Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts

Friday, July 19, 2019

That Time Andy Warhol Came to Birmingham

Andy Warhol was one of the best known and most controversial artists of the 20th century. His influence on both the art world and popular culture has been extensive; we can thank him for the Velvet Underground if nothing else. 

In 1979 Warhol was commissioned to paint four portraits of city residents Charles Ireland and his wife Caroline. He worked from Polaroids taken some months earlier. In March of that year Warhol came to the Birmingham Museum of Art for the presentation of Charles Ireland's portrait seen below.

That event took place on March 9. The BMA's web site has this further note about the visit: 

The artist was treated to a barbecue lunch during his interview for The Birmingham News. Eating his sandwich, Warhol quietly remarked, “It’s very good…No, we can’t get good barbecue in New York.”

Some further comments are below.




Source: BhamWiki.com 


Ireland joined the family business, the Birmingham Slag Company, in 1939. By 1951 he was president and steered the firm's merger with a New Jersey company to form Vulcan Materials. Ireland was named chairman of the board and remained in that position until his retirement in 1983. He died in 1987 and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery. 






Warhol and the portrait at the BMA on 9 March 1979

Source: Alabama Dept. of Archives and History





Warhol at the BMA 9 March 1979

Source: Alabama Dept. of Archives and History






Warhol with Caroline and Charles Ireland 9 March 1979

Source: Alabama Dept. of Archives and History







Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Yes, There's a Booth for That Art

For more than 50 years my mother, Carolyn Shores Wright, has been painting, mostly in watercolor. Her subjects have ranged from many types of birds including hummingbirds to landscapes, flowers, and still lifes. She's also had a long-running series "Bird Life" featuring birds in humorous--and human--situations. You can see many examples on Pinterest. You can follow her on Twitter too: @CShoresInc 

Mom's had success selling both originals and licensing rights, so her art appears on many things from prints to greeting cards, coasters, pillows, sun catchers, Franklin Mint plates, bookmarks, and mugs and much else. As I noted in a recent post, we found one of her licensed pieces in a shop in Manitou Springs, Colorado. In 1994 we took the kids to Disney World. The first shop we entered at Disney Marketplace had several prints of mom's art hanging on the walls. These encounters have been frequent over the years.

A few years ago we opened a shop for mom's work on ArtFire, and subsequently on Etsy, two online sites for the sale of arts and crafts. Dianne also sells her original jewelry on the ArtFire site. 

Recently we've opened two physical locations in Pelham, Alabama, at Encore Resales and Vintage Interiors. These are reminiscent of the booths mom operated at art shows for many years across the Southeast. However, these booths last longer than just a weekend!

The booths feature prints and other licensed items with mom's work and Dianne's jewelry. Just recently we've added some work by my nephew Ashley Wright, a Birmingham attorney. 

More comments are below the photos.


NOTE 19 August 2021

The Vintage Interiors booth is no longer operating. 




Here's the booth as it currently looks at Encore. 



Those two oyster prints are Ashley's. 




Here's the booth at Vintage which gives us lots of room for hanging items. We also have space for some non-art items and furniture.



Ashley's oysters are also available here, both framed and unframed. 



For years mom did the painting and matting, and dad made the frames. 






And here's mom at an art show booth in Huntsville in November 1991. For some years she did a weekend show in late January at Brookwood Village mall in the Birmingham area, and I remember taking the kids to see her on Friday night or Saturday. 

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Is a Florida Highwayman Hiding in Alabama?

Back in the day, before development forever changed much of the Florida panhandle, my father and his parents would make annual pilgrimages to a small fishing village somewhere further down that part of the Gulf coast. My mother thinks  the spot was Cedar Key, which in the 1940's and 1950's would have been tiny and away from it all. Pretty much still is, I guess. Not long after my parents married and when I was just a young sprout, there was an infamous family trip to wherever this fishing haven was. But that's another story....

If it was indeed Cedar Key, that's a nice touch. When he left Texas in the 1870's on the run from the Rangers, gunfighter John Wesley Hardin left New Orleans and landed in Cedar Key before making his way to Gainesville. He spent a couple of years hiding in Pollard in south Alabama before the Rangers finally caught up with him in Pensacola in August, 1877. But that's another story... 

Anyway, my grandparents were going to Florida in the mid-1950's when a group of African-American artists began to sell their quickly-done landscape paintings from the trunks of their cars in towns and along the tourist highways. Many were also sold door-to-door. This group of 26 individuals has since become known as the Florida Highwaymen. Alfred Hair, one of the group's original members, died in 1970 and their heydey seemed over. 

The art languished until Jim Fitch, an art historian, discovered it around 1995, and published an article about the artists. Journalist Jeff Klinkenberg also wrote several articles for a St. Petersburg newspaper about that time. More recently serious interest in the art and its creators has developed. There is even a Wikipedia page, for goodness sake. Several other pages on the web are here, here and here. Gary Monroe has just published a book on the group's only female member, Mary Ann Carroll. That work follows several others he has published on the Highwaymen. PBS broadcast a documentary in 2008. The art is now often identified as "folk" or "outsider" art.

Most of the artists were self-taught; mentoring by other group members was common. Inexpensive boards became their canvases; crown molding painted for an antique effect often framed the works. Most of the paintings featured Florida landscapes.

For years the painting below hung in a storage room my grandparents had as part of their garage and carport in Gadsden. When it came time to clean out their house, I took the work that no one else wanted. The piece remained in one of our basement closets until the Basement Event That Shall Remain Nameless last April made me take another look at it.

I remembered having read something about the Highwaymen years earlier, and this painting had the same bright colors, interesting details, cheap canvas and crown molding frame. Nothing on the painting itself or the back indicates anything about the artist or gives other information.

Is it a Highwayman piece? Who knows? The scene doesn't seem quite "Floridian". When I saw it often as a kid in that carport storage room, I thought it had a vaguely Asian feel. Did they have log cabins in China?

I'm not sure any of the actual Highwayment operated along the Panhandle; the east coast of Florida would have offered access to many more tourists in the 1950's through the 1970's. Perhaps it was painted by someone immitating their style.

Anyway, it's a colorful painting and for now it continues to hang in one of our basement closets. Maybe one day another child will re-discover it.