Thornton Dial.” in Elsa Longhauser and Harald Szeeman, Eds

“Thornton Dial.” In Elsa Longhauser and Harald Szeeman, eds. Self- Taught Artists of the 20th Century. New York: Museum of American Folk Art, 1998; pp. 174-179+204. Text © Robert Hobbs 1 7 4 Since 1987 brother Arthur. The Thornton Dial's paint THORNTON two boys first lived ings and sculpture have with their great-grand challenged and trans DIAL SR. mother Martha James formed standard con (b. 1928) Bell; after her death and ceptions of folk art. In BORN EMELLE, ALABAMA their Stlbsequent move his work he confronts WORKS BESSEMER, ALABAMA to an aunt's home for such issues as racism approximately two years, and civil rights, ecology, BI MBFRT uguus they moved to Bessemer. sexual politics , the Here they were brought homeless, natural disasters, the plight of veterans, up by their great-aunt Sarah Dial Lockett, to whom industrialism and postindustrialism, the death of Dial remained devoted until her death in 1995. the American city, and unemployment. Dial's life in Over the years, Dial has worked at a num rural and urban Alabama was not very different ber of jobs, often holding two or three simultane from the common ously, as well as planting big gardens and raising experience of blacks livestock. His main employment, with Pullman in the first half of Standard, involved him in most of its departments, the twentieth century including punch and shear, "vhere in the 1970s he who migrated from assumed the critical role of running the center rural tenant farms seals to the foundations of boxcars. He remained to industrial areas. with the company for almost thirty-three years. Instead of leaving the Concurrently, he worked intermittently for approx South for Chicago or imately thirteen years at the Bessemer Water Detroit as many did, Works. During downtime at Pullman, he was Dial moved from the forced to seek jobs painting and building houses, small town of Emelle, laying bricks, cementing sections of highways, Alabama (near Liv relining tin, pouring iron, fishing commercially, and ingston), on the west fitting pipes. ern side of the state While moving about from job to job, an area of cotton plan Thornton Dial made things. He built his own house, tations that is also remodeling and renovating it many times until it dotted with fields of pleased him. In the course of rebuilding it, he sweet potatoes and invented a new style of bricks that he cast in the corn-to Bessemer, form of soda cans so that they could be set verti which is part of the cally and would fit conveniently into one another. highly industrialized He also made fishing lures, often using plastic wrap area known as the and wire to create intricate and innovative con CONTAMINATED DRIFTING BLUES I 1994 I D"ic.:ate<l cat, dcilt· Birmingham District. structions. At one time, he created wooden crosses \vood, aluminum cans, glas s. bottle, fo und me ral , canvas, enamel, spray paint, and industrial sealing compo und o n surplus plywood I Born on Sep and cement urns for local cemeteries. In addition, 1 67 x 49 x 17 /2~ I The \Villiam S. Arnett Coll ectio n tember 10, 1928, to a the need to express his feelings resulted in series girl about thirteen years in age, Dial was never after series of welded-steel and mixed-media con acknowledged by his father. When he was nine structions using found objects, including roots and years old, he left school to work at such jobs as a variety of cast-off objects. Often, he decorated his helping out at a local ice house or digging sweet yard with these objects, but at times, either because potatoes. "I come up the hard life," Dial has of a lack of encouragement from his neighbors or recalled. 143 His memory of the difficulties sus because of fears of reprisals from the white com tained in his youth is corroborated by the nickname munity if his implicit critiques of social wrongs Patches, which described the unfortunate condition were discerned, he buried or recycled his work. of his clothing. When Dial was ten, his mother, While he obviously valued these objects as sym Mattie Bell, had the opportunity to marry, provid bolic ways to redress grievances and to give a tan ing she agreed to give up Thornton and his half- gible form to feelings that he had been programmed 1 7 5 not to express in his daily life, Dial was not com ited fellow self-taught artist Lonnie Holley, who had fortable considering them lasting works of art. found a circa 1960s bomb shelter underneath a Their improvisational quality, predicated on imper deserted shotgun house in his neighborhood. Its asso manency and a need to express deep-seated feel ciation with Cold War politics and widespread fears ings, is analogous to the nature of the blues. of radioactive fallout are no doubt concerns that cat Although scholars have not so far connected Dial's alyzed Dial's C ontaminated Drifting Blues. At the time art to this musical mode, his work can be consid that he made this \vork, Dial was thinking about how ered its visual equivalent. his childhood hometown, Emelle, had become a In the fall of 1994 Dial made explicit this nuclear waste site and was deeply concerned about a connection with the blues when he focused on the proposal for a nuclear waste dump in Bessemer. 144 theme of pollution as a result of finding the desic The title Contaminated Drifting Blues recalls cated body of a house cat in a crawl space in his the well-known blues song "Drifting Blues," by aunt Sarah Dial Lockett's house. The cat had unsuc Wallace "Pine Top" Johnson, which features this cessfully tried to escape the flood of early chorus: December 1983 that had affected most of Dial's community, called "Pipeshop," and filled his house Y ou ~now I'm drifting, with a foot and a half of water. As a memorial to and I'm dnfting just li~e a ship out on th e sea. this animal and possibly an elaboration on his com Well, I'm drifting and I 'm drifting li~e a ship out monly used tiger theme, Dial made it the center on the sea. piece of C ontaminated Drifting Blues, a simulated Well, you ~now I ain't got nobody in this world midden consisting of driftwood from the Gulf of to care for me. Mexico, crushed soda and beer cans (including a prominent red Coke can on the bottom left), metal Not only does the t itle reinforce Dial's shavings, bedsprings, a "C" clamp, and a glass bottle. work, but the references to the sea could charac Shortly before making the piece, Dial had vis- terize Contaminated Drifting Blues, with its earth- THE NEW BIRMI:'t'GHAM AND THE OLD BIRM•ltNOHA• I 1993 1 Rope . wire. vines, foond wood. roots. corrugated tin. s t o n ~s. sod. otl. \:n;:md . spray paint. and industrial scahog compnunJ: on canvas tbUUflt,l!.d. on wood I 82 x 133 x 7 1-2" I The \V ill i~m S. Arne: tt Co!lcc{ion 176 THE TIGER CAT I 1987/ Steel, tin, enamel, tubing, and cape/ 69 1/2 x 107 112 x 57"/ The WilliamS. Arri.ett Collection 177 colored panel placed in front of a larger acrid blue A number of African American musicians green one that could represent either water or sky. and scholars and others believe that the blues rep This relationship with the blues deserves resent a special understanding of what it means to investigation in order to understand how Dial's art be black. Although some have attributed this is related to this rich and vital twentieth-century music's great success to its inherent universality, tradition. Dial himself stressed the importance of others, such as B.B. King, have emphasized its way the blues to his life when he said, "For years, of establishing bonds between African Americans. music was my only pleasure."145 Over the years, he King noted, "If you've been singing the blues as has appreciated a wide range of blues works, long as I have, it's kind of like being black including music by B.B. King and Fats Domino, his twice." 149 Philosopher Cornel West believes that longtime favorites. On Friday nights, after getting blues and other forms of black music constitute an off work at 11:00 P.M., he would spend a couple of "Afro-American humanist" tradition. 150 And hours in Bessemer juke joints such as Duke's Club American studies specialist Jeffrey Stewart per or those that he remembers were run by Andy Hall ceives the blues to be a culturally sanctioned mode and Bill Hardy. He recalls that the interiors of for channeling African American tribulations: these clubs were painted in rich patterns that cap tured the flavor of the music. The overall improvi 'Th e blues is not just the language of oppres sational character of these painted walls can in sion and the realization that there's no way out general be considered a vernacular tradition impor of this belly of racist capitalism. It is the abil tant to Dial's paintings, and these paintings may ity to overcome . to sing a song of transcew represent one way he has effected visual equiva dence, of madcap joy in the midst of all hell. It lents to this important musical form and the places is the ability to laugh to ~eep from crying, to from which it came.

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