Clutching at life's beauty: Folk art exhibit focuses on handmade, low-tech approach

photo "Dog Named Horse"
photo "Mermaid"
photo "Frozen Explosion"
photo "A Bird in the Hand"

Folk Art Exhibition* When: Nov. 6-Jan. 6.* Where: Reflections Gallery, 6922 Lee Highway* Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday; 5:30-8:30 p.m. on the First Friday, Nov. 7.* Information: 423-892-3072 or http://reflectionsgallerytn.com.

The woman has good hair and the elegant posture of a ballerina or aristocrat, but her face is harried and her long dress has disintegrated around her left breast. Her left hand cradles a nightingale and her right hand drops a ball while rushing to help capture the bird.

The portrait -- titled "A Bird in the Hand" -- is on the sides of an old washing machine, cut apart and hammered flat. Instead of paint, the artist used sandpaper to scour the woman into the white paint. The "painting" is eerie yet beautiful.

Reflections Gallery curator Summer Fisher sees it as an homage to those at the bottom of life's ladder whose hard work never boosts them to the upper rung because they must drop the ball to clutch any bit of luck with both hands.

Like many folk artists, Daniel Johnson can't afford oils and canvas, so he uses whatever he can get his hands on, like pieces of an abandoned washer. The artist, who lives in Rising Fawn, Ga., discovered his artistic gift two decades ago after his grandmother died and bequeathed her art supplies to him. He felt driven to create art even when he worked at a North Carolina rescue mission where he was given a small room in which to live as part of his sparse compensation.

"With a high school education, most of what I can get in this economy are stop-and-go jobs, but I take whatever I can get to support my wife and three children," Johnson says. "I have good jobs now working at an automotive parts factory then third shift at Wal-Mart.

Johnson meets the classic definition of a folk artist -- self-taught with talent, eye and skill to create using whatever materials he can harvest.

"Sometimes I am so tired after work, but then thinking about making art gives me some energy," he says. "It's just that there isn't always gas money even for a quick drive to look for scrap metal. I always feel like art is my calling, but the reality is that we don't always get to follow our calling."

In its Folk Art exhibition, which opens Nov. 6, Reflections Gallery also will feature Johnson's exquisite sculpture of a running horse, its long mane flowing in the wind. The horse is made from scrap metal -- a tea strainer, blender blade, broken umbrella spokes, rusted springs, bits of wire coat hangar for the mane -- that Johnson painstakingly twisted into a wind-swept shape.

The same exhibit features Loren Howard, who studied engineering and animation at Southern Adventist University. Whether artists with formal training can be considered folk artists is a hotly debated topic in galleries and museums.

"We wanted to include artists who use a folk art's handmade or low-tech approach with easily accessible materials," Fisher said. "The broad definition of folk art simply says it is created by indigenous people rather than coming from the academically trained."

Howard is a Tennessean who knows how to handle a rifle. He created his piece "Frozen Explosion" by shooting a 7.62x59 full-metal-jacket bullet through 25-pound clay blob. The bullet, which can drop a moose, left an exit wound bigger than a silver dollar in the blob. Howard surrounded the hole with more than a dozen handmade clay petals that he attached in spiral pattern. The result is a sculpture that looks exactly like an explosion frozen in time.

In another piece, Steve Pickett, a trout farmer in Dunlap, Tenn., uses hollow tree limbs for his intricately detailed sculptures of a mermaid with ringlet-ed hair, mysterious forest beasts and a Wicca-like woman.

Contact Lynda Edwards at ledwards@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6391.

Upcoming Events