BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: Folk Art

DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: Folk Art:

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Description of Pictures: Folk and Self-Taught Art
October 21, 2016 – Ongoing
The works in SAAM’s galleries for folk and self-taught art represent the powerful vision of America’s untrained and vernacular artists, embodying diverse American narratives and reminding us that creativity flourishes independent of formal art training. Includes James Hampton's The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly (1950-64), a visionary work made from salvaged materials covered in gold and silver foil.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SIPGFA_161022_001.JPG: Clarence Woolsey Untitled (Caparena figure), ca. 1961 - 1972
2. SIPGFA_161022_006.JPG: Clarence Woolsey Untitled (Caparena Figure), ca. 1961-1972
3. SIPGFA_161022_018.JPG: The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly is a complex work of art created by James Hampton over a period of fourteen years. Hampton made the array based on several religious visions that prompted him to prepare for Christ's return to earth. His reference to the "third heaven" is based on scriptures citing it as the "heaven of heavens" -- God's realm. Hampton created his masterpiece in a rented carriage house, transforming its drab interior into a resplendent world. He hand-crafted many of the elements from cardboard and plastic, but added structure with found objects from his neighborhood, such as old furniture and jelly jars, and discards like light bulbs from the federal office buildings in which he worked. Hampton selected shimmering metallic foils, purple paper (now faded to tan), and other materials to evoke spiritual awe and splendor. The Throne embodies a complex fusion of Christianity and African-American spiritual practices overlaying themes of deliverance and freedom; it is both astonishingly splendid and profoundly humble. The Throne derives coherence from parallel rows of components arranged on two levels. A cushioned throne at the rear is a focal point for the highly symmetrical array. Objects on the right refer to the New Testament and Jesus; those on the left to the Old Testament and Moses. Hampton also left texts written in an arcane spiritual script that he may have understood as the word of God as received by him. Praised as America's greatest work of visionary art, Hampton's Throne reveals one man's faith in God as well as his hope for salvation. Although Hampton did not live to initiate a public ministry, his commanding phrase -- "FEAR NOT" -- summarizes his project's powerful message.
4. SIPGFA_161022_021.JPG: James Hampton Crown from The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly, ca. 1950-1964
5. SIPGFA_161022_024.JPG: James Hampton Untitled (Chalkboard and Eraser), ca. 1945-1964
6. SIPGFA_161022_043.JPG: From the late 1950s until his death in 1986, Emery Bladdon created a constantly changing installation of paintings and sculptures in a small building on his Nebraska farm. He believed in the power of "earth energies" and in his own ability to channel such forces in a space that, through constant adjusting and aesthetic power, could alleviate pain and illness. Blagdon found materials like hay baling wire, magnets, and remnant paints at farm sales, but he also sought out special ingredients like salts and other "earth elements" at a nearby pharmacy. He called the individual pieces his "pretties," but collectively they comprised The Healing Machine. Blagdon worked on his Healing Machine for more than three decades, tending, tinkering with, and reorganizing its components every day and, in his own words, "according to the phases of the moon." He believed it was a functional machine in which energies were drawn upward from the buidling's earthen floor into the space, where they could bounce around and remain dynamic. This installation presents only a portion of Blagdon's Healing Machine components and does not directly correspond with the artist's own installation of them.
7. SIPGFA_161022_076.JPG: Albert Zahn Untitled (Totem with Woman and Birds), ca. 1924 - 1950
8. SIPGFA_161022_079.JPG: Albert Zahn Untitled (Seated Hessian Soldier), ca. 1924 - 1950
9. SIPGFA_161022_081.JPG: Unidentified Untitled (Housetop), 1920s
10. SIPGFA_161022_083.JPG: David Butler Untitled (Very Old Mermaid), ca. 1968 David Butler Untitled (Seven Headed Dragon), ca. 1968
11. SIPGFA_161022_085.JPG: Protection, Salvation, Healing, and Home The works of art in this room mark the creative act as a negotiation with an uncontrollable world. They transform places into realms of physical safety or spiritual salvation -- sometimes both. James Hampton created The Throne of the Third Heaven as an act of devotion, service, and preparation, a physical execution of his faith and belief in a better life beyond death. Albert Zahn's home, covered in carved birds and angels, conveyed reverence for the wonder of nature and his faith that one day, his soul would fly to the heavens. David Butler created a garden of cut and painted tin, in which wind, light, and shadow animated a space that he believed kept evil spirits away. Emery Blagdon made a "healing machine," an aesthetic space that he believed could keep pain and illness at bay. Quilts evoke the protection of family even as they answer the practical need for warmth. Their compositions, both material and aesthetic, are in keeping with African-American rural styles that improvise with both pattern and materials to create great beauty from small means.
12. SIPGFA_161022_091.JPG: Unidentified Untitled (Coyote and Turtle), after 1930
13. SIPGFA_161022_094.JPG: Charlie Willeto Untitled (Mountain Lion Spirit Figure), ca. 1961 - 1964
14. SIPGFA_161022_097.JPG: Eddy Mumma Untitled (Twins), ca. 1978 - 1986
15. SIPGFA_161022_100.JPG: Personal Vision The artists represented here explore complex personal visions. Each has delved deeply into a privately defined project -- variously exploring belief, identity, spirituality, and communication. Achilles Rizzoli put his skills as an architectural draftsman to work in a series of intricate renderings that portray people he knew as elegant buildings or utopian cities. Visually and psychologically complex, Rizzoli's "portraits" speak volumes about their creator -- a man who largely kept to himself. J. B. Murray saw art as an active engagement with God. He believed that his scrawling script evidenced a spiritual message from the divine, positioning him as a conduit between heaven and earth. Charlie Willeto also interpreted his art as a communication with the divine. Willeto believed that the purpose of his carvings was not to convey the word of God to others on earth, but was his own form of negotiation with the Navajo deities as he sought to help his tribe transition into a modern era. Dan Miller uses painting and drawing to express memories, thoughts, and feelings that he is unable to voice with conventional language. Mart�n Ram�rez, who was also challenged by verbal expression, used drawing to sustain a sense of self, endure confinement, and chart an epic journey that entailed loss of home, family, and freedom.
16. SIPGFA_161022_104.JPG: Hawkins Bolden Untitled, 1987
17. SIPGFA_161022_107.JPG: The Beginning of Life in the Yellow Jungle 2003 plastic soda bottles, doll, clothing, bedding, wire, found metal, rubber glove, turtle shell, artificial flowers, Splash Zone compound, enamel, and spray paint on canvas on wood Thornton Dial Sr. born Emelle, AL 1928--died McCalla, AL 2016 Thornton Dial's assemblage presents a beginning -- a golden dawn with a child standing in a lush world of flowers. In this work Dial explores race in America -- a theme that preoccupied him over many decades. The colors are warm and optimistic; they sidestep a world that is entirely black or white. Using a "jungle" metaphor, Dial suggests the unending complexities of navigating and surviving in a world that is both beautiful and difficult.
18. SIPGFA_161022_116.JPG: The Soprano at the Mourning Easter Wake of 1968 1968 relief carved varnished walnut Daniel Pressley born Wasamasaw, SC 1918--died New York City 1971 Daniel Pressley learned the art of wood carving when he was a boy, from his grandfather who was a former slave. In South Carolina during the first half of the twentieth century, African-American families lived under the pall of racism. Pressley moved to New York City in 1953, like many African Americans of the era, in search of a better life. He became deft at compressing profound moments of human emotion into tight, controlled carvings. This carving shows a singer at the wake for Martin Luther King Jr., just after he was assassinated in 1968. Her clasped hands and anguished expression evoke the widespread passion and grief over the death of a hero to black Americans.
19. SIPGFA_161022_120.JPG: Iceman Crucified #4 1958 oil on canvas Ralph Fasanella born New York City 1914--died Yonkers, NY 1997 Ralph Fasanella cast his father, "Joe the Iceman," as the crucified Christ to explore ideas of suffering and sacrifice and to portray the working man as a persevering hero. Fasanella's parents were Italian immigrants who instilled in their son the values of work and solidarity. He became an artist who ardently championed labor and the common folk. "Lest We Forget" was Fasanella's impassioned plea to always honor the sacrifices of our forebears.
20. SIPGFA_161022_124.JPG: Struggle and Persistence The artists whose work is on view here discovered that art provided a powerful voice in a world where they had struggled to be heard. Ralph Fasanella believed that art was not solely for the elite and that one didn't have to be a professional artist in order to make powerful images; he understood that art could be a mighty tool for uniting the working class in a common cause. Issues of racial oppression and poverty are recurring themes. African-American artists including William Edmondson, Thornton Dial, Hawkins Bolden, and Bessie Harvey were born in the American South during the Jim Crow era. Their families recalled slavery, worked as sharecroppers and laborers, and faced unimaginable challenges. Each used art to bear witness, record memory, carry tradition, and proclaim self-worth. Joe Minter, Purvis Young, Herbert Singleton, and Lonnie Holley would carry this mantle forward. As young adults during the Civil Rights era, they felt more empowered than preceding generations to speak openly about oppression and injustice and to create bold works that don't apologize for the past but appeal for a better future.
21. SIPGFA_161022_126.JPG: The Way We Was 1990 carved and painted wood, metal locks, and hinges Herbert Singleton born New Orleans, LA 1945--died New Orleans, LA 2007 Herbert Singleton was born in the New Orleans neighborhood of Algiers. His art drew heavily on life in a corrosive inner-city neighborhood and addressed, comprehensively, both themes of racial injustice and the rich African-American cultural traditions of his region. Singleton started carving in the 1970s, making canes and relief carvings on old doors, cabinets, and driftwood. "When the river was low, I would find a plank of wood to carve." Singleton said in 1990. "I would look at it and wonder if someone's house and life fell apart."
22. SIPGFA_161022_131.JPG: The Dreamer about 1992--2014 steel and mixed media Joe Minter born Birmingham, AL 1943 Joe Minter is best known as the creator of the African Village, an art environment that he began in the late 1980s in Birmingham, Alabama, that is part sculpture garden, part history museum, and part memorial. A few years later Minter began to make pieces that function independently, such as The Dreamer. "The dream catcher represents the thoughts of a human being, thoughts from a faraway time, thoughts of the ancestors," says Minter. "Our cultural ties are to the ancestral place. Those ties cannot be broken, the ties to our own roots, to our family tree. Martin Luther King was our voice in the wilderness. He was chosen, he called to be our cry."
23. SIPGFA_161022_135.JPG: Crucifixion about 1932--37 limestone William Edmondson born Nashville, TN 1874-died Nashville, TN 1951 Stonecarver William Edmondson began making gravestones for the African-American community in and around Nashville, Tennessee, around 1927. He used a railroad spike as his chisel, hammering local limestone into geometric grave markers as well as sculptural forms of animals and people. Edmondson created at least four versions of Christ on the cross. He usually portrayed Jesus as strong, muscular, and resilient. This work presents a softer, younger version, yet the figure remains upright and aware, in keeping with his symbolic role in African-American art as one who brings deliverance and freedom.
24. SIPGFA_161022_140.JPG: Shields Landon ("S.L.") Jones Fiddler, 1975 Guitarist, 1976 Banjoist, 1976
25. SIPGFA_161022_144.JPG: The Struggle 1973--74 acrylic on wood Purvis Young born Miami, FL 1943--died Miami, FL 2010 Purvis Young was a native of Miami, Florida, who created a unique art environment in the neighborhood of Overtown. In 1971, Young decided to make a statement in his downtrodden neighborhood after being inspired by murals made by African-American activists in Chicago and Detroit. He decided to paint in a vacant alley of boarded up store fronts -- a blank slate -- with images that charted the challenges of this once-vibrant neighborhood. The Struggle is widely regarded as Young's most powerful and significant work from this period.
26. SIPGFA_161022_152.JPG: Yielding to the Ancestors While Controlling the Hands of Time about 1992 oil on wood and metal Lonnie Holley born Birmingham, AL 1950 "I travel around to see," the artist Lonnie Holley explains. "It's like walking back in time, to walk along the ocean, the beach, to walk in the sand. I am not trying to find my own footsteps in the sand, but to put my own footsteps where my ancestors might have stepped." Holley sees himself as a link connecting his ancestors -- brought to America as slaves -- to future generations. He explains that he gave this sculpture two heads; one is earthly, the other spiritual. "As we develop our personness, we learn to yield to the ancestors and the history of learning, we develop that inner head, that second head, the keeper head; the embankment of all wisdom."
27. SIPGFA_161022_154.JPG: Jon Serl Male Figure, 1967
28. SIPGFA_161022_158.JPG: 2 Dogs -- 3 BANDSMEN; and Camera 1963 oil on fiberboard Jon Serl born Olean, NY 1894--died Lake Elsinore, CA 1993 Jon Serl's paintings magnificently fuse the vivid life of his peripatetic, vaudeville upbringing with mature musings on survival, human relations, gender identity, morality, and his own artistic life in the company of chickens and chihuahuas. When Serl began painting in earnest in the late 1940s, he favored landscapes. He soon turned to portrayals of human interaction marked by saturated color and liquid-limbed, dream-like figures.
29. SIPGFA_161022_162.JPG: Clementine Hunter Melrose Quilt, ca. 1960
30. SIPGFA_161022_165.JPG: Untitled (Hart/Heart) about 1950--60 carved wood Ulysses Davis born Fitzgerald, GA 1913--died Savannah, GA 1990 Ulysses Davis carved this relief sculpture for his wife. Davis plays with words and form by depicting a hart, or mature male deer, bleating to his mate inside a heart-shaped frame. Playful young deer bound around a second border, which is set with additional heart shapes carved in relief. The piece, a departure from Davis's better-known presidential busts and fantastic animals, speaks about familial love.
31. SIPGFA_161022_168.JPG: Achilles G. Rizzoli The Kathredal - Mother Symbolically Represented, 1935
32. SIPGFA_161022_171.JPG: Achilles G. Rizzoli The Y.T.T.E. Plot Plan, Fifth Preliminary Study, 1939
33. SIPGFA_161022_184.JPG: Untitled (Nativity) about 1968 paint on tin David Butler born Good Hope, LA 1898--died Morgan City, LA 1997 David Butler fashioned a garden of pounded, cut, and painted metal forms around his Louisiana house. His sculptures fuse biblical imagery with characters from his dreams. The tiered layers, attached parts, and cut-out shapes created an animated array as wind and sunlight played across his installation. Butler, with other African Americans across the South, blended Christian beliefs with folk practices to create spaces that felt self-determined and protective in a world that was often harsh and unpredictable.
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Description of Subject Matter: Introductory sign for this gallery:
When the museum approached me to curate their folk art galleries, it thrilled me to no end to be associated with these "folk" and their creations. Growing up in Alabama during the 1940s and 50s, I was fortunate to live among many individuals for whom making things was a natural part of life. I treasure memories of sitting by my mother as she quilted, and watching my father carve tools out of wood -- what he called "just whittling and piddling." So I have had a deep interest and affection for such everyday objects -- long before the public caught on to them as folk art. By osmosis more than anything else, this kind of art has had a profound effect on my thinking about how and why people create.
These men and women whose work is presented here are not bound by aspirations to make "high art." With liberty to freely express what is in their hears and minds through all varieties of methods and materials familiar to them, these artists create works that possess unmistakable honesty and integrity. Sometimes the result is terrifying, and sometimes it is the most wonderful image that makes you feel good or laugh. This work is beautiful and so human. It is the ordinary made extraordinary.
William Christenberry, 2006
Artist and teacher, Washington DC

Pictures here usually include James Hampton's "The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly." Hampton worked on the piece for 14 years 1950-64 while living in Washington DC, building it in a renter garage. He made 180 components but only a portion are on display in the museum. He created notebooks bearing a secret writing system which has yet to be deciphered. He was a little odd.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: Folk Art) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2020_DC_SIPG_Folk: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: Folk Art (21 photos from 2020)
- 2019_DC_SIPG_Folk: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: Folk Art (17 photos from 2019)
- 2014_DC_SIPG_Folk: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: Folk Art (5 photos from 2014)
- 2012_DC_SIPG_Folk_Throne: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: Folk Art -- Restoring the Throne of the Third Heaven exhibit (31 photos from 2012)
- 2012_DC_SIPG_Folk: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: Folk Art (35 photos from 2012)
- 2011_DC_SIPG_Folk: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: Folk Art (32 photos from 2011)
- 2010_DC_SIPG_Folk: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: Folk Art (58 photos from 2010)
- 2008_DC_SIPG_Folk: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: Folk Art (28 photos from 2008)
- 2006_DC_SIPG_Folk: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: Folk Art (44 photos from 2006)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [(Smithsonian) Donald Reynolds Center (Everything)] [(Smithsonian) Donald Reynolds Center (Non-Events)] [Museums (Art)]
2016 photos: Seven relatively short trips this year: two Civil War Trust conference (Gettysburg, PA and West Point, NY, with a side-trip to New York City), my 11th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including sites in Utah, Nevada, and California), a quick trip to Michigan for Uncle Wayne's funeral, two additional trips to New York City, and a Civil Rights site trip to Alabama during the November elections. Being in places where people died to preserve the rights of minority voters made the Trumputin election even more depressing. Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Number of photos taken this year: just over 610,000.
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