Cover Story: Quilting Together Collaborations
Written by Alison BurkeAugust 12, 2009 – 1:28 pm
It’s ironic that a quilt brought Garbo and Archie Hearne to Chattanooga. A quilt that’s made to tell a story can, in fact, become the catalyst for new stories. A quilt that’s made by piecing together scraps of fabric can serve to bring people together around it. This is certainly the case for Phyllis Stephen’s story quilt, “A Red Hot Afternoon,” shown earlier this year at Stephen’s Quilting Together workshop at the Chattanooga African American Museum (CAAM) and will be seen again in the Hearnes’ upcoming 54-artist exhibition at CAAM, entitled “Collaborations: Two Decades of African American Art”.
The story of Garbo and Archie Hearne’s gallery in Little Rock, AK takes a parallel path to that of Chattanooga African American Museum. In each case, a business was launched in an effort to give voice to a black community on a local and national scale. In each case, what began decades ago as a small idea among friends became a multi-faceted community force that is still redefining its focus and scope today.
What is now Hearne Fine Art began 20 years ago as an idea in the minds of two people who, as Garbo Hearne puts it, “recognized a void in both the Central Arkansas art community and its African American community. The former lacked diversity, while the latter had no gallery or retail space dedicated to its culture and heritage.” They decided to carve out their own niche.
Beginning small as the Pyramid Gallery in 1988, the Hearnes’ business took off in the coming years. Within two years, they had not only moved to a bigger and more centrally located space, but were filling new shelves with books by prominent black authors and becoming a regular stop on book-signing circuits.
Soon, they moved and expanded again to add a frame shop and space enough to host community events, such as annual Kwanzaa celebrations. All the while, Pyramid’s gallery space remained at the forefront of their endeavors, drawing exhibitions by world-renowned artists like Elizabeth Catlett and George Hunt. They made annual trips to New York to participate in the National Black Fine Arts Show.
Over the course of two decades, what is now known as Hearne Fine Art has become not only a nationally recognized source for African American art and literature, but also the keystone between art and African American culture in Little Rock that it set out to be.
The Hearnes were not the only black Americans to recognize a lack of voice for their community in 1988. Although cities like Chicago, and New York had formed museums and centers for African American history, art and culture beginning in the ’50s and ’60s, in the Southeast, these things took a bit longer.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, African Americans all over the Southeast arrived at a similar realization: There were a lot of black stories to tell and not enough venues to tell them in. In cities across the region, African American history museums, cultural centers, bookstores, and galleries began popping up. In 1974, the Spirit Square Afro-American Cultural Center opened in Charlotte, NC. In 1978, Atlanta’s APEX Museum opened its doors. And the Tubman Museum of Macon, GA began showing work in 1981.
Chattanooga was no different. The CAAM, dreamt up in 1977 and realized in 1983, was part of this very movement. “It’s no coincidence that the idea for the museum came about the same year that the film Roots came out. A lot of people, especially in the African American community, were discovering their heritage,” says Carmen Davis, the museum’s education director and curator. “In ’77, a group of people came together and said they wanted to have some sort of Afro-American cultural center here in the city. In ’83, we got our first building, and the whole shebang was in one room. Offices, gift shop, and museum—all in one room.”
In spite of these meager beginnings, the museum became a force in the local black community and in 1996, the CAAM moved from the one-room building that is now the Kingdom Center to its current location alongside Bessie Smith Hall. And much like Hearne Fine Art, the museum has steadily broadened its scope over the course of its 26 years. Says Davis, “Our focus is history, but there’s a lot we do outside of that. We’re very interested in preserving music that is unique to the African American community, like blues, jazz, and R&B. We offer a lot of dance and music lessons. We also bring in performing artists, visual artists, and writers. Really, we’re changing from primarily a museum to more of a cultural center.”
With such similar histories, it’s no wonder that the Hearnes have chosen the Chattanooga African American Museum as the first stop on the tour of their traveling collection, Collaborations. Their collection, which is accompanied by a coffee-table book of the same name, compiles the works of 54 black artist who’ve shown in the Hearnes’ gallery space over its 20 years, including Leroy Allen, Benny Andrews, John Biggers, Earnest Davidson, William Tolliver, and Ernest Withers.
Celebrated painter Dianne Smith, whose work “Cornered” is included in the exhibit, also wrote the afterward for the Collaborations book. “Partnerships, alliances, relationships, synergy, and responsibility are what come to mind when I think of Collaborations,” writes Smith, “meaning that we should work together for a greater purpose. It is important for the artists and gallery to find a common ground to work towards a shared vision of protecting our cultural legacy through the visual arts.”
In this expression of artistic community, Smith touches on a focal point of the exhibition, which seeks to express both black history and black experience through visual art. The paintings, photography, quilts, and sculpture that make up this diverse collection—at times political, at times emotional and evocative—together articulate the many stories of Black America.
In Chattanooga, the exhibition itself is a historical event. “Because the exhibit covers… ’88 to 2008, you get to see some really heavy hitters like Elizabeth Catlett and George Hunt, but it also gives you some newer artists as well,” says Davis. “Normally, you wouldn’t be able to see many of these artists in Chattanooga, let alone all of them at one time in one exhibit.”
For the CAAM, the exhibit is as much about the future as it is about the past. In order to make room for Collaborations, the museum is taking down a collection of photographs by Chattanoogans who attended President Obama’s inauguration ceremony. Like the movement that sparked the movie Roots and initiated the first incarnation of CAAM, the election of the nation’s first black president has created a new climate for African Americans to rediscover their heritage.
In her afterward, Dianne Smith writes powerfully about the importance of our time in history, the role this exhibit plays in telling necessary stories or the past, and its contribution to the future. “We need to run our leg of the race in preparation to pass the baton,” Smith notes. “This will help to spread and strengthen the vision of Hearne Fine Art. There will be generations of artists to come as Hearne Fine Art celebrates forty, sixty, eighty years. Collaborations was twenty years in the making, yet it is part of a larger historical construct.”
The exhibition also marks the beginning of many revitalizing changes for the museum itself. In September, CAAM plans to reveal a name change that will more adequately reflect the variety of cultural resources it provides. “A name change will allow us to really expand and show the community everything that we do,” says Davis, “and help people understand that we offer more than just history.”
Collaborations’ opening on Friday, August 21 coincides with the kickoff of the CAAM’s second annual Bessie Smith Heritage Festival, which takes place the following Saturday afternoon and features workshops with artists, as well as and nationally renowned jazz, funk, and R&B musicians such as Vasti Jackson, Roy Ayers, and Angela Winbush.
More than anything, the presence of the Collaborations exhibit at CAAM functions a great deal like the quilt that first began the dialogue between Hearne Fine Art and CAAM. The exhibition, made by piecing together works of art, serves also to bring people and communities together around it. The exhibition is made to tell a story, and yet it is also the catalyst for new stories—and new collaborations.
To learn about membership opportunities or to obtain additional information about this exhibit and others, call (423) 266-8658.
Collaborations: Two Decades of African American Art
$5
10 a.m.- 5 p.m. Monday-Friday, noon – 4 p.m. Saturday|
Opens August 21, ends November 13
Chattanooga African American Museum, 200 E. MLK Blvd.
(423) 267-1628. www.caamhistory.org
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