As February—Black History Month—turns to March—Women’s History Month—it’s worth noting that three women played key roles in recording the African-American experience in rural Alabama in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Through oral history, photography and art, they captured a way of life defined by deep poverty and Jim Crow segregation, but rich in stories, music, religion and strong family ties.

Arguably the most famous of these women was Ruby Pickens Tartt of Livingston (1880-1974). Daughter of a prominent Black Belt cotton grower, she became captivated at an early age by the black community surrounding her in Sumter County. She attended Alabama State Normal College (now the University of West Alabama), studying under the progressive educator Julia Tutwiler. She later attended the prestigious Chase School of Art in New York, where she studied under the realist painter William Merritt Chase. The combination of her early interest in the people of the Black Belt, her art training and financial need, led Tartt to accept a job with the Works Progress Administration during the Depression. In 1936 she was appointed chair of the local Federal Writers’ Project in Sumter County, whose responsibilities included accompanying the ethnomusicologist John Lomax to record folk songs for the Library of Congress. Between the two, they compiled a large collection of recordings of songs and interviews with ex-slaves. Among them was the local cook Vera Hall Ward, who is now considered among the most important folk, blues and spirituals singers of the 20th century. The online Encyclopedia of Alabama (EOA) includes Lomax’s recording of Vera Hall singing “Railroad Bill.”

Instead of using a tape recorder, Mary Morgan Keipp (1875-1961) documented life in the Black Belt with a different instrument—a camera. A native of Selma, Keipp trained in the Northeast to become a nurse-anesthetist. Like Tartt, she was also exposed to the visual arts while away from Alabama. Between 1899 and 1904, Keipp exhibited her photographs, which she made on trips home to Selma, with some of the greatest photographers in America, including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen and Thomas Eakins. She returned permanently to Selma in 1904 and ceased exhibiting. As photography scholar Frances Robb writes in her EOA entry on Keipp: “Although some of Keipp’s photographs were publicly exhibited and probably interpreted across a spectrum of racial attitudes, no comic or denigrating elements are evident in her work. Because her photographic activity was not reported in Selma newspapers and was completely unknown outside her family at her death, her images were apparently not intended to influence Alabamians’ ideas about race and culture. Instead, they are most appropriately viewed as Keipp’s personal appreciation of rural and small-town Alabama life and a means of artistic and perhaps social discovery.”

The last of the three women, who documented African American life in postbellum Alabama, was Maria Howard Weeden of Huntsville (1846-1905). Born a generation earlier than Tartt and Keipp, Weeden also studied art—not in the North but from the successful local portraitist William Frye. But her education and youth were profoundly interrupted by the Civil War. Her relatively prosperous family was forced to flee Huntsville when Union troops occupied the city in 1862. When they returned after the war, they were financially ruined. To supplement the family income Howard (as she was called), began producing hand-painted greeting cards and writing romantic novels, which she then illustrated with her own calligraphy. In the 1890s she produced the most important work of her career—brush-and-ink portraits of ex-slaves who lived nearby. These straightforward but sympathetic images gained her international recognition and eventual exhibitions in Chicago, Berlin and Paris. Today Howard Weeden’s work and life can be seen firsthand in the Weeden House Museum near downtown Huntsville. Built in 1819, the Federal style house is one of the oldest in Alabama.

My first year here, friends and I visited several must-sees: Vulcan Park, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Whistlestop Café in Irondale, the Frank Lloyd Wright house in Florence, the Helen Keller Festival in Tuscumbia and the Sidewalk Film Festival. Recently I also had the privilege of visiting Harper Lee’s hometown, also where Truman Capote spent his childhood years, in Monroeville, and an interesting tour of Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park. A great start to touring Alabama, don’t you agree?

But there’s still so many sites in this rich state to see. Here’s my Top 10 “Bucket List” for 2011:

1. Chilton County peaches—I may buy dozens of peaches during the summer at the Pepper Place Saturday Market, but this year I want to go to the source. And I want peach ice cream.
2. U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville—I’ve always been interested in planes and spaceships, maybe because I grew up as an Air Force brat. From what I’ve heard, this space center rivals the Air & Space Museum in D.C., and I can’t wait to visit.
3. Cheaha State Park—simply because I hear it’s beautiful. I love to hike, and used to do so frequently as a child with my grandfather at Lake George in upstate New York. Do you know of any good trails at Cheaha?
4. Mobile—the whole city. Period. I recently raveled there for AHF and I’m so enamored with the architecture, food and people. I want more time to explore! Luckily AHF is hosting one SUPER institute, and one SES institute, in the Mobile area this summer. And both institutes focus on the great culture of the Gulf Coast region. Check out ahf.net in the upcoming weeks for all the details.
5. The Hank Williams Museum—It’s The Year of Alabama Music and I plan to celebrate with Hank, The Temptations, Jimmy Buffet and all the greats. Who is your favorite Alabama musician?
6. Auburn—Now this isn’t to put down Tuscaloosa! I’ve spent a lot of time in T-town and found the downtown charming, the campus beautiful and the local restaurants tasty. It’s time to see what the other football town has to offer too!
7. Jasper—this town in Walker County is home to a beautiful old house where a Hollywood starlet, Tallulah Bankhead, once got married. Now the Bankhead House and Heritage Center, this will be the site of this year’s Museum on Main Street exhibit, “Journey Stories,” a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institute and AHF. I am so excited to hear Alabamians’ own journey stories and to see the exhibit travel to five other host sites: Alexander City, Marion, Mobile, Eufaula and Arab.
8. Alabama Book Festival—I am a book nerd, there’s no doubt about it. So when I heard this festival was held at Old Alabama Town in Montgomery, I was thrilled at the chance to combine two of my passions: books and history.
9. The Kentuck Festival—More than 250 artists in downtown Northport on a beautiful October weekend? Sign me up!
10. Selma—The Bridge Crossing Jubilee in March at the Edmund Pettus Bridge remembers sad events in our history that, while hard to face, should not be forgotten. But it also brings light to the determination of the protesters during the Civil Rights Movement and the good they stood for.

What other sites in Alabama should I see? What’s on your Alabama “Bucket List” for 2011?

The next day we drive a few miles north to Hogback Mountain Trading Post/Pawn Shop located in a small nondescript building on the edge of Navajo territory. The shop’s fourth-generation proprietor spends a good deal of time sharing stories behind the displays of native art work, artifacts, handiwork and the artists that created them. The smell of leather draws our attention to a banister surrounding a loft above us hung with rows of saddles. He explains they belong to native cowhands that pawn them after roundups and rodeos for safekeeping over the winter, a virtually free storage service. He narrates the history of handmade rugs and turquoise jewelry on consignment from his fellow tribe members and a collection of not-for-sale arrowheads on display in a glass case.

His most engaging story is about a Navahjo artist/friend who creates the intricate “sand art” that caught our attention the moment we entered the post. Using indigenous sand as a medium, the artist crafts cultural designs and colorful regional landscapes glued on plywood. The shop owner tells us, “I arranged a showing of his work at a well-known gallery in San Francisco. The morning of the exhibit, we loaded several of his ‘paintings’ in my van and headed west. The drive that normally takes four hours lasted twice as long because every time he spotted sand or rocks in colors he could use in his artwork, we had to stop long enough for him to gather the materials. So, we arrived at the gallery with the van loaded down with rocks and sand but too late to arrange his ‘sand art’ works for the evening showing.”

Please tell us about your own encounters with local artists, or artists you’ve met on your own journeys across the U.S. and other countries.

Our recent blog “assignment” was to write about a work of art or literature that made a significant impression on us at a young age. I put off this “assignment” because my childhood favorites seem juvenile for the scholarly AHF blog. But here are the works that I read and reread, looked at again and again.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett was my favorite childhood book. The orphaned Mary Lennox is sent from India to England to live with her rich uncle at Misselthwaite Manor where she finds a walled garden and friendship. I dream of finding a secret garden like the one pictured in the book and believe in the healing power of nature. I have given this book to every girl in my family at age eight since I won the award for reading the most books (or for being the nerd) in the third grade when I read it.

The first book that I loved was The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by DuBose Heyward. The little country girl bunny dreamed of growing up and becoming one of the five Easter bunnies. The big, white, male rabbits laughed at the little Cottontail and told her to go back to the country. Cottontail grows up to be a mother of 21 bunnies and is chosen to be the special Easter bunny because she is wise, kind and swift from teaching her bunnies to take care of themselves. As a working mother, Cottontail has inspired me to teach my children to be independent and to pursue their dreams.

With an art teacher and English professor as parents, I was exposed to great works of art and literature at a young age. At the National Gallery of Art, my favorite artwork was Whistler’s “Symphony in White No. 1: The White Girl.” The innocent young woman stands on the skin of a bear. The girl’s red hair is a statement of empowerment in the “symphony in white.” As a kindergartner flipping through art books, my favorite picture was the young Infanta Margarita in Velázquez’s “The Maids of Honor.” I see my own daughter as Velázquez’s princess around whom the family revolves.

In reflection on my childhood favorites, I realize that each work focused on a female character. These female images have empowered me as a woman.

Remember the scene in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” when Ferris’s best friend Cameron stands before Georges Seurat’s giant painting, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte? He just stares and stares and stares.

I’ve done that too.

The moment I walked into The Art Institute of Chicago, I was in heaven. Let me wander around an art museum and soak in paintings and sculptures, and I’m a happy girl. But when I saw Seurat’s painting, I was transfixed. The scene is unbelievably beautiful: an island in the Seine, women with bustled dresses and umbrellas, men in top hats and long coats. Looking at this painting is like being transported back in time.

Seurat is a Post-Impressionist and used his pointillist technique to create this painting in 1884. Post-Impressionists “developed a structured, more monumental art to depict modern urban life,” according to The National Gallery of London’s website. Housed in that museum is Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières, another scene taken from the River Seine.

The Impressionists who came before Seurat were known for paintings that, to some critics, looked more like “sketches” than completed paintings. According to The Metropolitan Museum of Art website, “The artists’ loose brushwork gives an effect of spontaneity and effortlessness that masks their often carefully constructed compositions…”

These are undoubtedly my favorite paintings, next to Seurat. And my favorite painter? Why Claude-Oscar Monet, of course.

I could stare at a Monet painting for hours, and I often did when I lived in London a few years ago. The National Gallery is truly amazing, for one, because it’s free. It was also located a short distance from my office there, so I could spend lunch hours gazing at some stunning works, namely The Thames Below Westminster by Monet. He painted this in about 1871 when he lived in London during the Franco-Prussian War. Another favorite at The National Gallery is Snow Scene at Argenteuil, completed in 1875. This painting is of boulevard Saint-Denis, northwest of Paris, where Monet lived for a time. I am entranced by the effect of the snow on the street and trees; it looks almost like it’s underwater, or floating among the clouds.

The first time I ever saw a Monet in person was at The Met. My two favorites there: Water Lilies and Haystacks (Effect of Snow and Sun) are on view right now. I stood before these paintings, trying to study each brush stroke and how the colors were layered on one another. This past Christmas I returned to The Met and found these paintings again. I stayed in front of Water Lilies for so long, my friends thought I was lost. I told them, next time, just find Monet, and that’s where I’ll be.

Sources — The Metropolitan Museum of Art: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/imml/hd_imml.htm; The Art Institute of Chicago: http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/27992?search_id=1; The National Gallery: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/georges-seurat

I was in high school when Charlie Brown made his debut in America’s daily newspapers on October 2, 1950. I had long been an avid fan of comic strips, but I was not the least bit impressed with this clueless moon-headed kid that my younger brother could have drawn. Why should anyone want to read a comic strip about a boy in elementary school who is already a loser? During my years in college, I occasionally found the Peanuts strip somewhat amusing, but it was not until I had a “Charlie Brown” experience several years later that I came to appreciate the profound genius that surfaced in Charles Schultz’s simply drawn characters.

I was spending several days with my friend Stan and his wife at their Napa Valley home in 1970. One morning as Stan and I were to drive to Sacramento on business, his wife asked that we swing by her friend Joyce’s house and drop off some placemats she had made for their afternoon bridge club meeting. So as we stopped near Santa Rosa, parking in the circular driveway of a ranch-style house splayed across a small hill, Stan insisted I go with him to see Chuck’s place inside. So I helped him deliver the placemats. Joyce greeted us at the door and invited us inside. The size of the huge foyer impressed me but not as much as the art work covering every wall—neatly framed comic strip characters traipsing across white backgrounds. Stan asked if Chuck was busy. “Are you kidding? That’s all he does is work in his studio,” she groaned, “but you’re welcome to show your guest around the house.” I insisted we had no time to spare, so Stan handed over the placemats and we left.

As we drove towards Sacramento, I commented on Joyce’s house and her collection of art. “What kind of work does Chuck do?” I asked. Amazed at my inquiry, Stan suddenly realized I had unknowingly visited the home of Charles Schultz, the creator of Peanuts. Although surrounded by overwhelming evidence, I was clueless. For a moment I felt that Lucy might pop out of the back seat of Stan’s car and shout, “You blockhead!”

From that “Charlie Brown” moment on I read the Peanuts strip from a more analytical perspective, observing that the artist was expressing his philosophy of life through Charlie Brown. It amazed me how Charles Schultz could capture both our hopes and insecurities inside one simple strip. How many times did Charlie Brown approach the football with renewed hope only to end up flat on his back in the final frame?

After Charles Schultz suffered a stroke in the 1990s, he questioned whether he should discontinue the strip, but a quick recovery allowed him to turn out daily strips until his death in the year 2000. Many fans observed that thoughts of mortality began showing up in Schultz’s work as his time of death drew near. In one segment Linus asks Charlie Brown, “When you’ve died do you get to come back?” Charlie answers, “If they stamp your hand.”

Schultz’s death marked the end of new, original Peanuts comic strips, but Charlie Brown lives on in reruns, even at age 60. Good grief!

During October, we at the Alabama Humanities Foundation will bring you a series of blog posts highlighting some of our favorite humanities topics. These could be art history, literature, film studies…whatever we find interesting, whatever we’re passionate about.

We hope you will comment and tell us what books you love, what films you could watch again and again, or what pieces of art strike your heart.

Our first post comes from AHF Chair Bob Whetstone and celebrates Charlie Brown’s 60th birthday. Happy Birthday, Charlie Brown! And Happy National Arts and Humanities Month!!

With the exhibition “Eudora Welty: Exposures and Reflections” opening September 2 at the Museum of Mobile, I am reflecting on my memory of Eudora Welty’s visit to Agnes Scott College in 1977. She seemed elderly as she walked up the chapel aisle to read from the podium to the eagerly listening Scotties. Now I realize that she was only in her late 60s. At previous Writers’ Festivals, we had heard Robert Penn Warren, Reynolds Price and Josephine Jacobsen, but Eudora Welty touched our Southern sense of self.

Until a recent visit with Welty’s niece Mary Alice White for the Southern Literary Trail, I was unaware of Welty’s photography. Welty considered her work as a writer and a photographer of equal importance and claimed “her two art forms were parallel activities, with photography never directly affecting the product of her pen” (exhibition brochure). The juxtaposition of Welty’s words with the photographs in the exhibition may question her assertion.

At the opening of the exhibition, Frances Robb, an independent art and cultural historian who specializes in historic photography, will discuss Welty’s photography in the context of other women photographers. In the early 1930s, Eudora Welty traveled around Mississippi as a junior publicity agent for the WPA (Works Progress Administration). On these trips, Welty photographed people from many diverse racial and economic backgrounds. Welty’s short story, “Death of a Traveling Salesman,” was published in 1936 and received high acclaim that catapulted Welty into the American spotlight as one of the century’s great Southern literary voices. Welty claimed that her photography did not directly affect her writing, but narrative is present in both creative expressions.

In the exhibit’s wall text, curator Jacob Laurence states “the two art forms become a detailed record of the region and iconic images of the South, along the way leading people through a winding story from the mind and experiences of one storyteller.” Welty explained herself in her autobiographical One Writer’s Beginnings:

“My instinct—the dramatic instinct—was to lead me, eventually, on the right
track for a storyteller: the scene was full of hints, pointers, suggestions and promises of things to find out and know about human beings.”

As editor and contributor of Eudora Welty as Photographer and winner of the 2009 Eudora Welty Award, Pearl McHaney, associate professor of English at Georgia State University, notes that Welty’s photographs reflect her “recording of the Great Depression South without an agenda other than her own curiosity and artistic eye.” When the exhibition travels from Mobile to the Troy University’s Rosa Parks Library and Museum in Montgomery and Atlanta History Center in Georgia, McHaney will lecture on Welty as a photographer.

Explore views of Southern culture as seen through the eyes of Welty as part of the tri-state Southern Literary Trail. Visit Museum of Mobile for more information about the Welty exhibit.

Nathan Glick shows his WWII sketches.

How do we, as civilians, understand war?

Nathan Glick, a WWII veteran and combat artist, brought World War II to life for SUPER teachers June 11 with his portfolio of portraits of heroic WWII pilots and sketches of combat and soldiers at leisure. At 98 years old, Nathan Glick vividly remembers every location where he witnessed and recorded the personal stories and graphic images of WWII. Last week at the SUPER Institute, teachers explored World War II, considered by many to be the last “good” war, through art, music and literature. The lead scholar, Dr. Alan Brown, professor of English at the University of West Alabama, showed the PBS documentary film “They Drew Fire” about the 100 U.S. servicemen and civilians who served as combat artists in WWII. You can see the art gallery of their work, often unseen since the war, on the PBS website.

Members of the June 9-11 SUPER Institute program.

The SUPER Teacher Institute exemplifies the theme of the keynote address “Student Voice—through the Arts” by Dr. Tommy Bice, the Deputy State Superintendent with the Alabama State Department of Education. Alabama Institute for Education in the Arts (AIEA) invited Dr. Bice to be the luncheon speaker for the AIEA Teacher Institute in Montgomery, an AHF grant-funded project. Dr. Bice challenged teachers to listen to students and understand their interests through the arts. As an example of the integration of arts to teach the core curriculum, he used his own positive educational experience in the arts in elementary school in Alexander City. As a young student, he played the Mad Hatter in the play “Alice in Wonderland.” In an effort to decrease the number of dropouts in Alabama schools (currently about 5,000 a year), Dr. Bice believes that all children can become engaged through the arts. He quoted Ron Edmonds, an influential educational researcher: “We can, whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us.” The arts are a powerful tool to hear the student’s voice and to teach history, literature and mathematics.

Written by: Susan P.