Comment on this story What: “Mirror, Mirror” and “Works in Brick, Stone, and Wood” Where: The Literacy Imperative, 201 Harriet Tubman Street (673-8988), and UT’s Ewing Gallery, 1715 Volunteer Boulevard (974-3200) When: L.I. Exhibition thru Dec. 10 (with an artists’ talk and reception from 2-4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 5); UT Exhibition thru Dec. 18

African Americans dominate two current shows

by Heather Joyner Spica

Seeing the art show titled “Mirror Mirror” now at the Literacy Imperative (“celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement”), we might question to what extent attitudes about race have evolved within the past half-century. Sometimes it seems we still have mighty far to go. True, African-American artists included in the above exhibition have enjoyed advantages the 19th and early 20th century artisans featured in UT’s “Works in Brick, Stone, and Wood” would have deemed inconceivable. But our nation’s honoring Rosa Parks or attempting to finally bring to justice the surviving murderers of Emmett Till hardly compensates for wrongs ranging from denying voting privileges to discouraging opportunities for people of color. Which is why I’d hoped that “Mirror Mirror” would be a bit more challenging in its messages. Instead, it consists of a hodgepodge of works that are interesting but often unrelated to civil rights. That’s fine if we aren’t led to expect something different. Nevertheless, “Mirror Mirror” is worthy of our attention, as is the concurrent exhibition at the Ewing Gallery.

Stone sculpture, furniture, and building materials crafted long ago by African Americans in Tennessee were not meant to express anything specific about the black experience. Visiting the Ewing Gallery show, we realize they instead provided a measure of creative ingenuity and, when slavery wasn’t involved, a degree of economic freedom for their makers. Unfortunately, there’s not much on display. The exhibition is a nod to subject matter that deserves vigorous endorsement. Why? Beyond being significant to our state’s heritage between the 1850s and 1930s, Isaac Dockery, Richard Poynor, William Edmondson, and Lewis Buckner (all born slaves or born to former slaves) managed to produce accomplished and distinctive work in a not-so-accommodating environment. In fact, Edmondson’s stone carving was distinctive enough that in 1937 he became the first African American to mount a solo show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

“Works in Brick, Stone, and Wood” presents a pair of graceful ladder-back chairs and a rocker made by Poynor (a native of Williamson County), a number of robust and primitive-looking carvings by Nashvillian Edmondson, an intricate dresser built by Buckner (who, like Dockery, lived in Sevier County) and a collection of handmade bricks (one that we know was Dockery’s doing). As such, the show is quite limited—more like a teaser for the show it perhaps could be. The stories behind the artists are intriguing, yet not entirely evident given few examples. On loan by his granddaughter Regina Evans, Buckner’s dresser employs designs and methods of workmanship common to leather tooling; however, without other pieces to compare it to, we can’t decide if that was Buckner’s usual approach (as the show’s curator Josette Rabun assured me it was). Edmondson’s figures were inspired by religious visions, but we’d not necessarily know that looking at his buxom bride or trio of doves. And for Pete’s sake...what can I say about bricks aside from their ages or markings?

In contrast to the Ewing exhibition, “Mirror Mirror” is awhirl with many styles in a variety of mediums manipulated by 20 individuals both alive and no longer living. Situated in the cavernous space south of Magnolia where the Literacy Imperative has established itself is work by artists including Joseph Delaney (recently featured at UT’s Downtown Gallery), Carl Gombert, Bessie Harvey, and Sammie Nicely, as well as art that some viewers may find less familiar. Among the exhibitors is Eddie Davis, the organizer of the show. In the 1960s, Davis left Knoxville for the Art Institute of Chicago (and eventually, the Rochester Institute of Technology), returning to Knoxville in the late 1990s. According to one of the exhibition’s handouts, the show’s intent is “to be a catalyst for communal dialogue about social justice, race relations, and our community’s tolerance of each other.”

Again, “Mirror Mirror” would, in my mind, benefit from better fitting its different descriptions. It’s marvelous in many ways anyhow, but I’d like to see more pieces like Edye Ellis’ delicately wrought faces commemorating four young girls killed in a 1963 church bombing in Birmingham. Although it’s been decades since that incident, we as a society must continue to confront hatred and the senseless loss of innocents; Ellis’ catharsis—if it is indeed that—is visually compelling in addition to being personally meaningful; it functions on more than one level. And a smallness of scale lends her subject an intimacy and tone of quiet reverence within a framework of issues important to us all.

Davis’ captivating art—in this case combined paintings serving as a backdrop for four family “portrait busts”—is essentially social narrative despite abstract leanings. And Gombert’s grid of 12 self-portraits in which he appears as Arab, African American, and Asian in addition to other identities reminds us of how superficial appearances can be.

Of course I could be missing something in works that I don’t find adequately “activist”-minded. In his tome “Parting the Waters,” Taylor Branch addresses the complexity of various viewpoints when he writes, “Almost as color defines vision itself, race shapes the cultural eye—what we do and do not notice, the reach of empathy and the alignment of response.” Alas, we are all more or less products of our cultural upbringing. Seeing “Mirror Mirror,” then, contributes to the expansion of our “collective eye,” promoting greater understanding.

November 18, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 47 © 2004 Metro Pulse