Tuesday, February 26, 2008

THE RISE AND FALL OF PUBLIC ART

TUSCALOOSA -- Two sculptures stolen from the NorthRiver Yacht Club in December and the recent news of the demolition of Holy Spirit Catholic Church remind us that public art is not always permanent.











[This essay appears in a slightly different version on the back page of the Spring 2008 issue of The University of Alabama Department of Art's Image Resource Center newsletter titled “The Loupe.” I have made a few changes for clarity and included links (in the right column) to the newspaper stories and other sources cited.]
Above: Craig Wedderspoon,
untitled (Soft II), aluminum, 94 x 92 x 165", detail, Woods Quad installation, Jan. 2007; photo by Rachel Dobson.
Frank Engle –- professor of ceramics and sculpture in the UA art department from 1949 until his retirement in 1981 –- was commissioned by Holy Spirit in the early '60s to create sculptures for the (then) new church building dedicated in 1965. A Tuscaloosa News article (Jan. 2, 2008) said that the current building would be destroyed soon to make way for a new one. In preparation, “volunteers began salvaging anything they could from the sanctuary.” According to church member Lucy Kubiszyn, the church commissioned Engle to create a crucifix, statues of the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph, a medallion at the altar, and panels depicting the fourteen stations of the cross and the apostles, along with a mosaic altarpiece. Bethany Windham Engle has said that the towering blood-red mosaic reredos behind the altar will probably be destroyed because of the difficulty in dismantling it.
Robert Mellown, UA professor of art history and a colleague of the Engles, noted that in the early 1960s The University of Alabama commissioned Engle to create a sculptural fountain in front of Bryant Hall. The work created controversy mostly because of its depiction of male genitalia. Mellown recalled that vandals would regularly add Tide detergent to the fountain before football games, which gunked up the plumbing. The sculpture was destroyed by the university in the 1980s.
Today you can find examples of public art around the UA campus. Craig Wedderspoon and his students have worked on several public art projects in Tuscaloosa. Besides the Workers’ Memorial on the Riverwalk, Wedderspoon’s students are designing a Peace Garden with UA’s Community Crossroads, for the north side of Woods Hall. And his own monumental aluminum work now in the center of Woods Quad will eventually become surrounded by a landscaped garden, and be the first of a series of periodically changing sculptures there.
THE ALABAMA BIENNIAL
Wedderspoon, who joined the department in 1999, said that before he ever thought of coming here, he had heard of the art department because of its Alabama Biennial, which occurred in the years 1991, 1993, and 1995. Five pieces remain on campus as part of what former A&S Dean James Yarbrough designated “The University of Alabama’s permanent outdoor collection.”
These venerable pieces have not been immune to vandalism. In late 2003 and early 2004, Peter Flanary’s Walt Whitman Cult Wagon was tumped over three times in two months. UA graduate Paul Outlaw’s 3-piece installation outside the Rec Center was regularly vandalized from 2004 until it was finally dismantled in 2007. The recent theft of Jack Warner’s [NorthRiver Yacht Club] sculptures, the defacing of the Confederate Memorial in Montgomery, along with the demise of some of Engle’s works and the salvaging of others, illustrates the fragility of exposed art, no matter its size, weight, or meaning. When sculpture–-or any work of art–-leaves its maker’s hands, it becomes vulnerable. Artists have always had to deal with this fact of life, but the finality of destruction continues to amaze us.









Above: Peter Flanary, Walt Whitman Cult Wagon, 1995, cast iron, steel and stone, 42 x 27 x 134", located on the south lawn of Garland Hall, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Photo by Rachel Dobson.
Essay and photos reproduced courtesy of the Department of Art, College of Arts & Sciences, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

WATSON JOURNAL|ca.1918–19

This photograph (a reproduction my father had made in 1968) shows his grandmother Minnie Laura Wood Dobson (1864–1946) with several other women from Watson, Arkansas. His handwriting on the back identifies the women and dates the photo ca. 1918-19.

"Left to right: Edna Rice holds her daughter [but after research I think this is her son]; the young girl is Olive Griffith; behind Olive is Minnie Laura Dobson [with glasses]; then Mrs. Elva Rayder; little girl in front of her is Tootsie Rayder [this is actually Vivian Rayder]; older little girl is Audry Wilson; older lady is Mrs. Ezell."

They are all dressed up and without coats, so my guess is that the occasion for the group photograph is Easter Sunday. There seems to have been no shortage of cameras in either of my father’s parents’ families in rural southeast Arkansas, but it was still mostly special occasions that pictures were taken. Another guess is that my great grandfather, David Erastus Dobson (1862–1949), Minnie Laura’s husband, took this. But Granddaddy (Eugene Dobson Sr.) was about 14 and my Uncle Harry was about 17, both living at home, so one of them could have.

I found everybody in this picture on two pages of the 1920 Census of Watson, Redfork Township, Desha Co., taken on 10 Feb. 1920 by John Oakes, Enumerator.

On page 1:

Front Street:

Line 22: Edna Rice, age 19, is with her husband T. J. Rice and their son Thomas Rice, age 13 months. The census lists Mr. Rice working as a merchant in a grocery store. Edna's parents were from Indiana; Minnie Laura Dobson and David Erastus Dobson had come almost thirty years before from Mauckport, Harrison County, Indiana. Did the Dobsons know Edna’s family in Indiana?

Clay Street:

Line 33: Olive Griffith is nine years old, living with her family. Her father, H. D. Griffith Sr., from Mississippi, worked as a carpenter.

Line 35: Elva Rayder and her husband B. W. Rayder live with their four children, Samuel 17, Fern 16, Raymond 9 and Vivian [the census taker wrote 'Virginia'], age 5. Mrs. Elva Rayder and Benjamin W. Rayder are buried in the Watson Cemetery, according to the book, Desha County, Arkansas Cemetery Records, and posted online. Minnie Laura is buried next to her husband David Erastus Dobson there also. Thanks very much to Raylene Rayder Taylor, the granddaughter of Elva A. Haynes Rayder, for correcting the identification of her aunt Vivian.

On page 3 of the same census...

Front Street, living next door to D. E. and Minnie L. Dobson (and their sons Harry E., 18, and Eugene, 15, my grandfather) are (line 36) Margarett A. Ezzell, a widow, and her son Jerry [?] L. Ezzell, age 32, who works at a logging camp, and her granddaughter Audy [?] Wilson, age 12.

Bit of background

Watson, Arkansas, in Desha County, is a tiny little town out on the flat fertile lands by the Mississippi River where my grandfather grew up, the youngest of five children; his father owned a General Store. Later, Granddaddy married Lois Elizabeth Peacock of Tillar, built a house on Front Street near the railroad tracks, and they had a son, Eugene Dobson, Jr., my father. The family moved to Pine Bluff around the time Daddy was in high school. After Granny died in 1972, Granddaddy moved back to Watson, and lived there until his death at age 96. He is buried in the Tillar Cemetery (Drew County), next to his wife and son.

Sources:

Ancestry.com or Heritage Quest sometimes you can access these through your public library.

http://www.rootsweb.com/~ardesha/watsoncem.htm
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ardesha/newtncem.htm