The Alabama Experience; Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: The Art of Frank Fleming

the production funding for this program was made possible in part by a grant from the alabama state council on the arts it's been a animal oh you

are in kingston teaches business disney i was born in nineteen forty billion bear creek alabama which is about a hundred miles north of here and how is the fourth day on our sixth year as we were raised poor but very far cry on and there we

were farmers the parents felt roosevelt save the country i was named nick runs that i was named franklin don't know i used to trace pictures and that was the only are both you know because of the warm there or show worries you know what to do every day so there was not a lot of war ii tenth my early life was a sheer joy really because that was roland very pretty and i'll probably he instilled in me the most about the work ethic you know i have now and much closeness with nature

here that i have a speech coach a problem an annoyance rather that when some turn so painful arab alliance i guess they'll say was no word you know so and i couldn't bear was like when i was a singer invites to our agriculture teacher came to my parents and told me and where i could get help and that was up at what the florida state college which of about thirty five miles north where we live so i went there

so i could take speech therapy iowa was a gonna my injury and biology and i think my first one iraq took our course i am bound up the drone pain he can communicate these are now at the major impact liasson our standards they're worth and not to parliament that her legs a while why didn't we think of the things that it but it was mcconnell his originality baby is a relative to expressing servant through his art on think that maybe an outstanding intimate very first semester he was at emi women's side no mail had never been to college so at least the problem was really a blessing been a disguise

because that was the real reason why i went to colleges he said that when he got dna fly in and a big step and he said he also felt like a fledgling as bishop when frankie graduated from the receiving or sell them afford say talk he founded a job for about seven years where he worked at the space center and i remember he called a very telling time for him he was a technical artist and a game an opportunity that a couple of technical skill and i guess on it also showed in the navy he had done all he wanted to do with two dimensions and so in the early seventies he went to the restive alabama were masters of fine arts and focused and ceramics at the university they were so absorbed in abstract expressionism and

pots and given everything you know so my first pieces there were these huge pots that were hand they'll pin with slam singles really abstract forms but still had a vessel a pro each at that point the university was really focused on teaching ceramics says things are functional not sculptural he really was encouraged look at earth's towns but pottery in ceramics in general really changing dramatically in are really from the late fifties in nineteen seventy one by the trail with a couple of sentences and their us all people you know working with elvis cover place in various kinds a lot of robbery and some people in that war

anything but potts and oates are mainly sculptural a funky stuff and this it opened up now a vision of ceramics and probably was the most educational thing i have ever experience so i came back and started doing these little pieces using colors and last years and all the stuff but i was not up to be courageous of the faculty and so far my graduate this is a huge pile of our own rocks in nineteen seventy three when frank finished just a great university he went to birmingham he had found support through some sales subject who felt encouraged and then just a year later he and he'd sit at the studio here just a year later nineteen seventy four he was offered a one man show at the

birmingham same of art up until that time it was of the biggest terminal for an o opening they had an optimism of course they serve beer and i screen so that always brings people have no matter what we look in there at that point he wasn't using porcelain this was a rare quiet that was covered with a white glaze and it wasn't long after that that nineteen seventy five percent of that frightening whistle imply that he had discovered in tennessee and in exploring its properties more than having worked with did he decide to stop listening and i think that that was really when he did find his voice and his best way to smash it is the absence of color where and when you can built into your own employees similar committee acted as an envoy here really does allow protection of attack on certain

way and hayden and outliers transport this incredible detail some painful thoughts in a particular bird feathers inmates who just aren't impressive to see the feathers so that detailed exacting and beautiful why first occasion of freeform is reporting from washington dc to join the smithsonian institution at the renwick gallery that was in nineteen seventy four and was alarmist and an exhibition of friends in a private gallery in washington dc richard daley and of course in the art world were always looking for artists that are doing something new and i think of the french works certainly fit into that category the same time these pieces were delightful two months they were

serious in principle he chose not to pay for composers including i think if he had an account of the pieces i think it would've taken work in a different direction that might have made it perhaps too cute or two he's a very individualistic artist i would say and not tell not particularly fitting into it tran but i see him having the influence of surrealism of dog with women's or rather with a human body basically is the juxtaposition of little unexpected and very often having a characteristic of dreams the three rs have had the most impact on him who runs bosh and emigrate and robert

arneson and concrete among those especially notices surveillance and i think in the greatest paintings to see someone who is constantly examining reality and i think that's a frank assessments to do often the apple has legs or the camera takes on human forms but it's so real and it's not an it's deceptive you know it's this deception that pulls us up and mixes intimate and when we hadn't thought about that particular concept european art and i think it takes an artist lesson is somewhat withdrawn assistance i think it was for arms

not communicating not talking a lot and maybe in this deal or something in me that could not have been taught it was i guess store cell survival and that's when police so guns the strongest ideas and so that's pretty much what some of them are those years were usually i don't get it because if i do have this pitch is the idea not in a vineyard in places copy in them i know in the eyes of most europeans of americans are thought to be very liberal minded i'm very liberal in their expression of the antiwar australia campbell soup can walk to be more liberal

or a matter of fact and their effect on his work is just out to me so it's an imaginative creation another i will do an animal and what turns out is sometimes more surprising than i had in mind because so it's things that are homeless when their family say in their sentence we forget how much of a role nature planes many of them are uncomfortable and that is part of what draws

us into the parlor what these pieces are cheeses jesus speak to us about our own free will it's been about our own short poems and of our own kind of unpleasant relations with the world that we are continuing to damage to destroy also is a matter of these animals their candidates in a slightly pinned to it we begin a series in the nineteen eighties space time picasso's great anti war painting character which came from the bombing in nineteen forty seven of a spanish town what i was trying to convey was held more complex you know animals in the environment and this was in vegas was there a war on its buildup of vessels and you know one day i was with a

post sept of a show in new york in a december of eighty two are at the rig and i say it slides of all the us now with his horrified even now i can show this episode say and people want to come to new york to live with and be happy nice work has been collected by museums and private collections and really public lectures since the late seventies from the renwick gallery of the smithsonian national museum of american art the american craft and sam came a point in the early eighties when he really didn't have time for any more challenging more commissions and he was getting very very busy i came here in a real good time maybe you know when we cleave moved from california really got started it was always serious about what i was doing in one month they had to sell old man a possesses or to pay the right but i

stood my core sin did not take a part time job and that's strictly start to what i was doing i didn't you know i didn't take all the week he admits and i didn't take a holiday for work every day it's b he says for over the world filed suit moment in at seven in the us we don't know thirty dave and it all with your horse we do

that's where everything goes i think that to have an artist there is very closely identified to his region there's such a while positive way is quite refreshing and makes it much more interesting for me as an artist were some world and connected that they are picking up on each other's it isn't so sometimes the isolation that an artist is part of what the original is about no currier look in his manner it's

not dna rocket scientists know whenever it doesn't add up to me you know a lot of sense the meal us to keep me happy and i can look at the doomed for your true you will loom over lewd first load is minority minority that's my first one but i have to work if parents are working and bronze in the early eighties and i think the bronze castings have been very sensitive and very exact and very true to his support for models you know you pack of up show will close to shut off is a nightmare bronson became so much more feasible and have a sense of permanence of that

friends were starting out with porcelain trip to several years really mastered that technical difficulties of intimate medium and of course none of those technical difficulties is the fact that you cannot work on a large scale of course so his nursing rounds as real for him and opportunity as well as an opportunity to move into republican party our church where you can get a different exposure even went through private collections or museum collections fright was commissioned to do a fountain in five points and eighty seven or eight was frank's first large outdoor commissioner public commission and it was part of a larger conversation i sit with the city of birmingham was engaged in it was magic lead to dubai he's related to the peaceable kingdom because of old paintings are but the peaceable kingdom have always inches beneath

the storytelling thing is mainly for and the whale man holding the vote with these other animals listening you never can predict how people will find controversial if anyone had told me that a group of animals gathered in a circle listening to a story being read to them with francs a month a peaceable kingdom figures based on uncle remus and southern folk tales that anyone had said to me that someone would find satan lurking in these animals i would have said you're crazy but some people felt the figure which five sculptures a ram and which cost can be seen as a christ figure he wanted to opposite ends of this argument people saw the satanic and there were threats that people were gonna come and pull a day on i was shocked and i was scared but certainly

a lot more people of the cable where i saw this piece of work and would ever and it's not about it was pretty silly and it eventually died down and i think people now embrace and love as a huge gathering point mr mark only human in an insane simple and try its its eu or where you came for help make you what you are in a deal to forget that and you know i just assume the direction or tomei was

real supporters should never probably understood all of it but she was aware of oil by hand my sales and making a living and by doing something in the woods so foreign to do anything that's ever happened in the family but it was murray so important you know it to me or something you know something new church something that is a part of the us it's just that simple so is that can we a little a continuation of that ideal a young growing up on the island that guinness do a movie and it hangs own as long as you got some of your family that experience into this it's almost a real

liking wonderful when you can say do you remember i think that increased worker here we don't see that biking and that satirical and more from the eighties painful know is what frightens it's nice really he's never considered myself a mormon missionary bought an unhappy with that i have never worked but again i am like a fortune because my ego isn't that day and i went to new york with the last sentence at one as much fun as they say hey little thinner and iran is just that you know while the doctor i don't need you and i have had a very peaceful

history religious studies throughout our history so for an age steel universe in a very very strong way so i feel that his work will continue to be a joint for generations survival and honey is he

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