Yard advice
Marengo County AL, 2009.
Sister Gertrude
The Venice Biennale going on right now includes the works of Sister Gertrude Morgan, who was born in Lafayette, Alabama in 1900, the seventh child of Frances and Edward Williams. Her father was a dairy farmer.
It wasn’t until she was in her teens that she moved with her mother and siblings from their home in Girard / Phenix City, Alabama to Columbus, Georgia, and attended Rose Hill Memorial Baptist Church there.
The church is still around, and here’s a recent service:
Where her life truly turned came in her mid-30s: she left her husband, Will Morgan who was employed as a laborer at a lumber mill, whom she’d married in 1928 — they lived at 1324 North Avenue in Columbus. I’m bringing this up because she later made a drawing of this house (that now looks to have been demolished and is part of the site of the Piedmont Columbus Regional Hospital), and this year, the Columbus Museum acquired it.
On the drawing, she wrote:
Sitting in my kitchen one night I heard a great strong Voice speak to me said I’ll make thee as a signet for I have chosen thee I got this calling on the 30th day of Dec in 1934 I had to answere to my calling and one day give up and Pack up and go … a chosed vessel of God’s its wonderful to Be. G-d called me a chased me and turned me into the hands of his son and JESUS said take up your cross and follow me.
After leaving Columbus, she spent a short time in possibly Opelika and then Mobile, Alabama, and came in 1939 to preach on the streets of New Orleans (which she called the “headquarters of sin”) with Mother Margaret Parker and Sister Cora Williams, and the three of them ran an orphanage, dressed in black with only a white collar. They’d often be found in the French Quarter, spreading their message of salvation.
In the 1940 census, she’s listed living with them at 816-1/2 N Rampart, then I think for a while they were at 533 Flake Ave in Gentilly. The other two women in the 1940 census were marked as being widows, while Morgan is listed as being married still. The records states that the highest level of education she completed was second grade.
Sister Gertrude and Mother Margaret continued the ministry after Sister Cora died in 1954, and she and Mother Margaret traveled to attend conferences associated with the Holiness and Sanctified Church, a movement they were considered part of.
For a while, they lived together at 2538 Alabo Street, and there was another address on Alabo where she was listed.
Leaving there, she moved alone to a house in the Lower Ninth, calling it the “Everlasting Gospel Mission,” and she’d hang her paintings and messages on the front porch. I just checked — it seems that home was at 5444 N Dorgenois at Flood St — and it’s no longer extant, as it was destroyed when the levees failed during Katrina (the house also flooded when the levees failed in 1965 with Hurricane Betsy).
Harriet Blum’s photograph of Sister Gertrude Morgan at Home. Saw this at the Ogden in 2019. More of Blum’s portraits of her here, here, and here.
Backing up a little, in or about 1956, she was instructed by G-d to start painting, and that she did — so she’s known not only as an evangelist and singer but an artist…who changed her way of dress from black, to a white nurse’s uniform as her habit — as she considered herself a “Bride of Christ and housekeeper for Dada G-d,” also sometimes “nurse to Doctor Jesus.” Between the ’50s and 1974 when she purposefully stopped painting as she received another message to concentrate on other things, it’s estimated that she made eight hundred drawings, paintings, and sculptures.
One of Sister’s signs, at the Ogden
Sister died in her sleep on July 8, 1980 and was buried in an unmarked grave at Providence Memorial Park in Metairie. In 1997, a marker was placed.
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As usual, Christie’s does a nice bio; some of her works were included in their 2020 Outsider Art Sale.
Also:
The trailer for a documentary on her, Thank you Sister, is here.
A painting Noel Rockmore did of her while he was living in New Orleans, “Sister Gertrude Dreaming,” hung at JoAnn Clevenger’s Upperline before it closed.
Andy Warhol included her in his first issue of Interview, in September 1973.
Art historian William A. Fagaly, who knew her personally, wrote the book The Tools of Her Ministry: The Art of Sister Gertrude Morgan, published by the American Folk Art Museum and Rizzoli, in 2004.
Many nice photographs and audio bits from this piece at Panorama, Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art.
Huge sidenote on Panorama — their Spring 2022 issue includes a piece by Rachel Winter, Arabian Nights in the Mississippi Delta: The Embroideries of Ethel Wright Mohamed and we may have to talk about that soon. ❤️
Ritz-Carlton, New Orleans
Rolling a couple of Ritz-Carlton New Orleans posts together, because I haven’t done one from NOLA in a few years. This is the last time we got a suite (it was an upgrade, super nice):
The view from our room was the world’s best Walgreen’s neon
If you’re wondering…
We saw Jeremy Davenport playing downstairs with his band — when he introduced them, he didn’t give their real names, and gave lawyer names from TV instead…including Chip Forstall, Juan LaFonta…I think we may have been the only ones in on the joke because everyone else was like “oh, that Juan is so good…” ha!
The concierge lounge is large:
…and I love seeing what their big floral arrangement in the lobby will be, especially because I always think of Shug’s first hotel visit which was this one.
Here he is in ’07 (and now he’s grown to about 5’10” soooo):
Our latest stay there was in June — and the arrangement this time:
We had just a regular room this time:
love all the marble
Our view at night:
It was raining really hard one day, so we just stayed in for lunch at M Bistro:
Shug had Crawfish Monica:
…Shug had a hamburger, and I was boring and had the Caesar Salad:
…and this is the Davenport Lounge, and we got to see him perform again one evening
This Week’s Various
As always, all images unless otherwise noted copyright Deep Fried Kudzu. Like to use one elsewhere? Kindly contact me here.
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Crabmeat Gayle, from a visit in 2016 (the lighting in the private booths was odd — iykyk)
Lusco’s in Greenwood MS may be closed, but they’re still doing some takeout, and posted the recipe for Crabmeat Gayle (and the story) on their FB
from our visit last month
This Sunday, July 17 is the last day to see Queen Nefertari’s Egypt at NOMA
Speaking of Egypt: the McClung Museum in Knoxville is finally ending its Ancient Egypt: The Eternal Voice exhibit after an almost thirty year run, on July 23. We saw it in 2014:
Daily Yonder on Dr Chea Parton’s Literacy in Place program:
By teaching stories like Wilson Rawls’s Where the Red Fern Grows, about a boy and his two hunting dogs in rural Oklahoma, or Julie Murphy’s Dumplin’, about a self-proclaimed “fat girl” conquering her small town Texas beauty pageant, students are able to see themselves represented in their school work.
A writer from the Washington Post came down for HankFest, and more
The Dorothea Lange’s America exhibit at the Huntsville Museum of Art does not disappoint (it’s up through August 7) and includes works by Mike Disfarmer, Walker Evans, and others.
This A. Hays Town -designed office building in Baton Rouge on the market and so perfect
If you have a subscription to The Tennessean, you can read Are the South’s Meat-And-Three Restaurants a Dying Breed? Their recent photo gallery on Wendell Smith’s is available, though.
If this line at Niki’s West in Birmingham is any indication, meat and threes are doing fine:
Super random:
The President and Rosalynn celebrate their 76th anniversary
This September, Bonhams will auction Ernie Barnes ’ 1993 Solid Rock Congregation
Made Atlantic Beach Pie this week – pretty good
Whyyyy is this so interesting to watch
Col Sanders’ home and the accompanying Claudia Sanders Dinner House is on the market in Shelbyville, Kentucky
W-S with the recipe for Bouchon Bakery’s Robin’s Egg Macarons
If you’re in the mood for Jack Daniel’s highest-proof ever (155.1), it’s available as second edition Coy Hill small batch. They designed a new cork for it because they found that anything above 150 would have the high-proof vapors push the older cork out. A review at Inside Hook here. Also, they’re doing Jack in cans, including a Tennessee Honey lemonade, and Jack & Coke, finally.
Grub Street on NYC’s latest speakeasies (again with the speakeasies) which I think you maybe need to read in the voice of SJL’s Stefon. Reading the descriptions, I now know what a caviar bump is (though I prob coulda guessed) and wow what a time to be alive. 🙃
No idea what works will be included. This is Thornton Dial’s Smooth-Going Cats and the Hard-Headed Goat at the High in Atlanta, from a 2017 visit
Yes, AEIVA! “The first comprehensive survey and largest exhibition in Alabama to-date of works by legendary artist Thornton Dial Sr. will be presented by the University of Alabama at Birmingham from Sept. 9-Dec. 10″ — the exhibit is called I, Too, Am Alabama and some nice events are included around the show.
from a stay in 2005
Maybe Hotel Talisi’s famous fried chicken isn’t gone after all: it lives on at “Larry Melvyn’s Restaurant “Food Once Thought Gone”” in Tallassee, Alabama
from a visit in 2017
Central Grocery still isn’t open after damage to the building from Ida, but their muffalettas are available at Zuppardo’s and now Acquistapace’s (plus Goldbelly).
Jacob Hashimoto: The Other Sun at The University of Mississippi Museum runs through September 3.
From Daily Yonder, Dee Davis’ commentary on rural grocers
When I was starting out, 25 years old, I was on a film crew, and it was my job to interview Robert Penn Warren. Because he was a novelist and critic from tiny Guthrie, Kentucky, I wanted to talk to him about sense of place in his art. I was not skilled and had a hard time hearing what he tried to tell me. He said that we were in an era where people were losing their sense of place in time. He made the case that when we lose our sense of how we got here, we lose our perspective of our own journey in time, and to a degree what is possible for us to do in our moment.
The Jersey City Mana Contemporary is hosting Joe Minter: We Lost Our Spears, through August 22 this year.
As part of Land of the Free, Mana Contemporary proudly presents We Lost Our Spears, nine sculptures by artist Joe Minter, created between 1989 and 2013. We Lost Our Spears is Joe Minter’s third solo exhibition and was first exhibited at MARCH Gallery, New York in 2022.
Elizabeth Williams, founder of the National Food and Beverage Foundation, Southern Food & Beverage Museum (SoFAB), has a new cookbook: Nana’s Creole Italian Table: Recipes and Stories from Sicilian New Orleans (here at Amazon, here at Bookshop).
Felder Rushing talks bottle trees, and mentions:
My little egalitarian neighborhood, a self-contained village named Fondren buried deep within Mississippi’s capital city, is bejeweled with over a hundred bottle trees, the densest concentration in the known universe. And Mississippi’s Museum of Art featured two dozen in its garden.
I have three here at my home, but my favorite will always be that of my late friend Wade Wharton, who made this with friends at the Huntsville Botanical Garden
Saw the sweet Oliver Jeffers: 15 Years of Picturing Books exhibit (now through August 7) at the High
Really came close to going to see Hank a couple of weeks ago in Huntsville but wound up passing. This is his latest.
Diiiid, though, manage to see Garth last month and incredible. So much fun!
Mardi Gras 1898!
The NYT T Magazine Art Issue includes The Enduring Appeal of the Self-Taught Artist and features mention of Jammie Thompson, who grew up in Thibodaux, Louisiana.
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Surface with a visit to Sean Brock’s June in Nashville
At LitHub: How Eudora Welty Captured 1930s New York City on Film:
Welty’s photographs of Union Square reflect a geopolitical landscape marked by unemployment and stagnation that was of great concern to her: “These people of the Great Depression,” Welty recounted, “kept alive on the determination to get back to work and to make a living again. I photographed them in Union Square and in subways and sleeping in subway stations and huddling together to keep warm, and I felt, then, sort of placed in the editorial position as I took their pictures. Recording the mass of them did constitute a plea on their behalf to the public, their existing plight being so evident in the mass.”
The Georgia Guidestones have been blown up. Seriously.
From PBS North Carolina:
Changes in the Wind — an almost :27 documentary on Vollis Simpson
For most of his 94 years, Vollis Simpson worked as a farmer, house mover and self-taught artist. When his town of Wilson, NC looked to rebound from the loss of tobacco farming, they found inspiration in Simpson’s creativity and grit. The result is a one-of-a-kind park featuring his wind-powered sculptures.
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At NYT Mag, Why Are We Still Talking About Black Mountain College? In 1933, a handful of renegade teachers opened a school in rural North Carolina that would go on to shape American art and art education for decades to come.
Like ancient Athens, the Bloomsbury Group in London, the Harlem Renaissance, Vienna during the heyday of Mozart or Freud and 19th-century Concord, Mass., Black Mountain College was the site of a genius cluster, though in the unlikeliest of places: at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Swannanoa Valley, 15 miles east of Asheville
Plenty of students, too, would become famous artists in their own right: Ruth Asawa, Ray Johnson, Kenneth Noland, Robert Rauschenberg, Susan Weil, Cy Twombly, Francine du Plessix Gray, Robert De Niro Sr., Arthur Penn and John Wieners among them.
The buliding that was once home to K-Paul’s will now be ‘French Quarter Boulangerie‘
Fave piece at the Core Memory: Encoded exhibit that closed last month at the Newcomb Museum at Tulane: this Faig Ahmed rug
I’m now taking requests for any legislation that needs signing (this from a visit to American Village in Montevallo AL)
Saw the Robert Polidori: Recollections exhibit at NOMA; it’s up through July 31
Yummy June rewind:
our robot server at Kuna Revolving Sushi Bar was fun:
yummiest supper: lamb chops at the perfect, perfect, retro Red Maple in Gretna
yummiest treat: mochi doughnut at Mochi Donut at H Mart in Atlanta
this was flavored with what tastes like Honey Crisp cereal:
lunch at Galatoire’s
kid on left: was recognized at camp with a speech and award for being best at one of his electives, and is spending the rest of his summer at Session B now after us getting to see him during the short break they had
kid on right: actually hit the ball to the farthest hole at TopGolf the other day, living his best life doing everything other than camp cuz he’s not a camp kid.
Hope whatever you’re doing, you’re doing summer right. It’s already July! So much I still want to get in…
xoxo!
Don’t Feed The Plants
Last month, visited again Hattiesburg’s Pocket Museum — the “Tiniest Museum in Mississippi” in an alleyway — the pieces had changed and it was a sweet diversion to just play around:
Mosaic Huntsville
Last month, we went to the festival First Baptist Church in Huntsville was having to celebrate the restoration of their famous mosaic. Its official name is “Cosmic Christ” but for reasons that will be obvious in a moment, it’s really lovingly referred to as “eggbeater Jesus”
It was a lovely event — I really wanted to go because I grew up passing by here; in college, this was the route I took to B’nai Sholom many times.
There was free food, they were giving away mosaic tiles that were not replaced in the restoration (including some made into jewelry), had FBC swag, other vendors, and my friend ArtLady Sonya was doing plein air, with many people stopping to watch her process
Guests were also welcomed into the sanctuary, where they have gorgeous stained glass. I love how so much of Huntsville is space themed thanks to its place in history (and current events) and it’s sometimes more subtle, sometimes more overt
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