HOME - David Butler, Sanford Darling, Mary T. Smith and Sarah Mary Taylor

January 22 - February 20, 2020

How we customize, maintain and curate the spaces we live in has a remarkable influence on how we feel, both inside our individual dwellings and situated within our own identities. Whether creating a place to inhabit, or reveling in the nostalgia of a past or metaphorical “home”, the fingerprint of a living space can range from simple architecture and design choices, to small or unusual tweaks such as an unexpected paint color or unique landscaping, to over-the-top yard shows and properties that feel completely otherworldly and dreamlike.

HOME is a tribute to four self-taught artists who were all prolific and highly-creative makers: Mary T. Smith, Sarah Mary Taylor, Sanford Darling and David Butler. The exhibition highlights artworks that existed within the artists’ homes, decorated their front yards or property, or functioned as part of large-scale art environments. The creation and self-display of these works provided each artist with a meaningful outlet to share deeply personal histories and symbolic remembrances, and the gesture bravely declared their space in the world. The obsessive environments and artistic displays of these four individuals were also often spectacles for the world to see and gave evidence to profound lives lived.

Mary T. Smith (1904–1995) lived and painted on a one-acre property in Hazlehurst, Mississippi and began “making pictures” in the late 1970s following her retirement from work as a domestic servant and cook. Because it was visible from State Highway 51, Smith used her front yard and garden to display her work, which consisted of paintings rendered in oil enamel and house paint on found wood and roofing metal that the artist found at the local dump. Smith painted outdoors, in a small covered workspace she constructed herself, and the initial inspiration to show her creations in her yard was the attention of passersby garnered by two tall advertising billboards looming over her property. Smith’s art-making strategy was simple but effective — she combined images and texts to attract the attention of visitors, and her paintings used bold colors to depict subjects such as Jesus and God, herself, neighbors and friends. Smith, who suffered from a hearing impairment from a young age, felt uncomfortable in public so she made her own home an oasis, with highly decorated spaces, self-constructed buildings and a lush garden that served all of her needs.

Sarah Mary Taylor (1916-2000) of Anding, Mississippi, came to art and quilting late in life after retiring from many strenuous years of working random jobs throughout the Mississippi Delta, which included being a housekeeper, cook, field hand and nanny. Her craft stems from a long line of African and African American textile traditions passed down within her family, and which she learned from her mother, Pearlie Posie and her aunt, Pecolia Warner. Her aunt’s work was seen by art professors at the University of Mississippi, leading to the discovery and exhibition of Sarah Mary Taylor’s own works, which have unique, vibrant and colorful abstract compositions and figurative patterns created in the appliqué technique. Taylor’s works explore serious and timely issues ranging from segregation and racism to poverty and social class, while also giving voice to her more fanciful side. Taylor often created surreal scenes featuring giant animals that outsize humans and placed disembodied hands surrounding oblivious individuals. It has been theorized that much of her iconography was inspired by Vodun cosmology and spirits, but her images were also of her own making and emblematic of a private and very thoughtful spiritual belief. Her famous piece Purple Hand Quilt (1985) was commissioned for the film The Color Purple.

Sanford Darling (1894-1973) took up painting at age 68 after retiring from a life of working unusual jobs such as chiropractor, Hollywood stuntman, and engineer for General Petroleum, and also serving in World War I. Following his retirement and the passing of his wife soon after, he traveled abroad on tramp steamer ships for four years visiting Europe, Asia and the Pacific Islands. Upon his return home to Santa Barbara, California, Darling began creating paintings to document memories of his travels. His first attempt was done directly on one of the walls in his living room, which quickly expanded to making the entirety of the inside of his house a canvas. Once he ran out of space indoors, the artist began painting with oil paint on large wooden sheets, which were then mounted to the outside of his house and his roof. Eventually, paintings covered every inch of the facade of Darling’s home, which locals fondly referred to as “The House of 1,000 Paintings”.

Like Smith and Darling, David Butler (1898-1997) began obsessively filling his Louisiana yard and covering the facade of his house with artwork after retiring from his job at a sawmill following a work-related injury and the death of his wife. He created colorful cut-tin sculptural assemblages in the forms of fantastic creatures, mermaids and wild animals, designing many of these works to be kinetic whirligig-like pieces that shifted in the wind. Butler’s metal forms were then painted with bright enamel paint and adorned with a variety of found objects, often including plastic Mardi Gras beads. While much of his artwork was mobile (he was famous for the highly decorated bike he rode), even the stationary pieces he created over his windows cast shadows that were constantly in motion. Much of the artist’s imagery was intended to serve as protection, as Butler believed these “spirit shields” sheltered his home, and himself, from life’s anxieties and unfriendly forces.

Mary T. Smith’s work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, and The High Museum of Art in Atlanta. 

Sarah Mary Taylor’s work has been displayed in the American Museum of Folk Art, The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Art. 

Sanford Darling’s work can now be found in the Museum of American Folk Art, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Long Beach Museum of Art and The Oakland Museum of Art.

David Butler’s work is featured in the collections of  the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the American Folk Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art.