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Tinwood Foundation

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Featuring Southern Black vernacular art, plus related information and events, from the Tinwood Foundation, Atlanta.

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51

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2 days ago

Lola Pettway was taught to quilt by generations of women before her, including her grandmother and her mother, Allie Pettway. Pettway was also influenced by her mother's quilting circle, which included Lucy Mingo and Candis Pettway.

Pettway was one of 13 children to Allie and John the Baptist Pettway, and by the age of 10 she was working in fields doing manual labor, where she and her siblings would work majority of the year, from March through June, and then from August until December.⁠
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This is a housetop quilt from 2002 by Lola Pettway, made with denim and yellow cotton fabric.⁠
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#LolaPettway #GeesBend by @tinwoodfoundation

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4 days ago

Although the majority of Thornton Dial's works are autobiographical in nature, few directly and explicitly reference his own life, instead more broadly exploring themes, locations, and events in his proximity and in the news (from the olympics to hurricanes, national elections, celebrities, the Iraq War, and 9/11). There is a universality in Dial's work, even through the symbol of the tiger, which occasionally served as a stand in for Dial himself but more often was symbolic of the larger lived experience of Black people in America.⁠
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In contrast, the works pictured here directly reference Dial's life and family, which is somewhat rare in his oeuvre. The works above recall a number of periods in Dial's life, from his childhood in the town of Emelle in Sumter County, Alabama, to his 1941 journey moving to Bessemer in a Ford with his half-brother, and subsequent move into a new home many years later.⁠
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⁠1) 𝘏𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 𝘖𝘭𝘥 𝘚𝘶𝘮𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘊𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘺 (𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘢𝘴 𝘗𝘶𝘮𝘱𝘴 𝘚𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘖𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘺), 1992⁠, Graphite on paper⁠, 30 x 44.5 in⁠ches⁠
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2) 𝘖𝘭𝘥 𝘍𝘰𝘳𝘥 𝘊𝘢𝘳, 𝘛-𝘔𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘭 (𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘊𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘉𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘐𝘯), 1990⁠, Graphite, watercolor, ink on paper⁠, 22.25 x 30.25 in⁠ches⁠
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3) 𝘌𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘦, 1999⁠, Graphite, watercolor on paper⁠, 30 x 44.25 in⁠ches⁠
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4) 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘍𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺 (𝘔𝘺 𝘔𝘢𝘮𝘢’𝘴 𝘗𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦), 1996⁠, Graphite⁠ on paper⁠, 25.75 x 40.75 inches⁠
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5) 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘔𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘗𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘺 𝘏𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘦, 1990⁠, Graphite, watercolor on paper⁠, 22.25 x 30 inches⁠
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#ThorntonDial by @tinwoodfoundation

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6 days ago

In 1989 Joe Minter retired and began creating the African Village in America. This work, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘰𝘰𝘭𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘳, is among his earliest large-scale metal sculptures, produced shortly after he left his job in construction. Minter had been working with metal for much of his life, and had always fashioned things in resourceful ways—from handmade toys for himself as a child and then later for his own children, to the masonry in his home—though he hadn't made sculptures as art prior to the creation of the Village.⁠
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𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘰𝘰𝘭𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘳, 1990⁠
48 x 16 x 15 in⁠ches⁠
Found metal, chain⁠
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#JoeMinter by @tinwoodfoundation

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8 days ago

Portraits of Ronald Lockett in his Bessemer studio by Bill Arnett, as well as 2 images (slide 5 & 6) of Lockett with studio visitors including Amiri Baraka, Lonnie Holley, Babatunde Lawal, and Roy Blount Jr.⁠
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#RonaldLockett by @tinwoodfoundation

87

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10 days ago

James "Son Ford" Thomas sourced the clay for his sculptures from sites near his home in Leland, Mississippi, including the silty riverbeds of the Mississippi River and the clay-rich hills around Greenwood and Black Bottom. To make the clay stronger and more workable, Thomas developed a number of techniques including letting the clay soak up rainwater and adding wax and hair grease to the clay body. ⁠
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In addition to being a musician, Thomas worked as a gravedigger. Although he made his first skull sculpture as a child, through his work digging graves Thomas was frequently faced him with questions of mortality. This experience informed his repeated use of the skull as a subject, with his sculptures functioning as memento mori, reminders of the inevitability of death.⁠
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“I make a face first, then make me a skull. First I shape it up like a regular man's head. Then I cut it down to a skeleton head. That’s the onliest way you can get a shape" - James "Son Ford" Thomas on his technique. ⁠
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𝘜𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘭𝘦𝘥, c. 1980s⁠
Clay, teeth⁠
6 x 6 x 6 inches⁠
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#JamesSonFordThomas by @tinwoodfoundation

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13 days ago

Mary T. Smith used lettering as both a formal element and as a way of sharing ideas. Smith made signs devoid of imagery, messages meant to be seen by passersby on the road. In the religious scenes she frequently depicted, Smith would add text with various phrases, ”The Lord No Me” or “I Love the Name of the Lord”. Though she was capable of legible script and cursive writing, as Bill Arnett notes, Smith often chose instead to use text in purposefully unintelligible ways. The choice to use invented words and abstracted text may have served as a way to maintain a level of privacy within her work, or possibly she was instead using the visual patterning and graphic nature of text as a formalist design technique.⁠
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𝘜𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘭𝘦𝘥, n.d.⁠
House Paint on wood⁠
24 x 24 inches⁠
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#MaryTSmith by @tinwoodfoundation

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16 days ago

Since creating sandstone tombstones for his niece and nephew in 1979, Lonnie Holley has continued to work in the material throughout his career. Sandstone's ability to be carved with a variety of tools, as well as its abundance in hillsides surrounding Birmingham iron foundries, where Holley would sources buckets of it for free, made it an obvious material choice.⁠ Holley's work was first shown publicly in 1981 after he brought a few sandstone works to the Birmingham Museum of Art, where director Richard Murray immediately exhibited them. Shortly after, Holley's work appeared in a group exhibition at the Smithsonian following an introduction by Murray.⁠
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𝘜𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘭𝘦𝘥, n.d.⁠
Sandstone, metal crutches, wire⁠
48 x 22 x 9 inches⁠
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@lonnieholleysuniverse #LonnieHolley by @tinwoodfoundation

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18 days ago

Thornton Dial was born this month in 1928 in the rural town of Emelle, Alabama. He was born on September 10 in a house in the field of Luther Elliot's plantation, where various members of his family worked as sharecroppers. In 1941, 12-year-old Dial moved to Bessemer, Alabama, to live with relatives, in search of improved economic opportunities. In Bessemer, using his knowledge of metalwork from decades of employment at the Pullman Standard Plant, Dial began making objects, though it wasn't until he reached his fifties that he began seeing the things he created as art.⁠
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These portraits of Dial were taken c. 1990 by Bill Arnett.⁠ ⁠
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#ThorntonDial by @tinwoodfoundation

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20 days ago

In 1989, Joe Minter retired and began creating the African Village in America, his sprawling art environment in Birmingham, Alabama. Minter began building the village after hearing that the city was constructing a Civil Rights museum, as he feared that the "foot soldiers" of the movement would be left out of the official narrative. Though originally dedicated to both the foot soldiers and figureheads of the Civil Rights Movement, Minter's environment expanded to include memorials and commemorations for a number of historical events and tragedies, ranging from the Sandy Hook shooting to the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina.⁠
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Photos by Bill Arnett, shot between 1997 - 2001⁠.⁠
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#JoeMinter by @tinwoodfoundation

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22 days ago

Represented broadly across the Tinwood Foundation Collection are a number of functional objects ranging from artworks produced with everyday objects used as a painting or assemblage surface due to the accessibility of the materials (Mose Tolliver's painted suitcase) or the objects significance (Lonnie Holley's painted shovel), to works simply made to function as utilitarian art objects (E.M. Bailey's ceramic vase). In many cases, the artists were part of the tradition of "yard shows", which, for obvious reasons, typically sees a faded distinction between an artist's home life and their artistic production. This merging of the two realms means a number of quotidian items—including furniture, bottles, appliances, jugs, trays, doors, paint cans, chairs, helmets, tables, and shoes—become surfaces for creative expression.⁠
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Listed in order of appearance:⁠
Mose Tolliver (suitcase), Z.B. Armstrong (shoes), Mary T. Smith (Clorox bottle), E.M. Bailey (vase), Ronald Lockett (icebox), Lonnie Holley (shovel), Gertrude Morgan (jug), Mose Tolliver (helmet), Hawkins Bolden (chair), Rosie Lee Light (jug).⁠
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#TinwoodFoundation by @tinwoodfoundation

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a month ago

While in prison in 1960, Joe Light received a message from God. After listening to a preachers sermon, Light returned to his cell where heard a voice speaking to him claiming to be God. Light asked the voice to prove itself—he stepped up to his cell door and asked it to have a bird land on the windowsill. Sure enough, a bird landed on the sill as Light had asked. Light described this encounter as what led him to Judaism. The '𝘉𝘪𝘳𝘥𝘮𝘢𝘯' imagery seen here, and repeated frequently in Light's work, functions as a self-portrait referencing the guiding bird which brought him to religious enlightenment.⁠
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𝘉𝘪𝘳𝘥 𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘥, n.d.⁠
Paint on wood board⁠
16 x 20 inches⁠
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#JoeLight by @tinwoodfoundation

59

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a month ago