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Appalachia has been the smoky base flavor of my work even as I’ve lived in New York City, Florida, Hawaii, and Arizona. Living now in my family hometown in Bristol, Tennessee, I look to my roots directly. I am troubled by the artistic gentrification that would rob me of a heritage. Because I’ve come to think that a voice with a clear sense of heritage and place is the freshest voice in contemporary art, I address global issues through an Appalachian lens, and interpret rural Appalachia with a contemporary eye. |
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Val Lyle
Appalachia has been the smoky base flavor of my work even as I’ve lived in New York City, Florida, Hawaii, and Arizona. Living now in my family hometown in Bristol, Tennessee, I look to my roots directly. I am troubled by the artistic gentrification that would rob me of a heritage. Because I’ve come to think that a voice with a clear sense of heritage and place is the freshest voice in contemporary art, I address global issues through an Appalachian lens, and interpret rural Appalachia with a contemporary eye.
My current immersion installation focuses on the vanishing wooden barn, with large-scale paintings of interior and exterior views rendered in a contemporary, cropped, and abstracted style alongside drying tobacco, hay bales, and farm tools. Eight-foot-tall figurative rope sculptures stand next to their humble inspiration, a strand of bailing twine. Giant projections of barn imagery loop to live, old-time music. The strong play between positive and negative space carries through the individual artworks and the exhibition itself. Viewers spontaneously crawl through hay tunnels and gush their own “barn” stories brought to life by familiar scents. The interiors become a vehicle for embracing the vulnerable child that we all once were. The barn exteriors acknowledge the inevitable loss of innocence and time that occurs so naturally. Light shining through board slats becomes saturated with meanings.Arte Povera could be applied to much of my current work, for I use rope, burdock, and other discarded materials. But making art out of common stuff comes naturally to me, perhaps from a tradition steeped in “making do,” a way of life in Appalachia, where both materials and means are scarce. I continue to use all appropriate media to execute a visual and physical artistic concept. With a nod to Merritt Oppenheim’s fur-covered teacup, and a humorous wink in the title The Sticky Subjects Series, I use common burdock and cockleburs to create sculptures that point out the various elephants in the living rooms of our country without taking sides. A tea service titled Tea Time for Darfur references Great Britain’s role and the world’s non-action in the staggering number of deaths in Sudan. In this day of Octomoms, loving couples without children, and unplanned marriages due to pregnancy, the Cocklebur Fetus is hope and fear made visible. A life-size “M16” needs little explanation in burdock. The series continues to grow. So does the burdock.
