Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 28, 1990 TAG: 9007280150
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF DeBELL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A young couple moved more deliberately through the exhibit, pausing to solemnly evaluate each object in academic art jargon.
Then there was the 35-ish woman who came in with two preteen girls. She examined one comic piece - it had to do with a hungry bird and the private parts of a startled boy - muttered "Oh my God," and immediately left the gallery with the two sniggering youngsters in tow.
Welcome to the world of contemporary folk art, a world of carved monsters and animals - particularly snakes - and of colorful paintings on subjects as diverse as comic books, Old Glory and the Christian gospel.
It's a world made by people who know nothing of art theory and who may never have visited a museum. They make their work from sticks and boards and pieces of tin. They cover it with house paint because that will withstand the weather while the work is left outside to catch the passing eye.
"One man's kindling is another man's art," said Naomi Bowles, who serves as weekend hostess at the exhibit. "It's in the eye of the beholder, I guess."
Children tend to love the work. Adults respond more problematically but rarely with indifference.
"I like that," said Brian Sieveking, the museum's adjunct curator and folk-art authority. "I don't like shows when the work is all just good enough that it passes. Nobody really likes it and nobody really hates it. It's like watching TV."
Two visiting shows are sharing the museum's second floor gallery. One is called "Miles Carpenter: A Second Century" and is devoted to the work of the Waverly woodcarver who died in 1985. The other exhibit is "Fine Folk: Art 'n' Facts From the Rural South."
Opening Sunday is "O, Appalachia," a show of work by 27 Southern folk artists, most of whom are still living. A number of the museum's own pieces are being shown, too.
"I'd like to sit down and get to know every one of these people," Bowles said of the artists. "I can't look at the exhibit for any length of time without a smile coming to my face."
The Roanoke museum began collecting contemporary folk art in the mid-1980s as part of its emphasis on regional work in collecting and in educational programs.
The Appalachian region has long been a rich source of folk art. It comes from the rural crafts tradition that for generations has yielded beautiful handmade furniture, quilts, weather vanes, cigar-store Indians and the like.
But the mountains and rural byways also have produced a strain of what Sieveking calls "pure artists" whose work is more decorative than utilitarian. They're typically untrained, uneducated and poor, he said, but inventive, highly imaginative and startlingly productive. They make their paintings and woodcarvings because "they are driven to, answering a purely creative calling."
These are the artists - James Harold Jennings of North Carolina, Maryland's Richard Burnside, the Rev. B.F. Perkins of Alabama and others - whose work is in the exhibits.
Their art may consist of elaborate and highly personal systems of imagery and symbolism having to do with religion and other parts of their lives. Since the postwar communications revolution began to penetrate the isolation in which the artists once functioned, their work also has begun to reflect modern influences such as comics, advertising and TV.
"There's a whole group with one foot in the rural, isolated, traditional, regionalist community and the other foot in cable television," Sieveking said.
Contemporary folk art can be seen along roadsides and in fields or on the sides of buildings. It can be buildings or other environments. Sieveking said it wouldn't be too hard to make a case that "the only real American folk art is building something weird in your front yard."
The subject is hotly debated among collectors, dealers and museum types. They don't agree on what folk art is. They don't agree on what it should be called. "Primitive," "visionary," "outsider" and "naive" are some of the terms that have been used, depending on the artist and the nature of the work in question. Even the seemingly generic term "folk art" is not universally accepted.
"Contemporary folk art" was itself widely regarded as a contradiction in terms until the late 1970s. Since then, according to Tara L. Tappert, curator of the Roanoke museum, art done since the turn of the century has been granted "aesthetic validity" as an "unselfconscious continuation of earlier American traditions in the arts."
That coincides roughly with the American Bicentennial, and some experts believe there is a patriotic basis for the great popularity of folk art. Sieveking agrees to a point, though he thinks there are other reasons, too.
One is that the work is made by hand, a quality that is increasingly rare. Another is that people are weary of elitism in art.
"I don't have a lot of respect for what museums have become, places for old stuff that has the stamp of approval of 10 or 12 people," Sieveking said.
"We need to show that art is more than a perfect painting of an apple or a bunch of nymphs flying around Perseus. I'd like for people to look at stuff without preconceptions and enjoy it for what it is."
The Miles Carpenter and "Fine Folk" exhibits continue through Sept. 9, "O, Appalachia" through Sept. 23. Admission is $2 for adults, $1.50 for senior citizens and 50 cents for children ages 6 to 17. Admission charges are suspended on Fridays.
***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on July 29, 1990\ Correction
Because of a copy editor's error a cutline in Saturday's Extra section incorrectly said "Adam and Eve and the Serpent" was created by Brian Sieveking, adjunct curator of the Roanoke Museum of Fine Arts. The sculpture was the work of Miles Carpenter.
Memo: correction