Vernacularfrom the Gadsden Arts Center Permanent Art Collection Teacher’s Guide Vernacular Art from the Gadsden Arts Center Permanent Collection TABLE OF CON T EN T S Letter to Educators 3 Introduction to Vernacular Art 4 Meet the Artists 7 Thornton Dial Jr. 7 Thornton Dial Sr. 8 Arthur Dial 10 O.L. Samuels 11 Lesson Plans 12 Symbolism in Vernacular Art (K-5) 13 Vernacular Art & Sense of Place (K-5) 14 Vernacular Art & Sense of Place (6-12) 15 Pattern in Vernacular Art (K-5) 16 Vernacular Art & Found Materials (K-12) 17 Symmetry in Vernacular Art (K-8) 18 Vernacular Art & Texture (K-12) 19 References & Useful Resources 20 Vocabulary 22 Lesson Plan Evaluation 23 1 Teacher’s Guide 2 Vernacular Art from the Gadsden Arts Center Permanent Collection LE tt ER T O EDU C A T ORS Dear Florida Teachers, This packet was created by the Gadsden Arts Center as a tool to help you teach students about key Vernacular artists featured in the Gadsden Arts Center’s Permanent Collection. The packet includes informational articles on Vernacular Art, featured artists in the collection, and lesson plans for classroom or museum use. Lesson plans are designed to be adapted to any classroom and fit a variety of curriculum goals, but primarily address Sunshine State Standards in Visual Arts for the creation of art, development of skills in art, and understanding of the organizational structure of art forms. Additional content areas also addressed include history, language arts, writing, and reading. Please consider returning the lesson plan evaluation form on the last page of this guide for continued growth and improvement in lesson plans. The Gadsden Arts Center’s Permanent Collection is available to browse on our website at http://www.gadsdenarts.org/collection. aspx and Gadsden Arts will gladly send educators digital images for educational purposes. For more information on the collection please contact Education Director Anissa Ford at anissa.ford@ gadsdenarts.org or Curator of Exhibitions and Collections, Angie Barry at [email protected]. O.L. Samuels, Godzilla, n.d., paint & wood, 2009.1.6 Thank you, Anissa Ford Education Director Gadsden Arts Center (850) 627-5023 [email protected] www.gadsdenarts.org 3 Teacher’s Guide IN T RODU cti ON T O VERNA C ULAR AR T ernacular Art is a genre of art with a rich work of Vernacular and complex history. This history begins artists was rejected in private homes and yards, as intimate, by art historians and Vreflections on each artist’s life and surroundings. critics. These artists collected discarded materials, house paint, and other non-traditional materials to create The art these artists assemblages, paintings, and unique sculptures with produced was so themes relating to their history and their community. deeply personal, Many Vernacular artists grew up in poverty, with so expressive, and limited resources or access to art, or even education. yet it has not been With varying circumstances, each of the artists in categorized as this collection was driven to produce art–often a contemporary art lot of art–each with powerful symbols and personal until very recently. art-making methods. Overall, Vernacular Art refers One of the first art to the expressive power of their work to capture the collectors to discover language, community, and culture of the area in which Vernacular Art was it was created–primarily in the southern states of William Arnett, a Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and South native of Georgia O.L. Samuels, Godzilla, Carolina. who had traveled n.d., paint & wood, 2009.1.6 extensively to build Vernacular Art dates back to the 1930’s, but has been his collection and slow to receive recognition by art historians and curated exhibitions for museums in the South. He collectors, often marginalized as “folk” or “outsider” became first interested in African American Art in art because many of the genre’s artists were self- 1972 during a visit to Gainesville when Professor taught and/or African-American artists living in Roy Craven–who was curating an exhibition of his segregated rural areas of the Deep South. Although collection for the High Museum of Art in Atlanta– much of the work is non-objective or abstract–popular introduced him to the work of Jesse Aaron. Later, modern and contemporary art genres–originally the in 1986, Arnett met Lonnie Holley in Birmingham, where Holley’s environment incorporated “literally hundreds of assemblages and sandstone sculptures.”1 Acknowledging the importance of this dynamic African American visual art tradition, and its lack of recognition, Arnett began collecting these works in earnest, and working with the artists. He encouraged them to “do their best work” and that “the art world needed to be overwhelmed… because it was not going to accept the idea that important art was coming from the black uneducated South unless the evidence was irrefutable.”2 The extensive number of works Thornton Dial, Sr., Everything is Under the that has been produced by southern Vernacular artists Black Tree, n.d., paint & wood, 2009.1.2 is a testament to these artists’ drive and creativity. 4 Vernacular Art from the Gadsden Arts Center Permanent Collection IN T RODU cti ON T O VERNA C ULAR AR T A major step in preserving Vernacular Art is the associated with recent acquisition of 80 works of art from the Souls shaping a person’s Grown Deep Foundation to the Metropolitan Museum character and of Art in New York City (Met), including artwork personality. An by Thornton Dial and Lonnie Holley (artists also artist expressing represented in the Gadsden Arts Center’s Permanent a sense of place Collection). Of the collection, Met Director and in their work is CEO says, “It embodies the profoundly deep incorporating an and textured expression of the African American aspect of themselves experience during a complex time in this country’s within their art.” Joe Louis Light, Baby Shoe, history and a landmark moment in the evolution n.d., mixed media, 2010.1.7 of the Met.”3 “This extraordinary group of works Inspired by their contributes immeasurably to the Museum’s sense of place, representation of works by contemporary American Vernacular artists also used their art to adorn their artists and augments on a historic scale its holdings homes. Vernacular Art could be found hanging inside of contemporary art,” and outside the artists’ homes, made into quilts, says the Met’s Chairman painted on barns and fences, and displayed proudly in of the Department of yards. From found materials such as discarded chairs Modern and Contemporary and tires, to unfinished wood, to reclaimed windows, Art.4 Vernacular Art is and to objects from nature, these artists are driven to also represented in the create art that preserves their own story and history. collections and exhibitions across the United States, “In the African American South there is a including the Smithsonian sophisticated and esoteric visual system of Museum in Washington, communication, built around materials and D.C., the Philadelphia found objects with consistent symbolism and Museum of Fine Art, the concealed meanings, that came into being Whitney Museum of Art for the purposes of recording, preserving, in New York, and the High and disseminating ideas and information. Museum of Art in Atlanta. That art-making process transformed over centuries into a widespread tradition that Much of the art produced by in the twentieth century spawned some of Vernacular artists is inspired the greatest visual arts produced by any by and a response to each culture.”5 artist’s life, upbringing, and home. Of their sense of place, Gadsden Arts Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Center Curator Angie Untitled, n.d., earth Barry says, “A sense of pigments/wood, place and its influence on 2009.1.7 one’s upbringing are often 5 Teacher’s Guide IN T RODU cti ON T O VERNA C ULAR AR T The Gadsden Arts Center’s Vernacular Art Collection represents 21 artists and 37 works of art. Although many of these Vernacular Artists did not have any formal training, their works communicate in the same manner as the works of the formally trained contemporary artists with expressive brushwork, powerful compositions, and innovative use of color and materials. These artworks are very personal and offer a power of expression that is unmatched. Many of these works have a creative purity with references to isolation that may even be credited to the longstanding segregation between their creative genius and that of the contemporary art community. And like all of the greatest contemporary artists, these prolific artists created art because they were compelled to express their life experiences in a visual form – driven by a creative spirit to celebrate life, and often, struggle and tragedy. Purvis Young, Untitled, n.d., collage/paint, wood, 2009.1.9 1 Souls Grown Deep Foundation, “William Arnett Formative Role Patron & Collector.” <http://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/news/ william-arnetts-formative-role-patron-and-collector-african-american-art> 2 Ibid 3 Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Souls Grown Deep Foundation Donates...” < http://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-museum/press- room/news/2014/souls-grown-deep> 4 Ibid 5 Souls Grown Deep Foundation, “The Tradition.” <http://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/tradition> 6 Vernacular Art from the Gadsden Arts Center Permanent Collection MEE T T HE AR ti S T S THORN T ON DI AL JR. Thornton Dial Jr., called “Little Buck” by his family, was born in 1953 in Bessemer, Alabama1. He attended school through the 11th grade, after which he worked doing construction in Birmingham, Alabama, for around seven years. Dial then returned to Bessemer to work for the Pullman Standard Company operating punch-and- shear machines.