Tin Man (review)

the alabama review 236 in banking is fascinating, Hunt’s writing and organization clear, and including the notes at the bottom of the page makes the scholarship more an integral part of the text. Leah Rawls Atkins Auburn University Tin Man. By Charlie Lucas. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009. x, 181 pp. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-8173-5. Charlie Lucas (b. 1951) creates art from cast-off auto parts, worn-out quilts, rusty carpenters’ tools, stray wooden and metal windows, bent bicycle wheels, corrugated metal roofing, split garden hoses, and any other found object that speaks to him. In an excellent introduction to Tin Man, Georgine Clarke, Visual Arts Program Manager of the Alabama State Council on the Arts, explains that Lucas’s art has been defined by such terms as “self-taught, visionary, outsider, and vernacular, which refer to art made without regard to formal art training or process. It comes from the soul and passion of the artist” (p. 9). Other than Clarke’s description of the environment in which Lucas has created much of his work in Pink Lily, Alabama, and a brief foreword by Robert Farris Thompson, a professor of art history at Yale University, which establishes Lucas as a triumphant artist worthy of the attention of art historians, there is no scholarly interpretation or categorization. In the first half of the book, Lucas tells his own story and says what he feels should be said about his art. Here text is artfully interspersed with photos of various pieces, some of them details of large works that are part of Lucas’s Pink Lily environment. The second half of the book features full-page photos of individual works and a list of exhibitions, public programs, and publications in which Lucas is featured. Drawn from interviews recorded, transcribed, and lightly edited by Ben Windham, retired Tuscaloosa News journalist and long-time admirer and advocate of the folk arts of Alabama, Lucas’s story is totally honest, frequently painful, sometimes humorous, and often wise and eloquent. He tells of an extremely hard childhood, resulting emotional difficulties , and a feeling of acceptance of his differentness that has come with the appreciation of his artwork. He describes how he creates and names his works and how he feels about selling them. He struggles to explain the role of visions, spirituality, and even witchcraft in the creation of art. July 2011 237 Some readers may be bothered by nonstandard grammar in the text. While Windham could have made corrections, he was wise not to do so as changes in Lucas’s speech patterns would lessen the authenticity and power of his story. To this reader, the artist’s imaginative figures of speech and telling details outweigh grammatical irregularities. Tin Man contains more than 150 stunning color photos taken by Chip Cooper, Artist-in-Residence in the Honors College at the University of Alabama. Readers of the Alabama Review and Alabama Heritage will be familiar with his outstanding work. This is not a typical coffee table art book or catalogue. It does not give us the expected details about the size of the pieces, the materials used in their creation, or their present owners. Many are not titled, and it is difficult to know if a piece discussed in the text actually appears anywhere in the book. It is, however, a highly readable and gloriously beautiful book that provides the next best experience to seeing the works at Lucas’s home in Pink Lily. Tin Man will be treasured by fans of folk art, but anyone with an interest in Alabama culture and the social and economic conditions that have produced numerous nationally known self-taught artists will find it rewarding. Joyce Cauthen Birmingham Lost Plantations of the South. By Marc R. Matrana. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009. xv, 320 pp. $40.00. ISBN 978-1-57806-942-2. Contrary to popular myth, William Tecumseh Sherman’s fiery path of destruction is not what destroyed the Old South; rather, it was a sad mixture of tragedy and “progress.” After the Civil War plantations, farmhouses , churches, and even entire towns lay in ruin from pillage and neglect and were often...