Roots run deep: Exhibition looks at century of artwork
An old adage says “you can’t escape your raisin” but far from forgetting personal and cultural histories, one young Pine Bluff curator wants her audience to explore their past. To embrace and appreciate it.
That’s only part of the message, Arts and Science Center educational intern-curator Torri V. Richardson hopes to bring to Southeast Arkansas.
Her exhibit, “Deeply Rooted: A Glimpse into Southern Lifestyle,” opened Thursday at the Arts and Science Center, 701 S. Main St. It runs through March 5.
The center is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, a distinction held by fewer than 4% of museums in the United States and a rare privilege for an intern to curate a public, professional show.
So when Richardson was asked to put together an exhibition for the center, she embraced the rare opportunity.
The “experience of curating a collection exhibition gave me the opportunity to apply the fundamentals I’ve learned over the course of this internship at ASC. … I gained practical skills I will take on to my future endeavors, like installing artwork, writing artist labels, creating exhibition catalogs and much more,” Richardson said.
Plus, it would be a great experience as she starts working on her graduate degree in public history and museum studies at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She hopes to land a job in a museum one day.
Richardson was first approached about the exhibition in April. For about the past five months, she worked toward the opening of her exhibit titled “Deeply Rooted: A Glimpse into Southern Lifestyle.”
Richardson, a freshly graduated art student from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff was given access to the center’s vault — where it’s original art is stored. The art collection focuses on three categories, including the work of Delta, Arkansas and Black artists.
She determined what was available for show and fashioned a theme that focused on Southern culture. At first, she worked under the tutelage of center curator Chaney Jewell, establishing a theme and point of view for the exhibit.
“Chaney helped shape my ap
proach,” Richardson said.
Early in the process, Jewell gave Richardson weekly deadlines to meet, which she did.
The theme Richardson settled on would center around “the diversity of Southern lifestyles,” she said.
Jewell said an intern curating an exhibit is a unique opportunity.
“When she first approached me with this topic, I found it to be exciting and fitting to be hosted by ASC. … But, I believed that it was an important experience I was more than willing to give my intern,” Jewell said.
She walked Richardson through the process in great detail.
“Ultimately, I believe that Torri’s exhibition gives light to the multiple aspects of Southern lifestyle, particularly to the Arkansas Delta,” Jewell said.
INSIDE THE EXHIBIT
Richardson chose 15 pieces by eight artists, with a timeline that ran from the late 1920s through the mid1990s.
These were all pieces that appealed to her.
Henri Linton’s pieces “Arkansas Landscape 1, 2, 3” are central to the story Richardson is attempting to tell through this exhibit. Linton is a Black Arkansas artist and the former art department chair at UAPB.
The pieces set the tone for the message Richardson’s trying to convey and hopefully offer visitors a visual of the South — it’s a patchwork of agricultural fields and dotted with small towns and homes. It also relates how the South was and continues to be influenced by its rivers, such as the Mississippi and Arkansas.
She also chose pieces that show moments of lightheartedness or seemingly heartfelt reflection. For example, Palmer Hayden’s 1927 watercolor “Untitled (Dancers)” reflects the prevailing gaiety of the 1920s dress and dance.
“Gathering and dancing and music were and still are important in the South,” Richardson said.
Hayden’s real name was Peyton Cole Hedgeman and was born in 1890. The Black artist was part of the last century’s Harlem Renaissance movement.
“His color palette is playful … but it hints at sexuality,” Richardson said about this piece.
She also included Larry D. Alexander’s acrylic work titled “Where I grew up.” It’s a front-on view of three youngsters near the viewer, while there are two clapboard buildings, one, vaguely reminiscent of an early 1900s shotgun house, possibly a makeshift general store with possibly an old red Coke machine near the entrance.
This painting is part of Alexander’s “Dermott Series.” The Black artist was born in Dermott in 1953.
Howard Seymour Stern’s black and white photograph titled, “Sweet Repose,” pictures a man dressed in a white shirt and trousers sitting, eyes closed, under a tree. Although Stern was wellknown as a white Little Rock photographer and an award-winning painter, he was also a physician.
A FINAL WORD FROM THE CURATOR
Richardson said about the collection in its entirety, “I wanted the presentation order to help guide the viewer. I want them [the pieces] to tell a story as they walk through the gallery.”
Southerners are typically family- and community-oriented, but their culture was also tested and their histories rewritten by slavery, the Westward expansion, and the northward immigrations of Blacks during the last century.
This has “shaped the public perception of Southern lifestyle,” Richardson wrote in the Deeply Rooted Catalog.
Richardson hopes to encourage visitors to consider their own family’s heritage and how it’s been passed down through the generations. She hoped this would inspire viewers “to dive into their own family histories more deeply.”
The pieces set the tone for the message Richardson’s trying to convey and hopefully offer visitors a visual of the South — it’s a patchwork of agricultural fields and dotted with small towns and homes. It also relates how the South was and continues to be influenced by its rivers, such as the Mississippi and Arkansas.