July 2022 • Page 3 of 3 • Deep Fried Kudzu

July 11, 2022July 12, 2022

Red, Wheat, and Blue

Wheat fields with Alabama red dirt
Tanner AL, 2022.

July 10, 2022July 11, 2022

Dr Charles Smith’s NY Exhibit

Note: interspersed here are images from a visit or two to Dr Charles Smith’s art environment in Hammond, Louisiana

In the NYT, A Self-Taught Artist Takes His Roadside Acropolis North: Outside the art establishment for decades, Charles Smith has sculpted his Black heroes in Aurora, Ill., and now in Hammond, La. At 81, he’s getting his first show in New York.

That’s Dr Charles Smith’s (if you’ve ever wondered, the Dr is a self-bestowed honorific, as the Times put it, to denote “the depths of knowledge I have accumulated in this life.”) work, that many of us know from his art environment / home in Louisiana. The exhibit is at White Columns, ‘New York’s oldest alternative non-profit space’.

Smith was born in New Orleans, and moved to Chicago as a teen. He attended the funeral of Emmett Till, served as a Marine in Vietnam during the war there, and since has become a community advocate, social worker, educator, speaker, and more.

He established his “African-American Heritage Museum + Black Veterans’ Archive” at his home in in Aurora, Illinoia with its 600+ works, then in 2001 moved to Hammond, Louisiana where he continued making his sculptures. The majority of works from the Aurora site went to museums, and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin has 218 pieces. Those with his work in their permanent collection include Smithsonian American Art Museum; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, Chicago; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan; National Veterans Art Museum, Chicago; The Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History, Augusta; and the Milwaukee Art Museum, among others.

The White Columns show includes 30 smaller sculptures he’s made more recently from Hammond. The exhibit will be up from now through September 10 of this year.

July 8, 2022

Little Flock Chapel, Swingin’ Grandma, and Machete Man

We headed out to Walker County, Alabama to do some exploring — ran across machete man (seriously) — you know, just throwing blades on the side of the road. I told my friend that I had to document this person. My friend said no. I was persuasive:

Anyway, he was super nice, so friendly, and told some really interesting stories. He threw blades, he kicked blades, he twirled blades, it was really something to see.

We made it out to Self Cemetery in the community of Hiliard, Alabama. There’s a tiny chapel, and a monument covered with with an arbor and a porch swing hanging, with a car tag that reads “swingin’ grandma”

This is “Little Flock Chapel,” built by Louie Self. He reclaimed this cemetery in 1997 and built the little church in 2000.

July 6, 2022

We’re Picking Summer

We picked strawberries in the spring, and now blueberries and blackberries — after that, I think the next big fruit picking will be back when we’re among the vines for muscadines and scuppernongs in mid/late September and October.

We enjoy the Bagwell Blueberry Farm in my hometown of Cullman, Alabama because they’re so friendly and we like their dogs, who are fun to pick alongside.

A couple of easy cobbler recipes for many fruits: this one is almost embarrasingly easy but crazy delicious, and if you’re feeling more like a rustic tart, this one is terrific.