Scholar speaks about Yard art’s rich history in black Southern culture

An old whitewashed tire, an empty bottle and a misplaced shoe enshrined in a glass case.

The items in a front yard might be considered eyesores, but to scholar and artist Judith McWillie they’re eye openers to a long and rich “indigenous tradition” of vernacular black art in Alabama and the rest of the South.

McWillie’s talk,“Doing Things Right: Traditional Signs in African-American Cemeteries, Homes and Churches,” was hosted at Auburn University’s Jule Collins Smith Museum as part of the “New Perspectives: Alabama Art in the Open” series Tuesday.

McWillie’s 20-year anthropological research, chronicles the connection between the yard art of blacks in the South with art from West Africa and the Caribbean and their moral as well as spiritual
significance.

“Many of the Africans that were captives in the South, came from West and Central Africa (now the People’s Democratic Republic of Congo),” McWillie said. “The people of this region had a very rich religion based upon the configuration of objects called menkisi (found materials).”

Art that incorporated objects that had a circular shape may have been symbolic of the continuous cycle of life from birth to adulthood and death. Art that made use of the twisted roots of trees or other entwined objects may have symbolized a union or the idea of a binding promise.

But these artistic vestiges of African-influenced art weren’t relegated to the yards of blacks in the South. They are perhaps even more so evident in some of the grave sites of blacks throughout the
region.

One popular and recurring theme among many of the grave sites McWillie has documented in the book she co-authored with Grey Gundaker, titled “No Space Hidden: The Spirit of African-American Yard Work,” is the symbol of a diamond-shaped figure with a line dividing the figure symmetrically.

“Perhaps the line is symbolic of the separation between the realm of the living and that of the dead, where the dead in some morbid state but still very active but in different roles,” said McWillie. “There is also speculation that due to segregation and Jim Crow in the South, that African-Americans may have had to hide elements of their spirituality in forms that the dominant culture wouldn’t recognize.”

While her book chronicles several unique examples of African-American yard and grave art, McWillie said finding what may be similarly-influenced art in other areas of the region can be as simple as knowing what to look for.

“When you see these items in a yard or cemetery over a period of time, it helps you develop a kind of double-sight beyond what some people might commonly see and consider junk,” McWillie said. “What makes that double-sight valuable is the power it has to teach and that’s what the people who created these works of art continue to do to this day through their art.”