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| Thornton Dial: Lost Cows, 2001 |
By Pam Paulson
Earlier this spring I took a trip with my daughter
Isabelle and our friend Matt Arnett to visit
Thornton Dial’s exhibition at the High Museum in Atlanta
and see his studio in Alabama. Dial’s incredible works were showcased in the exhibition Hard Truths/ The Art of Thornton Dial. The exhibition, which originated at the Indianapolis Museum
of Art surveys twenty years of Dial’s paintings, sculptures, and drawings. The work emphasizes the strength and compassion that Dial brings to each idea. The survey brings up the difficult question of
why Dial’s work has not been given the respect and notoriety it is due until now.
Race, education, and class have all played a factor in the denial of Dial’s admission into the
contemporary art canon. The exhibition is a resplendent manifestation of a powerful discourse on
the human condition from a vantage point rarely celebrated.
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| Thornton Dial: Ladies Will Stand by Their Tiger, 1991 Isabelle at the High Museum with Dial drawing. |
A few miles beyond Birmingham in Bessemer, not far from
the highway, a row of warehouses line a sleepy street. Deep within the sprawling space of one of
these warehouses, a corner has been turned into a large windowless room where Thornton
Dial creates his work.
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| Looking into Dial's studio, 2013. |
The warehouse, built by Dial’s sons, is the home of their
steel patio furniture business, Dial
Metal Patterns. What was once a thriving industry has now
slowed, devastated by the steep
and prolonged rise of steel prices. Dial and his sons have worked in the metal
industry most
of their lives. Machines
for bending, cutting, and painting , once used in the production of patio furniture now slumber. Dial’s sons Richard and Donnie explained to me during my visit that not only had they built one of the
metal bending machines after seeing one in another metal shop, but they had also constructed the
entire warehouse itself, having had no experience with constructing large buildings. Creativity and ingenuity run in the Dial
family.
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| Thornton Dial: Construction of the Victory, 1997 (Detail) |
Thornton Dial was born in 1923 in Emelle, Alabama, a tiny
town that has all but disappeared. As a very young child he had many responsibilities caring
for farm animals and working the fields. He watched as his uncle built sheds, barns, and small
buildings. These structures, many built nearby by relatives and neighbors were designed
carefully, composed from a wide range of materials colors, textures, and architectural styles
intended to increase their visibility and to stylistically distinguish their makers. Assemblages made from recycled materials and
found objects dotted the landscape. Communities created dialogues with yard art
now recognized as part of the southern African American vernacular artistic
tradition. Dial absorbed this complex vocabulary and incorporated it into his own work.
Through making things Dial expresses his understanding of
the world around him. Dial’s
painting and sculptures are narratives that discuss the
complexities of his own life, nature, politics, race and history, constructed of found
materials both natural and handmade. Many
of his assemblages have included bones, wire, dirt, flowers,
clothing, utilizing reused and recycled materials, wood, wire, plastic, and metal scraps. Surviving struggle and hardship Dial remains optimistic and the beauty of the natural world winds its
way through his compositions.
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| Joe Minter's yard, 2013. |
The discipline of yard art is evident as you travel
throughout Alabama. Like Dial, Birmingham resident and Dial’s friend Joe Minter grew
into the practice of making things to express his ideas. Isabelle, Matt, and I paid an impromptu visit
to Minter’s yard to view the extensive environment he has created over the years. Minter’s house sits atop a hill abutting the local black cemetery, which serves as a
thought-provoking backdrop to his visual, highly political commentary. The enormous yard is home to a maze of
interconnecting installations
that touch on topics such as slavery, voter’s rights, the
Gees Bend Ferry, the World Trade
Center bombing, and religion. The dullness of the rainy spring day was
diminished by our eagerness to see what was around the next corner as we
walked through the yard over wooden pathways and bridges surrounded by a forest of rusting
metal decorated with thousands of words and bright plastic ephemera. Minter is constantly
amending the ever-changing environment. He
recently added a piece in response to the Sandy Hook shooting.
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| Joe Minter's Sandy Hook tribute, 2013 |
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| Dial's early studio. |
As we made our way to Dial’s studio we drove by his
former home, a neat brick one-story building that he built. The sidewalk to the house is
lined with cement filled soda cans, acting as bricks, attesting to the fact that Dial’s innovative
use of recycled materials is not only a trait of his artwork, but also a characteristic of his everyday
life. Behind the house is a small garage where Dial created his work for many years, unbeknownst to
anyone but his family. Dial has always made things, but didn’t think of himself as an
artist. Until a few years ago, Dial worked alone creating and moving large paintings and sculptures
in the garage behind his house. After he had a stroke in 2009, his sons created the new studio
for him within the warehouse, and they began helping him move the heavy assemblages. Inside Dial’s new studio, piles of scrap metal, wood, plastic flowers, paint cans, and old clothes
populate almost every conceivable space. Paintings
in progress either hang neatly on the walls, or sit atop sawhorses, so he can attach materials such as charred wooden boards and cloth.
From the surrounding sea of materials, glorious works of art arise.
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| Homemade soda can bricks line the driveway at Dial's former home. |
