Traditional, Spontaneous & Individual:

Folk Art At New Britain Museum Of American Art

By Shannon Hicks

NEW BRITAIN — For just a few more weeks the New Britain Museum of American Art is presenting an excellent exhibition that takes up the museum’s second floor. “American Folk Art: Traditional and Spontaneous,” which is on view until June 12, offers a large collection of folk art objects including paintings, furniture, pottery, quilts, sailor’s valentines, hooked rugs, painted wooden objects, baskets, scrimshaw, gameboards, dolls, tins and theorems, all celebrating the world of the untrained artist.

As museum director Douglas Hyland pointed out when the exhibition opened earlier this year, the exhibition transcends the traditional idea of folk art and additionally includes naïve, or outsider, art and also created in large part by contemporary artists of the southern states.

“Most of the southern ‘outsider’ artists in this exhibition have responded to a highly personal vision, or inner voice that inspired them,” explained Mr Hyland in an early press release for the exhibition. “Folk artists of the Northeast, in general, have responded to the practices of particular communities and their artistic practices, such as the stimuli of generations of wood carvers, quilters or stone carvers, working in a tradition that has been passed down from one generation to the next virtually changed.”

When the museum hosted a lecture by two of the exhibition’s curators recently, Mr Hyland seemed pleased with the exhibition.

“We’ve had very positive response from visitors to date,” he said, adding, “I think the exploration and contrast of South and Northeast artists is something I have enjoyed working on.”

In one section of the exhibition, for instance, called “Celebration of Life,” a number of works have combined Americana elements – the American flag and its colors – with religion. Artists represented in this small gallery space create works that celebrate the joy of living. These artists – including Jerry Brown, Herbert Bush, Chris Clark, Elayne Goodman, R.A. Miller and Fred Webster – return to this theme regularly.

Chris Clark is represented by an untitled painting on fabric done during the mid 1990s depicting a very busy church service. Within the space of 32 by 22 inches there is a large choir, a pianist, an organist, a number of children dancing across the front of the sanctuary, a minister at the altar, and pews filled with attendees.

Clark’s work comes from the personal collection of Julia Isham Ward, who is one of three collectors to provide the majority of this amazing exhibition. Ms Ward collected the pieces during a 20-year period while living in the south, purchasing many of the pieces directly from the artists.

One work by the Reverend Benjamin Franklin Perkins has a simple title, “Pledge of Allegiance,” but a busy presentation. The painting on board began with an American flag as its background, contains a painting of a brick church as its focal point and a gold depiction of the Statue of Liberty in the upper right corner. The words Go To The Church Of Your Choice follow the building’s roofline, while the statue is surrounded by Miss Liberty reaches out to those persecuted homeless sick and hungry This is the land of opportunity library and the pursuit of happiness This is America. Finally, the words of our country’s pledge of allegiance run across the top of the board.

Not surprisingly, one note in the text accompanying the Rev Perkins’s work says “Rev Perkins … never found an object nor a surface that he did not want to cover with his distinctive red, white and blue motifs.”

In another small gallery visitors encounter a collection of 17 face jugs by Jerry Brown. Mr Brown is in the ninth generation of an Alabama family that has produced handmade pottery from blue clay found in a 100-year old pit near the Brown home. The origins of face jugs date to the Civil War era in the rural south, where slaves on plantations would create jugs with menacing faces to identify vessels with caustic fluids inside them.

Paintings make up a large portion of the exhibition, including two familiar works by Royal Brewster Smith. “Girl Holding a Rose,” a circa 1835 oil on canvas measuring 30 by 26 inches, is coupled with “Boy Holding a Red Book,” of the same year and matching dimensions Between these two works appears a sheared rug with hand loomed linen yarn. “Floral Rug with Bow,” done during the mid-19th Century, measures 30 by 74 inches.

The Smith works are among the paintings from the collection of the Litchfield based dealer Peter Tillou. Mr Tillou also loaned “Lady with Lace Cap and Red Shawl,” an 1830-35 oil on canvas by Ammi Philliops, and “James Lee Harrison,” an 1845 oil on canvas by Susan Waters.

The majority of the exhibition is from the personal collections of Barbara Ardizone, a noted antiques dealer and collector who resides in Salisbury, and Linda Cheverton-Wick of Hartford, who is a trustee of the museum. Ms Ardizone and Ms Cheverton-Wick worked with Julia Isham Ward, who loaned the outside work for the exhibition, and museum director Hyland in curating the exhibition.

Ms Isham Ward’s pieces – from the face jugs by Jerry Brown and a paper collage by Melba Clark called “Southern Living Garden” done in the early 1990s to Sybil Gibson’s “Portrait of my daughter,” a 24 by 21-inch watercolor on brown grocery bag done January 21, 1970 – are collectively labeled Spontaneous Folk Art in an exhibition brochure. The brochure contains a handful of color photos and a pair of essays, one by Douglas Hyland and the other, “Eloquence of The South,” by Ms Isham Ward.

The pieces loaned by Ms Ardizone and Ms Cheverton-Wick, meanwhile, have been categorized as Traditional Folk Art, as have the pieces from Mr Tillou, the items from the museum’s own collections, a painting loaned by Shepherd Holcombe (“Girl with A Bird,” circa 18100-1818), an undated quilt from the collection of Stephen K. Hanks, and a circa 1860s cotton quilt from the collection of the Connecticut Historical Society Museum.

In addition to the work loaned by the abovementioned collectors, the show includes recent gifts from the estate of the late Carole Learmont, Mrs Jolene Goldenthal and Dr Carol Goldenthal, and Priscilla Porter. 

New Britain Museum of American Art is at 56 Lexington Avenue in New Britain. Call 860-229-0257 or visit www.nbmsaa.org for additional information.