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Spirit House art aims to bring people together
Tuesday, June 15, 1999 By Ervin Dyer, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
It's one of those mornings where it's 85 degrees before 10. The steamy heat and humidity easily wilt passers-by at the Three Rivers Arts Festival Gallery at 707 Penn Ave., Downtown.
But not festival curator-in-residence Lonnie Graham. Standing outside the gallery in his crisply starched long-sleeved shirt -- buttoned to the collar, no less -- Graham doesn't break a sweat.
"I don't think about this weather," he said, "so it doesn't bother me."
There is, however, a fire beneath Graham's cool demeanor. To spark it, ask him about art and artists' accountability.
Because artists contribute so much to daily culture and life, he said, they have a responsibility to their community to share their insights.
This is something, he continued, his hands lifting and lowering in cadence with his voice, that "enriches all of our lives and not just the artist's own and makes us aware of who we are as a people and gets people talking to each other."
One thing that has Graham talking these days is his Spirit House Project, making its home at the Three Rivers Arts Festival Gallery, across from the Benedum Center. In the slim, white room, the exhibit is an odyssey of paintings, photography, stained glass and social commentary. It stretches back to the bush country of rural South Africa, lifts up the burned black churches in the American South and reaches into the hearts of all who see it.
"All people glorify the experience of being human," said Graham, and teaching people that we have to learn about each other is part of the essence of the Spirit House Project.
A frequent traveler to southern Africa, Graham got lost in the bush country outside of Pretoria, South Africa, looking for painter Esther Mahlangu.
A globally known artist, Mahlangu is a curious mix of Old World customs and modern-day savvy. Her traditional paintings, which embrace a variety of symbols, geometric patterns and small animals, have been commissioned for airplanes and BMWs.
As a member of the Ndebele people, Mahlangu's home in the flat, rolling grasslands of northeast South Africa is one of many that uses the colorful patterns to mark weddings, births, children going to college or other celebrations. The practice is akin to keeping a photo album of family achievements, or, like addresses in the West, the creativity identifies an individual's home.
Before entering Mahlangu's compound, which is graced with her art, Graham must kneel at the door and pay homage to the ancestors. When he finds the painter, she's dressed in traditional clothing, sitting under a tree and talking on a cell phone.
The scene tells the story of how much the art and Mahlangu have evolved.
Visiting the Three Rivers Arts Festival Gallery, she is adorned in the beaded apron and multicolored cloak that's worn by adult women of her homeland. Her art, she said, was first done by making markings using cow dung. It then moved to working with clay and stone and painting with chicken feathers. Today her work encompasses a vibrant rainbow of latex paints that she buys from Pretoria and urban areas.
"In our culture, we just create," said Mahlangu, who speaks some English but translates largely through her son, Elias.
Mahlangu's paintings offer so much truth, said Graham, because it represents a long tradition of art making and not the work of one person.
"In tribal life, every person who's come before has contributed. It represents the contribution of the entire culture," he said. Mahlangu, who's in her 60s, learned the art from her mother and her grandmother.
Mahlangu's paintings are stunning, but even before you see them at the gallery, you're met with a byproduct: a radiant stained-glass window. Displayed at the front of the gallery, the glass panel was created by New Guild Studios in Braddock. At a cost of $1,500, it will be presented by the Urban Leagues in Pittsburgh and Richmond, Va., to the Glorious Church of God in Christ in Richmond. The church was one of more than 110 black churches to suffer vandalization and arson since 1994.
The Glorious Church of God is a handsome building. So, too, is its congregation. Visitors meet both through the photography of Clarissa Sligh. Using a combination of her own photos and the congregation's personal pictures, Sligh merges images and text that lament hate becoming a part of the fabric of life.
It's a complex display, but its poignancy doesn't escape Mahlangu.
She's proud that Americans recognize her artistry, but she's happier that the burned churches will get their stained-glass representations.
"In the churches, everyone of the younger generation will come to know this painting," she said. And it will be special because it will be "in God's house."
A lot happens in a spirit house, a dwelling place where ideas and concepts are nourished, said Graham. It's a place that touches the body, mind and spirit, a theme that has come across in Graham's works.
Particularly in regard to family legacy. A tribute to a beloved aunt led to his first Spirit House in 1992, a work that eventually was exhibited at the Smithsonian Institute.
As a child, Graham knew he'd become an artist because he was happy getting "stuff" to work on construction paper. The decision meant a lot of sacrifices for his working-class parents, who sent him to art lessons at the Cleveland Museum of Art. His father even created a space at home that served as a studio for young Graham.
Graham's Uncle Floyd and Aunt Dora Simmons were also nurturing souls. He came to live with them in Seldom Seen, a small community halfway between Pittsburgh and Uniontown, when his parents separated when he was 6. Graham received his first Polaroid Land camera from his uncle, and his Aunt Dora supported him with rounds of paints, pads and pencils.
Before she died in the 1980s, Aunt Dora told her nephew she'd "always be around."
And she has been.
A life-size silkscreened, sepia-toned image of Aunt Dora was the center piece of "In a Spirit House: Aunt Dora's Room," which re-created Dora's world of lace doilies and Whitman's chocolates that Graham remembered while growing in up rural Seldom Seen.
"I'm still feeling Aunt Dora's presence," he said. "Living in a spirit house is being where there's anybody who's helping and protecting you."
Graham, 45, former director of photography at the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, addressed a similar theme in 1996 at the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Three vignettes -- a 1940s living room with playing radio and a later, more chic dining room and kitchen -- reflected black American home life and Graham's own childhood.
Rich on many levels, the Spirit House Project signifies Graham's belief that artists can transcend the introspective nature of their craft and use art to connect people and issues.
It's not the first time Graham has given us food for thought.
One particular vegetable garden at Tioga Street and Hamilton Avenue in Homewood was co-sponsored by the Three Rivers Arts Festival in 1996. Still in use, it linked a universe of concerns. The garden had a sister plot in a village where Graham stayed in Muguga, Kenya. The Western Pennsylvania Conservancy provided expertise and in-kind help.
The local churches involved with the garden produced a cookbook and raised food to share with senior citizens. Profits from the books were used to buy clothes and shoes that were shipped back to Kenya.
"I believe," Graham said, "that after going all over the world, and exploring art-making in ancient cultures, [art] has little to do with sitting in a hut waiting for a muse and everything to do with people in the community being validated."
The goal, he insisted, is that when you "enlist the aid of other artists you contribute to a greater idea."
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