Folk Art Symposium - January 20, 2011

Lauren Rogers Museum of Art will present a Folk Art Symposium in conjunction with the exhibition Take Time to Appreciate: Photographs of Mrs. L. V. Hull and Reverend H. D. Dennis by Bruce West on display in the LRMA Lower Level Galleries. The symposium will be held Thursday, January 20, 2011 beginning at 1 p.m.

Presenters will be Bruce West, Take Time to Appreciate photographer, Emilie Taylor, co-producer of the documentary “God’s Architects,” and Dr. Stanley Harkness of “The Friends of L. V. Hull.”

Bruce West is a Professor in the Department of Art and Design at Missouri State University. He has received a number of awards for his photographic work including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ford Foundation for the Arts, and the Polaroid Corporation. His photographs are included in numerous public and corporate collections such as The Library of Congress, Saint Louis Art Museum, The Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Paine Webber Corporation. Recent exhibitions include Acts of Faith at the Noorderlicht Photofestival in Groningen, The Netherlands, The Mississippi Story at the Mississippi Museum of Art, Contemporary American Photography at the Internationale Fototage in Mannheim, Germany, and Recent Acquisitions in Photography at The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art.

God's Architects, produced by Zach Godshall and Emilie Taylor, tells the stories of five spiritually inspired artist-architects and their enigmatic creations. Taylor is a native of south Louisiana and works at the Tulane School of Architecture as an instructor and coordinator of design-build projects for the Tulane City Center. Taylor’s education includes a technical building background at the University of Southern Mississippi followed by a master’s degree in architecture at Tulane. Before the storm and the rebuilding efforts that followed, Emilie conducted a traveling fellowship across the south to meet, document, and study these self-taught builders. The lecture given at the end of that fellowship was a way of introducing these folk architects and their works to the design community. Between furniture making and screen printing experiments, Emilie is in the process of compiling a book on these makers and their inspired creations.

Dr. Stanley Harkness represents “The Friends of L. V. Hull.” Massey will discuss the group’s efforts to preserve the home of L. V. Hull in Kosciusko.

The symposium is generously sponsored by BancorpSouth, Laurel Ford, Lincoln, Mercury and Kia, Mississippi Power Co., and Sanderson Farms.