Delaware Art Museum showcases world of folk art
Print- •
-
Share
- Share this item
-
Grab the link
Copy and paste the link:
- Blog about it
- Close
- •
-
Post a Comment
- •
Favorite- •
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Be prepared to quell the instinct to plop yourself down on "The Last Frontier," a joyously colorful wooden love seat made out of found objects by folk artist Willie LeRoy Elliot.
Of course, if you did take a load off, you'd have quite the vantage point to study the snake-tongued sculpture by Bessie Harvey of Tennessee, described as a commentary on the chaos that ensued after she was discovered by the art world, and the eye-popping patterns in Nora McKeon Ezell's "Star Quilt," a study in impossible geometry.
And that's just the beginning of the brilliant colors, bizarre choices of details, unusual subjectmatter and mind-bending patterning that mark the Delaware Art Museum's two exhibits on folk art with gorgeously simple quilts, sculptures and paintings of the world of self-taught or outsider art.
You'll find the biggest sensory jolt in "Ancestry&Innovation: African American Art from the American Folk Art Museum," a traveling exhibit designed to woo your inner artist that runs through July 12. The Delaware companion exhibit, "Out of the Commonplace: The Folk Art of Delaware," is a quieter, calmer show with pieces and scenes plucked from life in the First State — quilts, baskets and exquisitely carved ducks. It runs through Aug. 16.
"Some people think that they don't have the background to understand folk art, but everybody does. We've all been living with it," says Carol Balick, the guest curator for "Out of the Commonplace."
Many of the pieces in the national show are big names in the rural South and urban North: Elliot, Harvey, Ezell, Louisiana painter Clementine Hunter; Gullah artist Sam Doyle of South Carolina; father-son painters Thornton Dial Sr. and Jr.; sculptor Kevin Sampson of Newark, N.J., and quilter Leola Pettway of Gee's Bend, Ala.
Their inclusion in a traditional museum is one more sign that folk art — also called self-taught, primitive, naive or outsider art — is gaining more acceptance as a form of art in its own right. Its primal forms and colors often spring from a need to create with what's on hand. Sometimes, the art form is a tradition passed down from generation to generation, one that today may be dying because the commercial need for the art is dying.
Most folk art was never designed to be shown in a formal museum, says Danielle Rice, executive director of the Delaware Art Museum. When it is, its context can be hard to understand — and understanding the context and the traditions from which it sprang are key in being able to appreciate the art.
Both environments — that of creation and that of display — are important, Rice says. Long wall panels explain the significance of each work in the national exhibit, but you don't have read them to appreciate many of the pieces, including "Star Quilt" and "The Last Frontier."
One of Balick's favorite pieces is "Barratt's Chapel," which Francis Lewis of Delmarva paints as a flat two-dimensional building, much in the manner of Matisse, Picasso and Cezanne in the early 1900s as their modern styles were developing and they were beginning to ignore the tradition of creating three dimensions in painting and move toward abstraction.
Rice leads a quick trip to the museum's own modern art exhibit after walking through the two folk art exhibits. The connections between the masters of modern art and the folk art on exhibit are both visceral and visual. The colors, the materials, techniques and even the subject matter leap off the walls.
The storytelling quilts "Grandfather's Cabin/Noah's Ark" by Elizabeth Talford Scott, which recalls her grandfather's house, and "Tar Beach" by Faith Ringgold, the story of a family freeing itself from the confines of the city, flow from the same traditions as the quilts in both the national and Delaware exhibits.
One final point, just be sure you are aware of this: You can't actually sit in "The Last Frontier," you know, or wrap yourself in one of the quilts.
And more's the pity.
____
On the Net:
Delaware Art Museum: http://www.delart.org
___
Information from: The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal, http://www.delawareonline.com
