LOCAL VISIONS: FOLK ART FROM NORTHEAST KENTUCKY
A case in point is the exhibit, open through May 22, at the School of the Art Institute’s Betty Rymer Gallery, “Local Visions: Folk Art From Northeast Kentucky.” The accompanying catalog, by exhibit curator Adrian Swain (head of the Folk Art Collection at Morehead State University in Kentucky, which sponsored this traveling exhibit), includes a lengthy essay–in fact, the bulk of the catalog–exploring what might have inspired these artists. Biographies of the artists, in fine print, stress their folksy roots. End of catalog. Nowhere is the work itself examined, even superficially. The illustrations in the catalog and the free brochure available at the exhibit do not identify the works by title, only by the artist’s name. The catalog does list the works by title and artist, but there’s no way to match up the title with the illustration. With over 100 pieces in the exhibit, by 16 artists, this can be problematic.
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Hell is very prominent in the apocalyptic work of Ronald and Jessie Cooper, a husband and wife whose religion has helped them survive some major traumas, according to the catalog. Both artists create horror vacui sculptures, full of closely painted scenes like those in the Persian miniatures the term was originated to describe. Especially in Jessie Cooper’s work, every didactic square inch is covered with sinners frying and angelic God-fearing citizens in white choir robes being rewarded by a vision of heaven or entrance into it. A video that’s part of the exhibit, Local Voices, shows interviews with each artist, and Jessie Cooper talks about how seeing a piece of furniture makes her want to paint it–how the object seems to crave scenes of deification.
Ronald Cooper’s style is similar to his wife’s, though his pieces are usually painted on less functional objects and an even stronger vein of tongue-in-cheek humor runs through the heavy-handed messages. His little red devils in The Cabinet of Truth come complete with tiny pitchforks. His figures also have a strong humanity and individuality. Below the white-robed Jesus figure on top of the cabinet are painted scenes called “The Rooms of Sin,” and these concrete depictions of real-life evils are what give this piece its vitality: portraits of the Child Abuser, the Thief, the Prostitute, and the Drunkard.
Cardinals also appear in McKenzie’s 1985 Garden of Eden, but they’re much smaller and poised inside the tree branches, which all have square-topped apples at their tips. There’s a cow at Adam’s feet, a sow at Eve’s. Both humans have an apple in each hand and white hair, to represent the fact that wisdom–and sin–have already been acquired. A snake runs the length of the base on which they stand. McKenzie’s 1982 Adam and Eve is simpler. The two flattened figures face toward each other slightly–they don’t directly confront each other as they do in Garden of Eden. The tree between them looks more like a branch–it’s more symbolic than representational of the Tree of Knowledge. The square-tipped apples are tiny, as are the apples in the hands of Adam and Eve. Their fingernails here are not polished a decadent red, and their hair is still black to match their eyebrows. The serpent snakes its way between Eve’s feet and in front of Adam. This seems to be a freeze-frame right before the moment of truth: Adam and Eve are about to partake of the apple.
It’s obvious that these artists have influenced each other. Any other such group would be called a school or a movement, but the printed materials accompanying this exhibit concentrate on the “cultural context”: the conditions under which the artists live “isolate,” the ways in which collectors have influenced the quantity and quality of their work, and the reasons they produce the work they do. As if a “folk” artist’s inspiration would be any easier to trace than that of an artist with an MFA. The fact that one of the artists, Minnie Adkins, has nurtured and inspired the others makes her a “rural impresario” to the curator; in any other context, she would most likely be called a mentor.
