Post Office Murals: Local, International Storytelling

Dardanelle Post Office mural; Meredith Martin-Moats

From an art historian’s perspective, [Dr. Gayle] Seymour explains, the man is a reference to “Atlas supporting the globe.”  The artist’s intent, Seymour argues, “is to show [that] the African American sharecropper carries the weight of the world on his shoulders.” 

As a perfect epilogue to the series of rural post offices discussions circulating on NPR, The Daily Yonder, and on this site, we can turn to Meredith Martin-Moats and her excellent Boiled Down Juice blog.

Reprinting a piece from her Seed and the Story column in her local Dardanelle (AR) Post-Dispatch, Mrs. Martin-Moats adds another facet to question of whether or not to leave these structures behind, by considering their architectural, art-historical, and even cultural legacies contained in--and painted upon--their walls. Here's how she begins this reflection:

As a young girl, my mother would frequently take me with her to drop off mail at our 1930s era post office in Dardanelle.  She’d always point out the New Deal mural hanging above the post master’s door.  A three-panel painting depicting the artist’s rendition of industry in the river valley, the two side panels feature men spinning cotton and loading boxes on boats to send down river.  In the larger, center panel are white and black men working in the cotton fields.  “See those people picking cotton,” my mother would say.  “Your grandparents used to pick cotton in Cardon Bottoms.”   My mother loved that mural, and fostered in me a deep curiosity about the history of family and community which fuels my work today.

Mrs. Martin-Moats continues from there to share the work of Dr. Gayle Seymour, art historian at the University of Central Arkansas and editor of a site entirely devoted to telling story of the Arkansas Post Office murals. Dardanelle houses one of the 1,400 post office murals commissioned by the Federal Art Project, and the story of this particular artist, Ludwig Mactarian, illuminates a far broader international story of repression and freedom. 

His story, and his unique interpretation in this mural, is captivating and unforgettable--and Mrs. Martin-Moats conveys this history with eloquence. Instead of paraphrasing it here, I encourage folks to give the full story a read...and then search out these post office murals in your own region of the country. 

Related Articles:
Hazel Dickens and The Boiled Down Juice

What We Talk About When We Talk About The Rural

Cast-iron stove reclaimed by David Lundahl from a local farm;  the foundation for a new sculpture

While working on an Art of the Rural project at New Light Studios in southern Wisconsin, the self-created arts environment of David Lundahl (who, despite physical and economic hardship, rebuilt a dilapidated dairy farm into a vibrant arts space) I had a moment to learn that some of my comments after the recent Talk of the Nation piece on rural America were printed in The Daily Yonder, and that TOTN's Blog of the Nation gave The Art of the Rural an enthusiastic mention. It's an honor on both fronts, and timely, as I spent a good part of the drive up to New Light Studios thinking about the TOTN piece and its reception. 

If folks haven't had a chance yet, I'd encourage a listen--and also a perusal of the TOTN comments section both there and on the Blog of the Nation follow-up.  Very quickly, the real concerns over the loss of rural posts offices were either swept off the table by some commenters ("These towns have no other buildings they can't meet in front of?") or subsumed into predictably digested political rhetoric ("If you want rural America to have stuff like P.Os., health clinics, and communications access, you'd better vote for a "big-government" Democrat."). 

Of course, this is the level of discourse on a number of internet forums and comments pages--a gruesome spectator sport all to itself. What's different here is that, in my opinion, the Talk of the Nation piece was not entirely successful in its communication of the diverse set of complexities enmeshed in contemporary rural life--and it almost entirely ignored the question of rural arts and culture, the very fabric that unites these communities. 

While NPR consistently provides some of best broadcast news and commentary to be found anywhere, and while (contrary to aforementioned political rhetoric) both my conservative and liberal friends seem to value its in-depth coverage (see the reports from the GOP straw poll in Iowa), I left the rural segment of Talk of the Nation discouraged on a basic level. Here's a portion of my reaction published in The Daily Yonder:

More than anything, I wish the NPR producers had the foresight to keep Dee Davis [President of the Center for Rural Strategies] on the line with Neal Conan for the whole segment, so that he could have helped contextualize the excellent perspectives of the guests.

This is telling: culturally speaking, as Americans, do we all assume we "know" the rural equally well? Do we admit that the "face" of rural America is changing, that there are many people in cities who identify as "rural," and that rural youth have a stake in these discussions?

Neal's language during the transitions spoke (alternately) to all the old assumptions about rural America: it's either a pastoral or a broke-down ghetto. The guests offered perspectives that challenged this, but I worry that the format of the segment and Neal's questions may, in the end, not have done the work of challenging his listeners--something NPR is generally adept at doing.

Writer and producer Mary Phillips-Sandy has added a much-needed critique of that use of language on her excellent A Lot of Consonants blog:

One of the things that stood out to me was the host’s use of the word ‘heartland’ as a synonym for ‘rural America.’ It’s a common idiom and a disingenuous one. Where is this heartland, exactly? Does the expression mean a geographic center or an emotional center? If the former, it fails to include all the parts of rural America that exist at the nation’s edges and farthest-flung points. If the latter it is patronizing, because it locates rural America in the realm of abstract sentiment, instead of on a map, right there, or right here.

An emotional center, in the realm of abstract sentiment: this eloquently gets at how Americans with little direct rural-experience can sometimes describe and qualify non-metropolitan life. If we think about this from a literary perspective, the use of "heartland" is simply an updated term for "Arcadia," that place of the literary pastoral invented by Theocritus--writing from the library in Alexandria, ca. 300 B.C. For this poet, it was a place of shaded groves of song and love, a landscape of man's communal experience with nature. 

In actuality, Arcadia was a rocky and barren region where very little grew. Two millennia later, we find that readers (and nations) need to have a pastoral myth, a place to invest the unalienable values of their people. And, updated in the modern age, they also need to view their Arcadia simultaneously as back-woods region where acts and sensibilities that would not be tolerated in urban centers can somehow be found permissible (consolidated schools, drastically insufficient health services, mountaintop removal, and so on). 

Whether the author is Theocritus or a speech-writer for any of the forthcoming 2012 campaigns, this language ignores one basic and inseparable fact: the rural and the urban are intimately connected. 

Later this week we will look over some of the articles we have published--in an effort to provide some entry points for folks to pass around, to expand what we talk about when we talk about the rural.

Saturday Portfolio: Freeman Kitchens, The Carter Family, and Drake Vintage Music and Curios

Mr. Kitchens in front of his store in Drake, Kentucky; Jennifer Joy Jameson

Today we'd like to offer a small portfolio relating to a forthcoming exhibit that promises to interest many of our readers. Yours For The Carters: Vintage Sound Collections of Freeman Kitchens, is an exhibit curated by Jennifer Joy Jameson that is set to open at the Kentucky Library & Museum on the campus of Western Kentucky University on Saturday, August 27th. The event begin at 3 pm, with The Hogslop String Band coming in from Nashville to help with the festivities. Following this, Ms. Jameson, who is a Masters student in the WKU Folk Studies program, will be leading a field-trip to Drake Music and Curios.

As Ms. Jameson would tell us, if you love The Carter Family, country/folk music, or if you are joyfully immersed in the music and art of the vernacular reissue movement, you owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Kitchens. Aside from his contributions on these fronts, Mr. Kitchens has also served a valuable role within his Drake, Kentucky community--as his Drake Vintage Music and Curios is at once a record store, general store, and United States Post Office. Here's Ms. Jameson elaborating upon the how the Yours For The Carters exhibit will work to share this story with us:

Since the mid-1940s, Freeman Kitchens has collected and sold early country music recordings out of his general store/post office in Drake, Ky., a small village about one hour north of Nashville, Tenn.

As founding member and president emeritus of the official fan club of the Carter Family, Kitchens and his club members have published and circulated some of the earliest forms of music journalism and grassroots documentation surrounding America’s beloved country music family, as well as other important country, blues, and country-western artists of the 20th Century.

With original images and artifacts from Mr. Kitchens’ shop, and from the collections of the Kentucky Library & Museum, this exhibit explores the wide reach of this local man, his small country store, and its legacy in contemporary music history.

Folks can follow this link to the Ms. Jameson's digital index of the vintage sound collection which consists of 250 7-inch reel-to-reel tapes of everything from recorded radio programs to his own field recordings. It's hard not to view the attached pdf file of this material and not get excited for the gems that this exhibit promises to share.

Included below are a few of Ms. Jameson's photographs from Drake Music and Curios. Far more, at far greater scale and resolution, are to be found on her flickr page. We encourage folks to visit the Yours For The Carters site, which offers a rich collection of images, sound files, interviews and archival material ahead of the exhibit. We will be sharing more information on this later in the month as well. Until then, here's some of Ms. Jameson's photography:

Challenging Contemporary Art, From Rural Wisconsin

David Lundahl at work

For the next few days I'll be visiting with David Lundahl, a visionary artist from southern Wisconsin. Though it's generally wise to scoff at these kinds of monikers, I'll say it anyway: David Lundahl on of the best artists you've never heard of. Beyond this, I'm comfortable saying that, within the regions of human experience that he's mapped over the last thirty years, he has no peer. Through our work on this site, and through some exciting efforts that we'll be announcing later this fall, we'll be working to bring to light more of his artwork. 

I've written on two occasions about Mr. Lundahl in the past; each only begins to get at his complex personal history and the amazing, nearly-unbelievable story about the New Light Studios he created out of the ruins of a dilapidated dairy farm. The first article deals more directly with the artist's landmark achievement: a body of over 100,000 polaroid "self-portaits" that more closely resemble abstract expressionist art than photos from a family picnic. (The link above explains the process of natural light, stencils, and other media involved in these photographs.) The second article deals more directly with the challenges in creating such contemporary art in a rural community, and with how the established art world views rural America. These two pieces barely skim the surface of the issues tangled up in David Lundahl's work. 

Start your weekend off right with a visit from one of Mr. Lundahl's alter-egos, Volcan Man:

Visualizing the Importance of Rural Post Offices

U.S. Representative Nick Rahall delivering the mail; Jon Bolt

The post office itself is often the identity of small town USA, and when you close the post office, it’s literally the nail in the coffin for that community. People go to the post office not only to receive mail, which is sometimes could be prescription medicines or some form of communications. They also socialize with their family and friends at the post office, learn what’s on their neighbors’ minds, and they gather to support community projects or issues. It’s ironic that in order to have these required hearings on these post offices, the only place big enough is the post office.

That's West Virginia Congressman Nick Rahall, sharing his thoughts with Greg Jordan of the Bluefield Daily Telegraph (found in yesterday's roundup in The Daily Yonder). Mr. Rahall was invited by Tim Thomason, a mail carrier and president of the West Virginia Rural Letter Carrier Association, to join him on his 90-mile 5-hour route this week--serving folks in some of the most remote parts of the state, folks that depend on Mr. Thomason for everything from prescription medications to NetFlix films. As The Daily Yonder has been covering for months, proposed cuts could drastically curtail the amount of USPS reach in rural America, and sever a vital social artery in these communities.

We might consider the outstanding video-mapping work below by Derek Watkins alongside Rachel Reynolds Luster's recent piece grappling with how we might faithfully map rural culture. When I watched this video for the first time, it was immediately clear that, as those little postal dots cross the continent, we are also seeing the spread of democratic representation, and the rise of a form of public discourse that undoubtedly made this country the predominant voice of the twentieth century--in the arts, sciences, business, philanthropy, and so on. In a cultural moment where we laud our technological "connectedness" just as liberals and conservatives can't even have a rational discussion with each other, we remove these physical and historical markers of community--and of democracy itself--at our own peril.

Here's Mr. Watkins's stunning visualization of USPS expansion. Much more information is available on his site:

Posted: Visualizing US expansion through post offices. from Derek Watkins on Vimeo.

The Yuma Project: Adrianna Santiago

Adrianna with Yuma residents in Shop All; Richard Saxton

Today we have the honor of presenting Adrianna Santiago's work from Yuma. Below we'll feature Ms. Santiago, in some excerpts from our email correspondence, describing her project and her collaborations with the community. For more information on the work of Richard Saxton and his students in Yuma, Colorado, please see our introductory article.

Listening is an important part my artistic process of engaging with any community.  In the case of Yuma, I began with the Yuma Historical Society Museum.  I investigated and researched the history of Yuma, as it relates to agrarian traditions surrounding food.  I curated a small exhibit from the museum collection and presented a small display in the context of the Shop All Grocery Store, also a historic site.  Those historical objects guided our conversations and interactions.  

From there, I spoke directly with community members as they shopped.  The main 
interest from the audience at the Shop All came mostly from the elderly, who recognized and could contribute to the topic of Yuma history and traditions.  The influence of these individuals was essential to the making of the work.  I initiated the creative process through conversation and invited collaborative engagements that were defined by the community. I also asked Shop All patrons to nominate community members who could teach me, through hands-on experience, about Yuma's traditions.

The most inspiring aspect of this work centered around those close community connections. While I began by meeting Judy Rutledge in the Shop All, who nominated her son, the web of connections became very apparent as I embarked upon new lessons with different community members. Organic popcorn planting, cattle herding, wood carving and butter churning were the focused situations that I experienced.

Working in the public space of the Shop All was most eye-opening.  I expected that the display of historic objects would surprise and draw people in, however, many completely overlooked my presence.  This experience caused me to reflect on the idea of being outside of the community.

Communities have become less connected, even in rural areas; the progression of technology has watered down the quality of relationships people have with each other. The family traditions and collective histories embedded in the identity of a locale are becoming mere memories spoken by elders. 

The individuals who founded The Yuma Historical Society Museum (YHSM) in Yuma, CO are dedicated to preserving the history of their farming community; they can be found leading efforts through their work at the YHSM. Founders and members of the YHSM share and archive first-hand narratives about times such as the depression era, stories about land development and the lineage of common families. Ms. Doris Mekelburg and other YHSM members want to ensure that younger generations of the town take responsibility and continue to preserve the cultural identity of Yuma.

I am intrigued by how quickly cultural knowledge seems to be disappearing, despite all “advances” in technology over the past decade. My work in Yuma will begin a journey focused on seeking knowledge and establishing a network where resources can be shared. I want to incorporate new technologies with old practices, without losing ties between people and the land. Eventually, I’d like to create a practical guide book that’s easily accessible for others to take part in so that they may create wholesome communal ties that preserve traditions in their own communities—Yuma, Colorado is the first stop in this process.

Angola Prison: From Leadbelly to Michael Palmer

Angola Prison, with Leadbelly in the foreground; Library of Congress

A number of prisoners are channeling their experiences through music. These days it's official policy at Angola to encourage creativity – be it singing, crafts or painting. Assistant Warden Kathy Fontenot says it's not just effective prison management — it gives inmates an important tool for survival.

Prison Songs: The Angola Blues was recently broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered, and, in light of our recent writing on Alan Lomax's Southern Journey, this outstanding piece of radio journalism connects a pivotal moment in American folk music to our contemporary dialogue about incarceration, culture, and the arts. Producers Hal Cannon and Taki Telonidis have been producing Deep West Radio Documentaries over the last few years that have followed the path of John Lomax (Alan's father), a pioneering American folk music scholar. Mr. Cannon, the founding Director of the Western Folklife Center and The Cowboy Poetry Gathering, is a also an acclaimed musician; as a result, these radio pieces have an attention to music and culture that really "brings the story home," and makes for some memorable listening. Folks can learn much more about stories found along the path of John Lomax by visiting the WFC blog. 

Prison Songs: The Angola Blues is a striking piece because it not only tells the story of Lomax's discovery of Leadbelly, but it traces a line forward to the ways that music has continued to be a positive presence in the lives of those who work and are incarcerated at Angola. Conditions inside have changed for the better since the 1930's, and the prison staff recognize the multilayered benefits the arts can provide to both individuals and the community (inside and beyond the walls). 

What's so exciting about Mr. Cannon and Telonidis's work is that they've shown how--contrary to John Lomax's earlier wishes--popular culture has infused this work, how rural and urban, traditional and modern, meet and reside together. Folks can follow the link above to find three additional video performances by the musicians featured in the radio piece. Below we'll include "Jesus Died For Me," by Michael Palmer:

The Angola Rodeo is also produced on site and deserves a post of its own--it's further evidence of the attention to arts and culture that's being cultivated by the Angola staff.

Related Articles:

Alan Lomax and the Southern Journey

Cultural Equity

Holler to the Hood & The Thousand Kites Project