November 15, 2007
The Coleman Center for the Arts is pleased to present the Mose Toliver Project, by current resident artist, Garland Farwell. The project reception will take place on Thursday, November 15th from 4:30 to 6:30 pm at the Coleman Center gallery. The display and celebration of the work will be accompanied by a gallery cook out. Participating schools, students and parents, and community members are all encouraged to attend. The event is free and open to the public. Please join us for the celebration!
The Mose Toliver Project is the culmination of Farwell’s three-month residency at the Coleman Center. Since arriving in York in September, he has worked with students in Demopolis High School, North Sumter Jr. High School, Kinterbish Jr. High School, Livingston Jr. High School, York West End Jr. High School, and at the Coleman Center’s weekend workshop. Over 75 students have contributed to Farwell’s vision of reinterpreting the work of famed Alabama folk artist Mose Toliver, who passed away a little over a year ago.
In working with the students Farwell hoped to teach them basic creative processes such as 3-d construction, painting, and what he calls “drawing with scissors.” But he also hoped that he could urge them to tap into their own creativity ability, and the basic artistic process of expression. Farwell sees folk art in particular as a catalyst for conveying creative potential. This creativity is not based in formal art training or expensive materials, but on the human capacity to articulate our deepest feelings and beliefs through visual representation. This spirit emanates from Farwell’s work. It is a blend of Toliver’s imagery, a bold sense of imagination and mythic representation, and the combined effort of an entire community.
In one piece Farwell drew from the Freedom Bus, an image that appears frequently in Toliver’s work. Students were asked to find a real person who represented freedom to them. Farwell then led the students in creating their own “seated figure,” a devotional sculpture common in Africa that represents authority and wisdom. Based on the students’ own research, Farwell aided them in creating the characters from common household materials. These symbolic characters were installed in Farwell’s gigantic freedom busses, which are over eight feet long. The three busses, each a sculptural frame filled with the seated figures, create a varied caravan of cultural icons such as Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Garrison, Louis Armstrong, Booker T. Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Cesar Chavez, and Oprah Winfrey.
Another frequent image in Toliver’s work is Mr. Bones, a character that Farwell refers to as a powerful meditation on life and mortality. The same sense of duality runs throughout Farwell’s creations. They blur the line between alien and whimsy, fright and beauty, and between this world and another. Farwell has re-envisioned Mr. Bones as a nearly eight foot tall “puppet.” The colorful creature looms over the viewer, hanging on a large metal frame draped with fabric. Reminiscent of Japanese Bunraku style puppets the creation begs to be brought to life.
Other pieces include flocks of birds, a small forest of student-made trees, and collaborative collages made from improvised shapes and figures. Together they create a fantastical world for both the maker and the viewer. While both accessible and celebratory the work has an undeniable social conscious, expressing the creative and constructive potential of both individuals and communities.
This project was made possible by funding from the Alabama Power Foundation, the Black Belt Community Foundation, the West Alabama Community Foundation, the Sumter County Board of Education Community Education Program, Demopolis High School, an the generous contributions of our individual supporters. For more information please contact the Coleman Center for the Arts at 205-392-205, email info@colemanarts.org, or visit www.colemanarts.org.
About the Artist
Garland Farwell is an internationally respected artist and accomplished arts instructor. He holds a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design. His work has been show throughout the United States including at the Jonathon Shorr Gallery in New York City, and the Lincoln Center Museum for the Performing Arts. His work has been shown across the world in Germany, Scotland, South Africa, Brazil, Portugal, and Angola. He has taught drawing, sculpture and puppetry at Montclair Art Museum, the New York Public School System, and the Rhode Island School of Design, among others.