Month: December 2024

The Decatur, Alabama Princess Theatre’s building began in 1887 as a livery stable, became a silent film and vaudeville payhouse in 1919, and after another renovation in 1941 became the art deco theater we know today.

At least twice I’ve gotten to see Ricky Skaggs at the Opry, and here in March at the Princess, my first opportunity to see him do a stand-alone show. Was nice — and I’ve been wanting to go to *something* in this theater anyway.  This was a good concert year — also got to see 49 Winchester, Hank Williams Jr, Whiskey Myers, Tyler Childers, the 30 Years of Forrest Gump at the Opry fundraiser (several artists including Scotty McCreery, Jamey Johnson, Gary Sinise), Christopher Cross, and Brad Paisley. I’d go see any of those again right now. Excited for ’25 shows!

Earlier this year, I got to see Mark Cline’s Lady in the Lake sculpture at the Barber Motorsports Park in Leeds, Alabama. It’s a twin of his Lady in the Bay sculpture in Elberta, Alabama (this pic from a visit in 2015:)

Mark is probably best known for making Foamhenge, the styrofoam replica of Stonehenge. Cline’s version was originally in Natural Bridge, Virginia then restored (it’s styrofoam after all) and moved to Cox Farms in Centreville, Virginia.

He does all kinds of sculpture, and a ton of fiberglass work. A visit to his studio:

On his website, the artist says

The giant man is an incarnation from a mold I bought that was originally known as the Muffler Man. Over the years I’ve converted him to a rock star, ice cream jerk, cowboy, and even used his face for a giant Cyborg.

Some of his fiberglass dinosaurs in south Alabama

On the way:

At one point he developed his own dinosaur environment in Virginia. He says:

I’ve probably built close to 400 dinosaurs during my career so when it came time to build my own Dinosaur Park I wanted it to be unlike anything ever seen before. Dinosaur Kingdom, Yankees verses Dinosaurs, was sort of inspired by a movie I’d seen in the sixties where it was cowboys mixin it up with the prehistoric beasts in “Valley of the Guangi”

 

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There’s now an American Giants Museum in Atlanta, Illinois dedicated to the Muffler Man and his kind.

Some around Alabama I can think of:

The Tarrant muffler man has been removed in the last three or four years to a private residence in another part of the state.

The giant boy in Athens, Alabama is still doing great:

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update Feb 2025: found a Wagon Ho! pioneer man in Rainsville AL:

Dorignac’s One Stop Food Center
“Best for Less”
Metairie LA, 2024.

Made a visit to Faulkner’s Rowan Oak in Oxford — he purchased the 1844 Greek Revival home in 1930 and lived in it ’til his passing in 1962; today it is run as a museum with Ole Miss.

Faulkner lived here with Estelle and her two children, Victoria and Malcolm, from previous to this marriage and then he and Estelle had daughter Jill here. It’s Jill who sold the home to the University.

Not often mentioned, but Faulkner’s daughter Alabama was born in January 1931  and passed away here fewer than two weeks after her birth. She needed an incubator and died while Faulkner was gone to Memphis to bring one back as there wasn’t one available around Oxford. He later donated one to the local hospital.

I’ll post a little more about Alabama and her namesake, Aunt Bama, next week.

It’s a self-guided tour here, with run of most all of the home and outbuildings which include a barn, stables, servants quarters, a slave home, and gardens.

This is the parlor where Jill was married:

The painting on the mantle here in the dining room was done by his mother, Maud, who was a well-known artist in the area.

Before post-its:

He wrote on the walls an outline of A Fable in this room

On display in his bedroom: this number 64 was pinned to him at a horse show in Virginia:

So good to visit. And it’s an easy walk to the Square from here as well, past many beautiful homes (and famous-y Four Corners Chevron, for chicken-on-a-stick).

(btw, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury enters the public domain this year.)

Many more pics of Rowan Oak on my Flickr.

Last spring, I had the opportunity to visit sculptor Christopher Fennell at his studio in Birmingham. The workshop is on a site housed along with a few other artists…a terrific ragged, rough landscape with industrial remnants.

(another artist:)

Other images of the area:

This was my first time meeting him; previously I knew his work through his 2017 Light Tree in downtown Huntsville AL. A great touch is that he says that the lights are in the power grid so that when the city lights come on, the sculpture automatically lights up too.

These are not at all the only subject of his installations. Below, I was able to see his “The Artists’ Fire” made from boards with self-portraits by student artists at the 2009 Magic City Art Connection:

I don’t see this one listed on his site but I photographed this work of his in Birmingham in 2011:

A list of other installations — he does a healthy variety — at his website here.

Alex Chinneck intalled twisted street lights in Bristol and designboom earlier this month named them among 2024’s best public art projects.

This is Werner Reiterer’s brass chandelier hanging outside the 21C Museum Hotel in Cincinnati, pic from our 2016 visit:

…and this is Pieke Bergman’s Totally in Love, from our 2016 visit to the 21C Lexington, Kentucky:

Other artists doing street lamp style sculptures include Chris Burden’s 2008 Urban Light, installed at the LA County Museum of Art. LACMA says it is “unofficially adopted by Los Angeles as a symbol of the city and is indisputably the most popular artwork on campus.”

Never missing a chance to visit the Besthoff Sculpture Garden behind/aside NOMA . This piece, Jim Hodges’s Craig’s Closet , is placed there in front of the museum. It will be on view through June 30, 2025:

This is the new sculpture, Elmgreen & Dragset ‘s “Maybe (Not)” — you know them from Prada Marfa and nowadays they’ve opened something somewhat similar (but actually populated) in Thailand, K-BAR

Ugo Rondinone ‘s The Sun — I saw his Seven Magic Mountains again in October in Las Vegas. Beyond.

Frank Gehry’s stainless sculpture, Bear with Us

Wangechi Mutu’s Crocodylus

Frank Stella’s Alu Truss Star

From Stella’s obit in the NYT:

Mr. Stella, a formalist of Calvinist severity, rejected all attempts to interpret his work. The sense of mystery, he argued, was a matter of “technical, spatial and painterly ambiguities.” In an oft-quoted admonition to critics, he insisted that “what you see is what you see” — a formulation that became the unofficial motto of the minimalist movement.

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The Art Newspaper’s podcast “A Brush With” episode with Elmgreen & Dragset came out about a week ago and is available here .