ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 13, 1996 TAG: 9610150047
SECTION: HOMES PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOAN BRUNSKILL ASSOCIATED PRESS
A proud family commissions a painting of its solid home, a needlewoman hand-stitches a whole community of little buildings over a quilt. Craftsmen carve wooden steeples on a fireboard, build a toy-size schoolhouse in painted tin, mold a model church in plaster with tiny glass windows.
The buildings they live in and around have long provided American folk artists with some of their most appealing and revealing subjects. The evidence is easy to find in any representative sampling of folk art.
A particularly focused selection is set out in the galleries of the Museum of American Folk Art, in ``A Place for Us: Vernacular Architecture in American Folk Art,'' an exhibition that will be on display through Jan. 5, 1997.
``Architectural imagery is so pervasive in American folk art, it's across the board, across the centuries,'' said curator Stacy C. Hollander, who organized the exhibition of around 100 pieces that colorfully support this statement.
As chroniclers of daily life, ``the artists we call `folk' today have preserved the way America looks since at least the 18th century,'' she says.
This rich body of American folk art is a priceless heritage, Hollander says, because it has so much to tell us about what mattered to people and how architectural traditions evolved.
``What comes through in all these representations is an overwhelming sense of achievement and pride,'' Hollander said, on a tour of the exhibition in all its variety.
There's a 10-year-old schoolgirl's sampler of the Providence State House; one of painter ``Grandma'' Moses' nostalgic views of upstate New York; an elegant little 1882 cupola-topped building in painted tin and wood that's actually a squirrel cage.
People enthusiastically recorded images of whatever they were proud of, from log cabins to skyscrapers.
The ``Farm of H. Windle,'' an 1875 oil painting, is a good example. The artist, Henry Dousa, featured the Indiana farmer's prize bull in truly outsize proportion. And there probably isn't another farm for miles around, but the German immigrant's house and lawn are carefully enclosed within a sharp white fence.
``The art works are often a collaboration between artist and client over what to preserve on record, how to have it look its best,'' Hollander said. ``So there was some manipulation in terms of perspective, for example, in how things were shown.
``Folk art is often thought of as naive, simple - but, in fact, many kinds of sophisticated decisions went into these `primitive' works.''
A lighthouse looms very large in a seaport picture, since it attracted shipping business. Paintings show how architecture in colder New England was based on a central hearth, while a handsome southern plantation house could have its kitchen in a separate building.
Other works closely reflect the artist's life. A towering model of the Empire State Building, teased together from interlocking pieces of cherry wood without use of glue or nails, was made around 1931 by an anonymous artist who helped to build the skyscraper.
A captured Confederate soldier's sketchbook records life in prison; the blue glaze on a 4-gallon stoneware crock depicts the pottery where it was made; a sailor's scrimshaw miniature, lovingly scratched on whale ivory, recalls his ``Sweet Home.''
There are many stories of individuals and their homes. But images in folk art also record the social structure of a community; the prestige of commercial buildings, banks and shops; the importance of railroads and waterways, the advantage to a hotel owner of adjacent vineyards.
``We can look at these works today as valuable documents that preserve an architectural legacy, and also tell us a lot about how buildings were used,'' Hollander said.
``But first and foremost, they are works of art, making a statement about people's achievement.''
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. AP Artist Henry Dousa painted this 1875 oil onby CNBcanvas, "Farm of H. Windle," showing a property in Sugar Creek,
Parke County, Ind. He carefully included a larger-than-life
rendering of Windle's prize bull, beside the simplified gothic
Revival house with its large lawn, enclosed by a fence amid an
otherwise open landscape. color
2. "Sweet Home" says the inscription incised on this piece of whale
ivory by an unknown artist in 1851. On long voyages, sailors'
spare-time activity included making scrimshaw items, decorated with
images that expressed their poignant thoughts of home. color
3. This painted tin and wood squirrel cage with its elegant
architectural detail was made in 1882 in Chester County, Pa., by an
unknown artist. It's a reflection of middle-class prosperity.
color