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August 20, 2006 Staff Lynn Marshall-Linnemeier's home is like one of her sculptures writ
large -- an assemblage of photos, spirits, talismans and stories. =
=
The
Buddhist altar on the dresser in her bedroom faces a wall of Haitian orishas, or spirits. A copy of L. Frank Baum's &quo=
t;The
Wizard of Oz," a favorite fairy tale, rests on the nightstand. Family
photos line the hall. A bottle tree stands in the backyard garden. Her art
and that of her friends hang everywhere you look. =
There's
so much to see that you might miss the urn in the dining room filled with
stalks of cotton bolls, which Marshall-Linnemeier gathered in a field off=
the
Mississippi Delta's legendary =
"Riding
through the Delta is like riding through history," she says. "Y=
ou
can see the place where B.B. King played. A man showed me where Robert
Johnson met the devil at the crossroads. [Civil rights icon] Fannie Lou <=
span
class=3DSpellE>Hamer was born there. Emmett Till was lynched
there." =
The
fluffy white puffs feel soft, but, as field slaves -- and later, her moth=
er
-- knew firsthand, the burs that hold them are as sharp as thorns. =
You
might describe her show at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia the =
same
way. At first glance, the works in the "Hurricane" series are
enchanting. The hand-painted photos and boxes feature her familiar vivid
palette, dominated by high-key red and blues -- and undulant vines bearing
luxuriant blooms. But on closer inspection, they are not so benign. =
Consider
the painted photograph "I Know Who." The photo is a blowup of a
sepia 19th-century stereograph, a double image that when seen through a
stereoscope becomes a remarkably three-dimensional image. The sun-bright
yellow zinnia on the left side of the piece first catches the eye. On the
right, an adorable African-American child sits on a crate next to a large
watermelon. The title: "I'se a Little Al=
abama
Coon." =
This
body of work grew out of her 2005 master's thesis in Southern Studies at =
the =
"The
stereograph was the first visual mass medium, the 19th-century version of
television," she says. "They were popular across =
The
stereographs depicted African-Americans as raggedy folks with goggle-eyed
grins, devouring watermelon, speaking terrible English. Using her artist's
prerogative, the Atlanta College of Art grad alters one photo of each pai=
r to
create a positive image. A watermelon becomes a book. The cotton fields
filled with workers become a mass of billowy clouds. The child's face in
"I Know Who" becomes the center of the zinnia, and the words
"My mom says I'm a beautiful flower, and I trust my mom, so who's sa=
ying
...?" override the original caption. =
The
stereographs are part of the "Hurricane" series, a narrative wh=
ose
structure is modeled on "The Wizard of Oz." Like Dorothy, her
protagonist -- based on the real-life Mary Virginia Montgomery -- suffers=
a
head injury, and hallucinations (the stereograph images) ensue. =
The
title is not just wordplay on Dorothy's tornado. It is the name of an
experimental plantation owned by Jefferson Davis' brother Joseph, where
slaves were educated and cared for. =
The
artist, 52, discovered the Montgomery family in 1989 while doing photogra=
phic
and oral history field work in Mound Bayou, an African-American town foun=
ded
in 1887 by Mary's Virginia's brother Isaiah. There she met the late Milton
Crowe, a descendant of one of the founding families who had documented Mo=
und
Bayou's history with words and photographs. The photographic portraits in=
her
assemblages are from a =
As a
child of segregation, Marshall-Linnemeier was fascinated by this town. =
"I
remember the owner of the ice cream parlor in Southern Pines [N.C.] shooi=
ng
us out of the store after we bought a cone, and my dad telling us we could
not play in certain playgrounds," she says. "It still remains a
thorn -- being humiliated in that manner. Mound Bayou was a place where I
could have sat in the ice cream parlor. =
" =
There's
a hint of "what if" in Marshall-Linnemeier=
's
musings. After the hallucinations show her how the white world perceives =
her,
=
"Stereo
Propaganda: Deconstructing Stereotypes, Reconstructing Identity" Thr=
ough
Sept. 16. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. =
In
"A Day Most Pleasant," the photo is a portrait of Mary Virginia
Montgomery, Lynn Marshall-Linnemeier's protag=
onist.
She discovered the family while doing field work in =
Photo =
CHARLOTTE
B. TEAGLE / Staff =
"Mound
Bayou was a place where I could have sat in the ice cream parlor," L=
ynn
Marshall-Linnemeier, 52, says, recalling incidents from a childhood in the
segregated South. =
Photo = Cotton loses its sting in "The Cloud Gatherers."
Copyright 2006 The=
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