Happy Birthday Flannery O'Connor!

Flannery O'Connor was born on March 25, 1925 in Savannah, GA. 

Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964)

(photograph © Joe McTyre/Atlanta Constitution. source: Conversations with Flannery O'Connor, edited by Rosemary M. Magee, published by University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, ©1987)

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excerpt from the short story Greenleaf:

“In a few minutes something emerged from the tree line, a black heavy shadow that tossed its head several times and then bounded forward. After a second she saw it was the bull. He was crossing the pasture toward her at a slow gallop, a gay almost rocking gait as if he were overjoyed to find her again. She looked beyond him to see if Mr. Greenleaf was coming out of the woods too but he was not. "Here his is, Mr. Greenleaf!" she called and looked on the other side of the pasture to see if he could be coming out there but he was not in sight. She looked back and saw that the bull, his head lowered, was racing toward her. She remained perfectly still, not in fright, but in a freezing unbelief. She stared at the violent black streak bounding toward her as if she had no sense of distance, as if she could not decide at once what his intention was, and the bull had buried his head in her lap, like a wild tormented lover, before her expression changed. One of his horns sank until it pierced her heart and the other curved around her side and held her in an unbreakable grip. She continued to stare straight ahead but the entire scene in front of her had changed - the tree line was a dark wound in a world that was nothing but sky - and she had the look of a person whose sight has been suddenly restored but who finds the light unbearable.” - Flannery O'Connor

(source for quote: Flannery O'Connor: The Complete Stories, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, NY ©1971)

Fact and Fantasy: Beaded Narratives Gallery Talk at Indigo Sky Community Gallery

exhibition card for Fact and Fantasy: Beaded Narratives by Nancy Hooten and Kym Hepworth 

at Indigo Sky Community Gallery

Looking for something to do in Savannah, GA this weekend? Come to Indigo Sky Community Gallery for a Gallery Talk! The current exhibit is a two-person show, Fact and Fantasy: Beaded Narratives by Nancy Hooten and Kym Hepworth. Tania Sammons, Curator of the Owens-Thomas House and Decorative Arts at the Telfair Museum, has served as curator for this exhibition and will talk about the show on Sunday, March 25th from 3-5 pm. 

If you'd like to read more about the exhibit, here's a link to the article, Beads of light & darkness, by Jim Morekis at Connect Savannah.

new assemblage: Southern Gothic (Flannery O'Connor)

Kym Hepworth / Southern Gothic (Flannery O'Connor) / 2012 / mixed media / 35 3/4 x 20 5/8 x 4 3/8"

© 2012 - Kym Hepworth. All Rights Reserved. All photographs by Robin Miller.

"Question: Miss O'Connor, you said yesterday that the South was Christ-haunted instead of Christ-centered. I don't quite understand this and how it effects our Southern literature. Would you please explain this?

O'Connor: I shouldn't have said that, should I? Well, as I said, the South didn't seem to me as a writer to be Christ-centered. I don't think anyone would object to that at all. I think all you would have to do is to read the newspapers to agree with me, but I said that we seemed to me to be Christ-haunted and that ghosts cast strange shadows, very fierce shadows, particularly in our literature. It is hard to explain a flat statement like that. I would hate to talk off the top of my head on a subject like that. I think it is a subject that a book could be written about but it would take me ten or twelve years to do it."
(italics mine. source for quote: Conversations with Flannery O'Connor, edited by Rosemary M. Magee, published by University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, MS ©1987)

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Southern Gothic (Flannery O'Connor) was made for a two-person show, Fact and Fantasy: Beaded Narratives by Nancy Hooten and Kym Hepworth at Indigo Sky Community Gallery. Tania Sammons, curator of the Owens-Thomas House and Decorative Arts at the Telfair Museum of Art, is the guest curator of the exhibit. Tania asked Nancy Hooten and me to each create a work inspired by the author Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964). 

detail, Southern Gothic (Flannery O'Connor) / 2012 / mixed media

Detail showing a 19th century tintype of a woman holding an open book.

For my assemblage, I decided to focus on Flannery O'Connor's connection to Savannah. O'Connor was born in Savannah on March 25, 1925 and lived here until 1938. (The Flannery O'Connor Childhood Home is located at 207 East Charlton Street and is one of the few museum houses in the South that is restored to the depression era.) 

detail, Southern Gothic (Flannery O'Connor) / 2012 / mixed media

I sewed together multiple photo transfer images of a house taken from a found photograph. On the top, left corner, someone had written in pencil "where I was born". This is the only panel on the backing board with abbreviated text.

Flannery O'Connor lived most of her life in Milledgeville, GA and was a devout Catholic. She wrote about the South and a central theme in her work is faith, revelation and redemption.

detail, Southern Gothic (Flannery O'Connor) / 2012 / mixed media

detail, Southern Gothic (Flannery O'Connor) / 2012 / mixed media

Detail showing Virgin Mary religious medallion and four-leaf clover. The four-leaf clover refers to Flannery O'Connor's Irish roots. "In Irish tradition the Shamrock or 3-leaf Clover represents the Holy Trinity: one leaf for the Father, one for the Son and one for the Holy Spirit. When a Shamrock is found with the fourth leaf, it represents God's Grace."  (source)

I wanted my assemblage to reflect what was important in O'Connor's life and writing - the South and religion -and to highlight O'Connor's use of dark, macabre, grotesque imagery. 

detail, Southern Gothic (Flannery O'Connor) / 2012 / mixed media

Detail showing a detached, hanging doll arm and a Civil War bullet. My references to the Civil War are extremely understated and include the bullet, blue and gray beadwork, and four Lincoln pennies.

Southern Gothic (Flannery O'Connor) is about being tied to a place and haunted by the past. Through my imagery, I've evoked the ideas of ancestral roots, family trees, home, and inheritance.

detail, Southern Gothic (Flannery O'Connor) / 2012 / mixed media

Detail of roots growing from of the bottom of the memory dress.

detail, Southern Gothic (Flannery O'Connor) / 2012 / mixed media

Detail showing abandoned/haunted house with treeline behind it.

Fact and Fantasy: Beaded Narratives by Nancy Hooten and Kym Hepworth

exhibition card for Fact and Fantasy: Beaded Narratives by Nancy Hooten and Kym Hepworth, 

at Indigo Sky Community Gallery, Savannah, GA

If you're in the area . . . stop by Indigo Sky Community Gallery on Friday, March 16th for the opening reception of Fact and Fantasy: Beaded Narratives by Nancy Hooten and Kym Hepworth (6-9 pm). Jerome Meadows is the Owner and Gallery Director of Indigo Sky Community Gallery and Tania Sammons, curator of the Owens-Thomas House and Decorative Arts at the Telfair Museum of Art, is the guest curator of the exhibit. The show runs from March 16 - April 1, 2012.

Many, many, many thanks to Tania Sammons for making this happen!
and thank you Robin Miller!

2nd Annual Telfair Trunk Show at the Jepson Center

If you're in Savannah, GA this weekend, come join Robin and me at the 2nd Annual Telfair Trunk Show in the Jepson Center's Eckburg Atrium on Saturday, December 3, 2011 from  10:00 am - 5:00 pm. The holiday trunk show features exceptional wares made by local artists and artisans, including ornaments, cards, handcrafted art, and one-of-a-kind gift items. There will also be free activities for children, a gift wrapping station, and holiday refreshments.

This year’s artists include:

Tina Austing
Kelley McCarthy
Joanna Angell
E.R.Jones
Maricia Blizzard Flowers
Robert Triheart
Chris Geiger
Mary Millsaps
Robin Miller and Kym Hepworth (a.k.a. inthecrystalpalace)
Kay Warren
Eric Wooddell

inthecrystalpalace will display original mixed media assemblages, collages, collage magnets, collage pendants, and sun ornaments. 

The Jepson Center is located at 207 W. York Street in the Historic District.

This Bird Has Flown: a new mixed media assemblage

Kym Hepworth / red thread

Kym Hepworth / red beads

Over the summer, I bought a doily at an antiques store. When I looked at the shape of the doily - two circles joined at the middle - I immediately thought that I'd use it in a piece about lovers. With that in mind, I began embellishing the doily with red beads. 

Kym Hepworth / work in progress: doilies embellished with seed beads

Kym Hepworth / work in progress: beaded doilies

The piece remained generally about lovers until I looked at a Victorian brooch that I own and it provided me with a more specific inspiration about marriage. At first, I considered using found images of any anonymous man and woman and placing them in the center of the doilies. However, I decided that it was important to use portraits of an actual couple, and I ended up using the images from the brooch itself.

Kym Hepworth / Victorian brooch

The Unquiet Grave

The wind doth blow today, my love,
And a few small drops of rain;
 I never had but one true-love,
In cold grave she was lain.

"I'll do as much for my true-love
As any young man may;
I'll sit and mourn all at her grave
For a twelvemonth and a day."

The twelvemonth and a day being up,
The dead began to speak:
"Oh who sits weeping on my grave,
And will not let me sleep?"

"T is I, my love, sits on your grave,
And will not let you sleep;
For I crave one kiss of your clay-cold lips,
And that is all I seek."

"You crave one kiss of my clay-cold lips,
But my breath smells earthy strong;
If you have one kiss of my clay-cold lips,
Your time will not be long.

"T is down in yonder garden green,
Love, where we used to walk,
The finest flower that e'ver was seen
Is withered to a stalk.

"The stalk is withered dry, my love,
So will our hearts decay;
So make yourself content, my love,
Till God calls you away."

- popular ballad collected by Francis James Child

 (source for ballad: The Norton Anthology of Poetry, third edition, edited by Alexander W. Allison, et al., published by W. W. Norton & Company, New York, © 1983)  

 

As I worked on the piece, my idea for it changed again and turned darker. The love birds on top of the brooch suggested mourning doves and then mourning. The lovers joined in marriage changed to lovers bound to each other beyond death. A narrative developed that the wife had died first and the husband was left in mourning for her. In order to convey or suggest this story, I covered the image of the woman with black netting, placed a feather between the couple, and positioned a bird - ready to take flight - directly over the image of the woman. I picked out a wooden rope trim for the frame and echoed it with green braided trim along the inside border. This small detail suggests - in a very abstract way - being joined together or union. The dominant color of the piece is dark, charcoal gray and, of course, refers to mourning. 

Kym Hepworth / This Bird Has Flown / 2011 / mixed media / 9 3/4 x 12 1/2 x 3 in.
© 2011 - Kym Hepworth. All Rights Reserved. 
Available at inthecrystalpalace 

Kym Hepworth / This Bird Has Flown / 2011 / mixed media / 9 3/4 x 12 1/2 x 3 in.

Kym Hepworth / This Bird Has Flown, detail 


That's what the work is about for me - for someone else, it could be about separation or divorce or simply an odd thing with a bird stuck on top for no particular reason at all. 

excerpt from The Widow of the South

"Time, twisting on and on, always taking away and never bringing anything back, could kill people years before they extricated themselves from their bodies and flew off to God. I had heard her float through the hallways of the house, whispering the names of her children as she blew out the lamps. John Randal, Mary Elizabeth, Martha. It sounded like prayer, like some sort of invocation. I'd been in a Catholic church once, down on toward Natchez, and I'd heard the same sound when the priests approached the altar, muttering the sounds that would bring Christ back to them.

Kym Hepworth / Reliquary / 2007 / mixed media / 8 3/8 x 6 1/8 3 1/4 in. 

 © 2007 - Kym Hepworth. All Rights Reserved. Available at inthecrystalpalace.

I didn't much care for that sort of thing, and I had no faith that a priest could work such magic, but I found myself praying that someday, maybe, Carrie McGavock would perform that miracle, that time would get all wrapped up on itself and confused, and that those children would walk the hallways with their mother again. There was beauty in that woman. Not in her pain, but in the part of her obscured by the pain and the black crinkly dress and the black thread of time. 

Kym Hepworth / The Widow / 2010 / mixed media / 13 1/8 x 9 7/8 x 4 1/4 in. 

© 2011 - Kym Hepworth. All Rights Reserved. Available at inthecrystalpalace.

I saw a young and beautiful woman, a woman who could lift burdens and redeem men. I wanted to be redeemed, I wanted to be absolved. And I wanted that woman, the angel who walked in the cemetery among her dead children and kissed their gravestones when she thought no one was looking, to be the one doing the redeeming. I had no name for that, no word. Just a feeling." 

(source for quote: The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks, published by Warner Books, New York, NY © 2005 )