felt safe eating indoors, I discovered a sushi restaurant inside a gas station in Jasper, Alabama named Bayou Fresh and when I feel safe for us to all eat indoors again, this is going to be one of the first places we go. They don’t serve alcohol in the restaurant but if you want something, you walk into the store, grab whatever, voila.
When I was in college, I went on a date with a boy who as a gift brought me the latest Reba McEntire cd just to set a good tone. At the NYT, It’s a Good Time to be Reba McEntire, and this quote from Kristin Chenowith:
“I’m an Oklahoma girl, and where I come from, there’s Jesus Christ and then there’s Reba”
From the Dawn DeDeaux: The Space Between Worlds exhibit at NOMA, 2021, my favorite exhibit of the year. Full post next week.
The NYT with their favorite art exhibits this year.
I heard about The Outlands, the new book with unpublished William Eggleston photographs, and wondered why my local library didn’t have a copy, then realized: it lists at $450 for the three-volume set.
We made Jerusalem Kugel with an Israeli friend this week // Muddy Buddies — Puppy Chow too, for the first time ever // I can now say the boys are post- bar mitzvah and so happy and proud of the great job they did // Shugie won the school spelling bee again this year // Hope you have really great plans for winter break. I’ll post more often between now and the end of the year // Sending lots of love! xoxo!