Alabama Folk Art

Well, it's almost embarrassing how much I love Alabama now that I've left it. I can't deny the fact that I spent most of my thirteen years there victimizing myself as some poor, liberal arts minded individual. I was pretty skeptical of the art scene down there, but I have to admit that I never really gave it a welcome eye (of course, is this any surprise given my worship of French Realists and Modernist fiction? I mean come on). It's only now that I live on the other side of the continent that I realize what an amazingly raw artistry Alabama, and actually all of the South, actually has. Now, most of these examples here are self-taught, post-fauvist/post-primitive painters. There is an enormous variety in South aesthetics, especially if you start looking at antebellum architecture and interiors. But as the title presents, this is folk art. This is a completely different realm. 

There is such a new-found resurgence in the interest in art like this. I'm sure everyone has their own theories, but I personally believe that it is birthed from a natural, cultural hesitancy to be swept up into the internet age of grey and blue computer interface, and mindless binary code. The new worship of the organic and the vintage (hello, hipsters) is cultural phenomenon that is rooted in our own self-questioning and instability. Unsure of who we are in the 21st century, wondering how to work the seven hundredth update of iTunes, and wondering what happened to the ideas of lying cars and intergalactic vacation homes. But I digress. Along with this anti-techno aesthetic movement, there is also the aspect of New Internationalism, or as I would say, Global Nationalism, where the world, however divided as it may be, has connected and merged to a new, all-encompassing breed. I'm sure you've heard the saying of the American man who drives a Japanese car, wears Italian patent leather shoes, drinks a French coffee, and has Korean take-out for lunch. Or at least something along those lines. I am huge advocate for this new omni-culturalism, however, this also causes a bit of a backlash. A new global mono-identity prompts to question, if not who we are, at least who we were. At that we turn to the cultural backbones of our roots: in my case, Alabama folk art.