Last week, I talked to fifty-eight first graders about light art. I told them that there are two things you can always ask when you encounter an artwork. What was the artist observing (the subject)? And what did the artist use to mark it down (the tool)? I showed them artwork by Noble & Webster, Anthony McCall, …
For one week Andrew Raffo Dewar moved his studio into the Ferguson Gallery inside the student center at the University of Alabama (home to 36,000 students). Every day Dewar created a new installation. At the same time, he invited a guest artist to share the space and also make a new artwork. The doors were open, …
When my son ran up to the artwork above squealing, Ruby (the artist) said, “What’s wrong with the world now is that kids aren’t happy.” The painting became the first artwork in my youngest son’s collection. “I am Ruby” is one of the few children’s books that tells the story of a folk artist from the …
I’m slowly building an art collection for each of my sons. I purchased three fish by James A. Buddy Snipes for my oldest son when he turned one. I found Buddy at the Kentuck Festival, an annual festival on folk art that began in the early 1970s. In a short biography written by a Garde Rail Gallery, Buddy explains that as …
In the 1960s the Gee’s Bend Ferry was closed, isolating an African American community. Josh Bean reports that in 1996 the government gave a lot of money to re-open it. As of 2006, it is up and running. When the weather warms up and school is out, we plan to take a trip to ride the …
Last summer, my friends and I took our children to Greensboro, Alabama to see two art exhibitions, “A Changing Nature: Photographs of the South, 1963-2014” from the Do Good Fund and Gordon Parks: The Segregation Portfolio. Greensboro is a small town of about 2,700 people. 60% of which are African American. It was a special …