Written by Tom Patterson
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Written by Tom Patterson “IF YOU CAN KILL A SNAKE WITH IT, IT AIN’T ART” Selected works from the collection of Jonathan Williams an exhibition curated by Tom Patterson, independent curator North Carolina poet Jonathan Williams (b. 1929) has been collecting things that captured his visual attention and imagination for most of his life, and especially since the beginning of the 1950s, around the time he dropped out of Princeton University and found a more suitable educational niche for himself closer to home at Black Mountain College. Before he began to establish himself as a poet and publisher closely tied to the Black Mountain school of writing (the Beat movement’s East-Coast wing, in effect), Williams had spent a couple of years investigating the visual arts. He studied painting, printmaking and book design, first at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., then at the Institute of Design in Chicago. In 1951 he turned to photography, and his desire to study with photographers Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind led him to Black Mountain, where they both taught that summer. Black Mountain would only survive for another five years before closing its doors, but the friendships and associations that Williams formed there played a big part in determining his future. Other developing artists and writers who were fellow Black Mountain students at the time included Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, John Chamberlain, Kenneth Noland, Francine du Plessix, and Suzi Gablik. When he arrived at the school Williams was already writing poetry in addition to his work in visual mediums, and soon he fell under the spell of Charles Olson, Black Mountain’s charismatic rector and writing teacher. Williams thereafter began to concentrate much of his attention on developing his own poetic voice and--under the imprint of his pioneering Jargon Press--publishing the poetry of Olson and other avant-garde writers of the time (Sherwood Anderson, Robert Creeley, Buckminster Fuller, Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, Mina Loy, Michael McClure, Paul Metcalf, Henry Miller, Lorine Niedecker, Joel Oppenheimer, Louis Zukofsky....). But Williams also continued to make photographs and otherwise to maintain an active engagement with visual art and artists. The more than 100 handsomely designed books that Jargon has published in its 55-year history stand as one enduringly significant testament to the range of Williams’ visual interests. Among the photographers and other visual artists whose works have graced these volumes are Callahan, Siskind, Rauschenberg, Ralph Eugene Meatyard and Doris Ulmann. While the books of the Jargon Society (as the press is now known) have been the focus of several exhibitions over the years, this will be the first to focus on Williams’ wide-ranging art collection. The show will consist of more than 100 objects, including: photography by Ansel Adams, Lyle Bonge, Harry Callahan, William Christenberry, Clarence John Laughlin, Roger Manley, Elizabeth Matheson, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, John Menapace, Guy Mendes, Art Sinsabaugh, Frederick Sommer, Doris Ulmann and others; sculpture, works on paper and works in other mediums by contemporary artists William Anthony, Glen Baxter, Richard C., Gregory Corso, Jorge Fick, John Furnival, David Hockney, R.B. Kitaj, Henry Miller, Kenneth Patchen, Tom Phillips, Bernard G. Schatz (aka L-15) and others; contemporary Southern folk art, including works by Vernon Burwell, Howard Finster, James Harold Jennings, Eddie Owens Martin (a.k.a. St. EOM), Gertrude Morgan, Juanita Rogers, Mary T. Smith, Edgar Tolson, Bill Traylor and others; a selection of photographs by JW himself, including portraits of poets and artists, views of the graves of artists and writers, views of outsider-art environments in the U.S. and Europe; and a selection of limited-edition books that Williams has published under the Jargon imprint. The exhibition’s main title is a quotation William’s attributes to photographer Orcenith Lyle Bonge, who was among Williams’ fellow students at Black Mountain and is represented in the exhibition. It’s one of many similarly amusing, enigmatic and/or enlightening entries in Williams’ collection of favorite quotes, which have been the subject of several of his books including, most popularly, Quote, Unquote (Ten Speed Press, 1989). A NOTE ON THE CURATOR: Tom Patterson is a writer, critic, independent curator and the author of several books on contemporary folk art and artists, including the Jargon-published St. EOM in the Land of Pasaquan (1987) and Contemporary Folk Art: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 2001). He has curated a dozen exhibitions since 1985 for institutions including the Terra Museum of American Art (Chicago), the Center on Contemporary Art (Seattle), the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (Queens, N.Y.), the Jargon Society, Winthrop University (Rock Hill, S.C.), Winston-Salem State University’s Diggs Gallery, the Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art (Greensboro), Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond), the Hickory Museum of Art (Hickory, N.C.) and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (Winston-Salem, NC.). His largest exhibition to date was “High on Life: Transcending Addiction,” a 300-piece, 100- artist exhibition at Baltimore’s American Visionary Art Museum (fall 2002-summer 2003). He has written catalog essays for exhibitions at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center (Williamsburg, Va.), the Alabama State Arts Council, the Atlanta College of Art, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY-Purchase, and San Francisco Cameraworks, among other institutions. As executive director of the Jargon Society and the director of its Southern Visionary Folk Art Project from 1984 to 1987, Patterson worked collaboratively with Jonathan Williams. He has enthusiastically followed Williams’ work since their first meeting in 1974. .