Frank Goodloe III, the Artistic Director for CenterStage at JCC, was our guest on February 13.. They are finishing their season with Hair and Mamma Mia and are about to announce the 2020-21 season. We talked about all of that and the upcoming Louisville's Got Talent event. Tune in to WXOX 97.1, or stream on Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10:00am to hear Keith Waits talk with artists.
African American artists
Artebella On The Radio: December 19, 2019
Playwright, poet, and Artistic Director of Stage One Family Theatre Idris Goodwin and spoken word artist Morgan Allison were in the studio with Keith this week reading from, among others, idris' new collection, "Can I Kick It?" Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM, or stream on Artxfm.com each Thursday to hear Keith Waits talk with artists.
Idris Goodwin is an award-winning playwright, director, orator and educator. He is the Producing Artistic Director of Stage One Family Theater in Louisville, KY for which he penned the widely produced And In This Corner: Cassius Clay. Other widely produced plays include: How We Got On, This Is Modern Art co-written with Kevin Coval, Bars and Measures, The Raid, and Hype Man: a break beat play which was just produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville. His poetry collection, Can I Kick It?, has just been published.
Morgan-Allison is a Louisville native and a graduate of Lane College and Vanderbilt University. She has been a spoken word artist for 7 plus years and spoken word is just a portion of who she truly is. Her particular interest is to use her voice to ask the hard questions or join into conversations that most people want to avoid.
She leads by example as her goal with her poetry is to inspire others to be open and walk in their truths, which she does through her poetry.
Legacy: Marvin Finn (1913-2007)
“A Flock of Finns” at the Louisville Waterfront
When I was a student at the long ago-defunct Louisville School of Art, the school gallery in the Cloisters building hosted an early exhibition of the work of Marvin Finn. I remember the gallery being filled with a menagerie of wooden animals (I purchased a small bull for $11), but also intricately tooled machines: monolithic cranes, personable bulldozers, and magnificent biplanes hung from the ceiling at daredevil angles. The retired African American gentleman making all of this within the confines of his tiny Shelby Street home in the Clarksdale housing “projects” was the talk of the town, and his work was collected by the wealthy and powerful.
Finn embodies the meaning of the Folk Art aesthetic. His love of carving wood came from watching his sharecropper father whittle as a young boy in Clio, Alabama, and his lack of any formal art education and adherence to simple forms fits the concept perfectly. He spent many years making wooden toys for his children and grandchildren so that there was also a purity in the motivation.
Marvin Finn photographed by Geoff Carr.
“There were ten boys and two girls in my family, and most of them older than I was, so I didn’t have toys except I made them,” said Finn when recalling his childhood on the farm in Clio. “I thought my old man was everything. When I was little I stood right up under him when he was whittling, and I learned it from him. I always tried to make my own toys when I was coming up as a kid. Anything that looked like a toy I would go into the woods and find me a tree and make it. But I remember a lot of Christmases when I never even seen me a toy.” (1)
After first exhibiting at the Kentuckiana Hobby and Gift Show in 1972, Finn’s profile rose over the next ten years, even though his prices did not. In the 1980’s the show at LSA and attention from the newly formed Kentucky Art and Craft Foundation (now KMAC) cemented Finn’s status as one of the most beloved and respected artists in Louisville.
Eighteen years ago, Louisville Mayor David Armstrong and an advisory committee developed the concept for the use of Marvin Finn’s work as the inspiration for a major public art initiative.
“Public art is more than an amenity in the streetscapes and open spaces in our city,” said Mayor Armstrong. “It evokes pride and awe in our city from passers-by, and it is a gift to every citizen.”
Photo: Kentucky Museum of Art & Craft
Thus, the idea for the flock of Finn’s was hatched. Dozens of owners of Finn’s art presented their originals to the Mayor’s advisory committee and 32 pieces were selected as models for the public art project. Colorful steel renditions, some as tall as nine feet, were cut out of half-inch thick steel and painted with graffiti proof paint by a cadre of artists mimicking the unique colors and patterns of Finn’s work. In April of 2001, the “Flock of Finns” landed in Waterfront Park in downtown Louisville.(2)
Finn’s work bridges traditional distinctions between craft and art. Although there is little functionality in the work, they began as toys but were almost never vessels or implements, it always expressed the naivete often associated with folk art, with a balance of rustic imagery and polished finish that enabled him to be embraced as easily by the fine art culture. The bright patterns of color were also seen as evocative of West African art, a connection to ancestry that is another important thread found in most Folk Art.
Today, Finn’s inspiration continues unabated, as many Louisville art teachers’ curriculum includes a ”Marvin Finn” project, most often in which children make their own brightly painted cut out birds.
Louisville Visual Art Summer Camp - 2017
Wooden Rooster by Marvin Finn, private collection
(1) (2) marvinfinnweebly.com
Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved. In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.
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Vignette: Sandra Charles
“Living Monument, Angela Hollingsworth” by Sandra Charles, Oil on canvas, 48x60in, 2019, $4750
What makes a person royalty? Perhaps it is when they are seen in a regal aspect. Angela Hollingsworth would likely reject such a lofty position, yet Sandra Charles’ portrait of her for the Imagined Monuments exhibit places her in the same attitude that the artist has previously assigned to her series of African Queens. Hollingsworth’s humility is not absent, but it is clothed in rich fabrics and colors that connote a woman in a position of power and respect honestly earned achieved through accomplishment. Imagined Monuments, a Louisville Visual Art exhibit for Louisville’s Metro Hall, runs through July 12, 2019
“My work celebrates the self-esteem of African American women through interpretative portraiture,” Charles explains in her artist’s statement. “Each painting focuses on the expressions that represent our history and the expectations of the future. I look behind the facade of social perceptions that weighs down each of us. My work attempts to capture the removal of this hegemonic veil that covers the struggle between self and the perceived social order. It acknowledges this internal struggle as it fades away from the stereotypical norm towards a truer self. Moving away from traditional portraits, my body of work mixes this history and self together with color and stances that project an attitude of defiance. The facial expression of each woman contains the history of her progress and is a personal statement that captures the confidence of self.”
“Cynthia as Queen of Ethopia” by Sandra Charles, Oil on canvas, 48x60in 2016, NFS
Charles will be featured with two other notable African American women artists in The Art of Elmer Lucille Allen, Sandra Charles and Barbara Tyson Mosley, which will be on display at The Carnegie Art Center For Art and History in New Albany Indiana February 22 through April 20, 2019. It will showcase Charles’ vision of contemporary women who are African Queens walking amongst us, women changing the world through the hard work of social activism and public service. Their leadership is built brick-by-brick, step-by-step, against the fusillade of slings and arrows that are the daily experience in a country divided against itself.
Charles came to her painting career later in life, but since earning her BFA in 2015, she has rapidly gained a high profile in the Louisville art community, selected to be a member of the first cohort of Hadley Creatives (Community Foundation of Louisville) in 2017, granted a solo exhibit at Wayside Expressions Gallery n 2017, at Art Sanctuary for the Kentucky Foundation Of Women’s Summer Residency Exhibit in 2018, and having two paintings chosen for permanent installation in the newly renovated Kentucky International Convention Center.
Other recognition:
2017 Mellon-Oberst Family Award, 23rd Annual African American Exhibition, Louisville, KY
2016 Kentucky Foundation of Women Summer Residency Grant, Louisville, KY
Hometown: Hazard, Kentucky
Education: BFA, Painting, University of Louisville
Website: www.scharlesart.com
Instagram: sandraspaintings
Scroll down for more images
”Refections of Us” by Sandra Charles, Oil on canvas, 48x60in, 2018, $4750
“Pam” by Sandra Charles, Oil on canvas, 30x30in, 2018, $2750
“Restrained Dreads” by Sandra Charles, Oil on Canvas, 48x60in, 2015, $2750
“Fourth of July” Sandra Charles, Oil on canvas, 36x48in, 2016, $3750
Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved. In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.
