Thornton Dial Catalog Peek

THORNTON DIAL

I, Too, Am Alabama

Edited by Paul Barrett
and Rebecca Dobrinski

THORNTON DIAL: I, Too, Am Alabama

This catalog was produced in conjunction with the exhibitions Thornton Dial: I, Too, Am Alabama at the
Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (September 9-December
10, 2022) and I, Too, Am Thornton Dial at the Samford University Art Gallery (September 15-December 2, 2022),
both in Birmingham, Alabama. The editors would also like to acknowledge the exhibition Anyone Can Move a
Mountain at Maus Contemporary (August 19-October 1, 2022) featuring the artist contributors to this book.

© 2022 University of Alabama at Birmingham Press
ISBN: 979-8-9865050-1-5
Cataloging-in-publication information is available from the Library of Congress.
All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the written permission of the editors of record.
Every effort has been made to trace the status of all works of art mentioned within the catalog. The editors
apologize for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be
incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
All works by Thornton Dial are © Estate of Thornton Dial / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
All photos are by Jerry Siegel, unless otherwise noted.
Quotes from the Dial family are taken from the transcript of footage created in 2021 for an episode of the
Alabama Public Television show Monograph. The episode was unaired at the time of publication.

Front Cover Credit
Man with His Bream (1987). Thornton Dial. Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett. © Estate of Thornton
Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Jerry Siegel.

Back Cover Credit
Antioch (2015). Thornton Dial. Private Collection. © Estate of Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New
York. Photo by Jerry Siegel.

For Buck and Bill.
You were right, history refused to die.

CONTENTS

Alabama is not a throwaway place.
1.1 “All Y’all Really From Alabama”……………………………Ashley M. Jones
1.2 “In the Midst of You”……………………………………………….Paul Barrett
1.3 “A Portrait of the Artist”…………………………………………….Jerry Siegel
1.4 “An Up and Down Life Picture”………………………………….Roscoe Hall

If I could do it, I’d do no writing at all here.
2.1 Preamble to “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”……………..James Agee
2.2 “Blackness in February”………………………………..Michaela Pilar Brown
2.3 “The Indian is Still Here”…………………………………………..Umar Rashid

What do you think an artist is?
3.1 Pablo Picasso……………………………………..interview with Simone Téry
3.2 “Putting the Damage On”……………………………………..Jakob Dwight
3.3 “Surface and Medium: The Quiet Part Out Loud”…………Leslie Smith III

We are made by history.
4.1 excerpt from “Strength To Love”……………………Martin Luther King, Jr.
4.2 “A New Kind of Monument”………………………Margaret Lynne Ausfeld
4.3 “No Right in the Wrong”…………………………………….Shaun Leonardo

I, Too, am America.
5.1 “I, Too”…………………………………………………………Langston Hughes
5.2 “Hoodoo People: We Know Them When We See Them”.…Renée Stout
5.3 “Art is Strange-Looking Stuff”……………………………………...Paul Arnett
5.4 “An Immense Presence”…………………………………………...John Fields

Index
6.1 Thornton Dial
6.2 Referenced Works

Untitled Photo by William S. Arnett (c. 1987-1988)
[20491/2450], in the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Collection #20491,
Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Alabama is not a throwaway place.

ALL Y’ALL REALLY FROM ALABAMA

“...The straitjackets of race prejudice and discrimination do not wear only southern

and victimization of the Negro the outright terror and open brutality of the South.”
- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait

this here the cradle of this here nation—
everywhere you look, roots run right back
south. every vein filled with red dirt, blood,
cotton. we the dirty word you spit out your
mouth. mason dixon is an imagined line—
you can theorize it, or wish it real, but it’s the
same old ghost—see-through, benign. all
y’all from alabama; we the wheel turning
cotton to make the nation move. we the
scapegoat in a land built from death. no
longitude or latitude disproves the truth of
founding fathers’ sacred oath:
we hold these truths like dark snuff in our jaw,
Black oppression’s not happenstance; it’s law.

- Ashley M. Jones

Alabama is not a throwaway place. It is not a place to cast off and say, “too
bad” or “not enough.” Growing up here, I always thought I had to leave to
follow my dreams, that Alabama was a place of shame only. That art couldn’t
thrive here. But the opposite is true—we are the birthplace of so many amazing
artists, writers, and changemaking movements. The people of Alabama are the
thing which makes this place breathe. And all those folks who say to me in my
travels that Alabama is where all hatred resides, I like to remind them that this
entire nation was built on racism, pillage, trafficking, mistreatment of
marginalized people, and a violent adherence to a system designed to keep
those on the bottom squarely there. I didn’t learn about Mr. Thornton Dial until
recently, and I’m struck by his own thoughts about freedom, Blackness, and the
way his work screams a unique Southernness that is familiar to me. It is high time
for his work to be celebrated, collected, and highlighted in Alabama—we
have to start valuing ourselves without the need for validation outside of our
state’s borders. We have to understand that this place is more than a scape-
goat, and that the issues we have here have roots in every single state in this
country. By the same token, what we create here has influenced every single
state—we are a building place. We are an artful place. We are a place where
freedom can be born.

- Ashley M. Jones

IN THE MIDST OF YOU

On November 12, 2010, a mutual acquaintance brought me to Thornton Dial’s studio in
Bessemer, Alabama, for the first time. This was one of Alabama’s greatest living artists,
possibly one of the greatest American artists. I was starstruck, and in the moment cannot
have said anything noteworthy or memorable. The artwork was, and is, both memorable
and extraordinary.

Mr. Dial was an enigma because I never had the pleasure of knowing him well. Preparing
for the largest exhibition of his work ever mounted in his home state presented seemingly
endless opportunities – and just as many rabbit holes. One rabbit hole led me to re-watch
the 2007 Alabama Public Television documentary, Mr. Dial Has Something To Say. In the
midst of the interviews with people I recognized, I was struck by Jane Fonda’s statement to
the camera, "One of the things that I really wish for is that Thornton Dial, before he dies, gets
the recognition that he deserves."

Artists from Alabama are rarely celebrated as such. Rather, we gaze longingly at the works
of artists from here, basking in the reflected glory of those who left and achieved success
elsewhere. We claim them and hope they won’t embarrass us by rejecting our pride in their
accomplishments. The scars of the Reconstruction run deep. When we take too much pride
in our achievements, we risk giving oxygen to the Lost Cause myth. So, we qualify our best
contributions and perpetually live in the shadow of other places. The grass is always greener
on the other side of the fence – or the state line. Or the Mason-Dixon Line.

I reject this mindset out of hand. While I’ve never been particularly religious, I think of Luke
17:20-21, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they
say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”
The excellence of human achievement is with us, and all around us. What more perfect
expression of faith can there be than to acknowledge what is best in humanity?

In 2013, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts exhibited, Thornton Dial: Thoughts on Paper,
organized by the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, but

otherwise I found no evidence of another institutional exhibition dedicated solely to the
work of Thornton Dial, despite Dial’s work featuring prominently in group exhibitions in
Birmingham, Gadsden, Mobile, Montgomery, and Tuscaloosa over the years. Dial enjoyed
a major solo exhibition jointly presented by the New Museum and the American Folk Art
Museum in New York in 1993. He was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial. In 2005 the
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presented Thornton Dial in the 21st Century. His 2011 solo
outing, Hard Truths, organized by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, traveled to the New
Orleans Museum of Art, the Mint Museum in Charlotte, and concluded at Atlanta’s High
Museum of Art in 2013. While Alabama celebrated Kerry James Marshall with a solo
museum exhibition in 2005 and Bessemer-born Jack Whitten with a solo show at beta
pictoris/Maus Contemporary in 2011, Thornton Dial was left behind.

On February 1, 2016, the week after Mr. Dial died, the Birmingham News published an
appreciation by Gail Andrews, then R. Hugh Daniel Director of the Birmingham Museum of
Art. She wrote, “…the question that has frequently arisen is, why didn’t more people in
Alabama, specifically the Birmingham area, recognize and appreciate his talent? We can
say the same about many other artists from our state, but this artist had a particularly stellar
exhibition and gallery record.” She continued, “That said, not everyone embraced this work.
In the case of Mr. Dial, the work looked raw, unfinished and primitive to some. The same was
said of Lonnie Holley’s assemblages and his ‘one acre of art,’ eventually taken over by the
airport for expansion.” However, three weeks later, the High Museum of Art opened Greener
Pastures: In Memory of Thornton Dial, Sr. Both the New York Times and Washington Post
published obituaries before the Birmingham News. Alabamians should not have to wait for
validation from New York and Washington, DC. As the quilters of Gee’s Bend sing in Maris
Curran’s 2018 documentary for the New York Times, “Give me my flowers while I yet live.”

Much has been written about Mr. Dial's work, including significant historical publications by
Paul Arnett and his father, Bill, who championed many Alabama artists' work for decades
before those artists had an appreciative audience at home. The challenge then became
to create a new publication that would add to an already rich body of writing. Alongside
essays by scholars and art-historians, I asked artists from around the United States to respond
to Thornton Dial's work and to relate it to their own artistic practice.

History is subjective. Art, even more so. This publication brings together a range of artists
and scholars who contributed their reactions to Dial's work. The proof of concept - why I
selected these contributors - became the catalyst for the exhibition Anyone Can Move a
Mountain and a constellation of guiding stars illuminating the framework for Thornton Dial: I,
Too, Am Alabama. Paul Arnett, co-author of the seminal, Souls Grown Deep, Volumes 1&2,
and Margaret Lynne Ausfeld, curator and contributor to the original, History Refused to Die:
The Enduring Legacy of African American Art in Alabama, were kind enough to contribute
here. Ashley M. Jones, Alabama’s youngest-ever Poet Laureate, wrote a new introduction
for her poem, All Y’all Really From Alabama, that beautifully mirrors Langston Hughes’
poem, I, Too, which inspired so much of the thought process behind this exhibition and
catalog.

Just as James Nelson, Douglas and Tita Hyland, Georgine Clarke, Jon Coffelt, Emily Hanna,
and Bill Arnett introduced me to significant artists and their work over the last 35-years, it is
now my privilege to continue to introduce others to important Alabama artists. My heartfelt
thanks to Richard and Dan Dial and the Dial family for welcoming me into your homes and
sharing your stories. Thanks to Paul Arnett for helping me to fulfill a pipe dream I shared with
your father years ago. Thanks to Rebecca and Jack Drake, and to Doug McCraw and
Becky Patterson for your unwavering support of Alabama artists (and my tilting at windmills).
Thanks to everyone at AEIVA, Samford University, and the Wiregrass Museum of Art for
sticking with this project through COVID and my constant insistence that we do more to
give the Dial family and Alabama the show Mr. Dial always deserved. Thanks to Guido Maus
for allowing me to bring Anyone Can Move A Mountain to Birmingham during the
exhibitions at AEIVA and Samford. And thanks especially to my mother, Jan, for her love
and encouragement.

I have heard Joe Minter use the following phrase many times, but it was never so poignant
as when he said it at Mr. Dial’s memorial service: “We may not have it all together, but
together, we have it all.”

- Paul Barrett

“I learned a whole lot just by being around him and knowing how to look at something and
look like it needs to be needed. So I learned that from him and yes, I did learn that.”

- Dan Dial

“He was always making something, so it really didn't excite me or nothing like that because I
was used to it. I guess when we started going to different shows and museums and stuff like
that, I started loving it a whole lot because I said, this stuff going somewhere, it's going to be
something- I realized that. I guess I was around four to eight, somewhere like that and I said,
Daddy going somewhere with his art and he loved to be praised about what he do. I guess
it went so many years and he made it and didn't nobody praise him for it, but when that
time came, people started praising him for it, that made him love it even harder. That made
him work harder at it. Daddy would paint all night.”

- Thornton Dial, Jr.

Man with His Bream (1987)
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST

One of my first introductions to vernacular (formerly outsider) art was through my uncle,
also named Jerry Siegel, a gallery owner and collector in Selma, Alabama. His focus was
on Alabama artists including Anne Goldthwaite, Kelly Fitzpatrick, Crawford Gillis, and Clara
Weaver Parrish, among others. But the piece just inside his office door that most captured
my attention was a drawing by Bill Traylor. Traylor was a former slave living in Montgomery,
whose work was brought to the art world by Charles Shannon. I loved the looseness and
emotion of the work and how it depicted Traylor’s life. Shannon, a significant painter in his
own right, had befriended Traylor on the Montgomery streets in 1939. Shannon was also a
close friend of my Uncle Jerry, and, in 1996, he sat for one of the earliest portraits I made of
Southern artists.

This series of Southern artists started organically, photographing friends who also happened
to be great artists: Crawford Gillis and John Lapsley of Selma; Mary Ward Brown, a
distinguished writer from Marion, and Shannon. After seeing these portraits, Bill Eiland,
Director of the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia, suggested I had the
beginnings of a nice series of late-career Southern artists. As I was introduced to many New
Orleans artists by Donna Perret Rosen, director/owner of Galerie Simone Stern, the series
grew. I soon began to reach out to artists whose work I admired and hoped to meet. Being
a fan of vernacular art, I made trips to Gainesville, Georgia, to photograph R.A. Miller, back
to Montgomery to see Mose T., and to Pink Lily, Alabama, for a visit to the studio and
environment of Charlie “Tin Man” Lucas.

Early on I was particularly interested in vernacular art, and I loved the accessibility of the art
and the artists. It was an adventure to pull up to their houses, knock on their doors, and be
exposed to the wonders of their art, whether it was tacked on walls, lying on beds, or nailed
to the side of the house, and especially to the storytelling that is such a big part of the work.

In 1996 the Souls Grown Deep exhibition opened at City Hall East in Atlanta. It was at this
show where works by Thornton Dial and Ronald Lockett really made an impression. I was
drawn to the work and wanted to meet Mr. Dial and make his portrait. I reached out to
Matt Arnett, who was willing to make the introduction.

Thornton Dial, McCalla, Alabama (2007) The day I went to meet Mr. Dial was a
Photo courtesy of Jerry Siegel beautiful morning in June 2007. I made the
drive from Atlanta to McCalla, a pretty spot
studio and in his environment on the grounds. about 30 minutes southwest of Birmingham.
Mr. Dial met me as I made my way up to
the house. At this point in the series, I had
met and made portraits of a number of
great artists. But for some reason this one
felt different. Most of the time, when I ar-
rived for a shoot, there had been a phone
call or an email. I had no communication
with Mr. Dial before I arrived, so I was not
sure if he would be happy to have me
there, or consider me a necessary evil or a
pain in the ass. He could not have been
nicer. He showed me around the studio,
telling me about the pieces he was working
on. He was soft spoken and generous with
his time. We made portraits both in his

When the time came to publish the artist series, there were many strong contenders to
choose from for the cover of the book. Early on it was pretty clear that the portrait of
Mr. Dial belonged on the cover. With that said, the greatest gift of this project has been
meeting the artists who welcomed me into their homes and studios, sharing their thoughts
and work, and the lasting relationships I’ve cultivated as the series continues.

- Jerry Siegel

“Well, I think with me traveling and getting the opportunity to talk to people, most people
that you talk to that's art lovers will say that he's one of the greatest artists of the century.
So I really wouldn't want to say... What I would say about it is just that I think it's great. I think
it's... I like all the materials and stuff that he worked with and amazed at how he was able to
put it together. You got a large portion of people that loved what he did and respected
what he did. I think growing up with him that you... I kind of thought like my mom and dad,
get this stuff out of the house so we can get this corner over here cleaned up. But now
looking back, I personally praise and fell in love with the creations that he made, and I think
the majority of people that get to see his work feel the same way.”

- Richard Dial

"What y'all think about this?" "Oh dad, I don't think I like that one." "Well, you got to like this?"
"No, dad. I don't like it," but just to watch him work, it was amazing. Because he would work
on three and four pictures at a time, and he would stay up. Mom would say, “It's getting
late out there. You need to come over in the house. Somebody can come up in this yard.
We won't even know you gone.” But it was great watching him to work, especially when he
would be in the house, and he would sit there and draw his pictures. That was wonderful.

- Mattie Dial

How Things Work: The Parade of Life (1992)
Collection of Doug McCraw

We are made by history.

Image credit goes here with inner edge 2.5 inches from gutter in 10pt Atlanta
and lining up bottom edge .5 inches from page edge

Editors

PAUL BARRETT

Paul Barrett focuses his curatorial projects on contemporary social issues and leading
collaborative community initiatives. As director of the photography and book-arts gallery,
AGNES, he curated exhibitions for Paul Caponigro, Elise Mitchell Sanford, and Jack Spencer.
At AGNES he supervised the reformatting ofAlabama's first statewide print art magazine,

, as its editor. Following a career in marketing for Microsoft, Kodak, and
LG Electronics, Barrett curated exhibitions featuring Zach Blas, Jakob Dwight, Jamey Grimes,
Ben Grosser, Tyree Guyton, Eric Rhein, and Robert Sherer as founding director of Stephen
Smith Fine Art. In 2017, the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, Birmingham Civil Rights
Institute, Birmingham Public Library, and Birmingham Museum of Art jointly presented

a city-wide series of exhibitions and public programs about
discrimination and healthcare centering the works of artist, Jordan Eagles, in partnership

participation in the nationwide initiative. That year he curated

featuring works by Chris Clark, Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Charlie Lucas, and quilters Mary

Lee Bendolph and Lucy T. Pettway of Gee's Bend. Barrett has curated exhibitions of the

work of Sheila Pree Bright, Jenny Fine, Al Sella, and Purvis Young, and traveling shows for

Sara Garden Armstrong, Beverly Buchanan, and Jerry Siegel. He organized a presentation of

Hank Willis Thomas' complete

(2019). He curated a traveling two-person show featuring works by Charlie Lucas and

Yvonne Wells called, (2021). Barrett curated

at the Abroms-Engel Institute for the VIsual Arts; at the

Samford University Art Gallery and forthcoming exhibitions at the Wiregrass Museum of Art

and the LSU Museum of Art; and at Maus Contemporary.

He currently serves as president of the board of the Alabama Visual Arts Network, a

statewide partner of the Alabama State Council on the Arts founded in 1968.

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REBECCA DOBRINSKI

Rebecca Dobrinski is the Scrum Master and Chief Content Officer at CAVU Benefit
Corporation, a multi-media professional development and Agile education platform, where
she manages the creation and publication of all on demand educational content. She
returned to Birmingham in 2003 to finish her BA in History at UAB, then went on to earn MAs
from SCAD (Historic Preservation) and UAB (History). She is the organizer emerita for
TEDxBirmingham and founder of F*ckUp Nights Birmingham, a member of Leadership

program, a Co.Starters graduate, a member of the inaugural cohort for the Birmingham

Entrepreneurship Academy, a speaking coach for events and private entrepreneurial

clients. Amongst many others, she copyedited the urban history textbooks

3rd Edition (2012) and 3rd Edition (2011),

both with co-editor Raymond A. Mohl, PhD. While at the Birmingham Museum of Art, she

edited the publications (2012) and

(2013), to which she also contributed an essay. Dobrinski

currently serves on the Entrepreneur and Practitioner Advisory Board for the Journal of Small

Business and Enterprise Development and the Board of Directors of Innovate Birmingham.

Authors
PAUL ARNETT
Paul Arnett is an art historian who specializes in Black art and artists of the American South.

projects and publications include

and He is based in Atlanta, Georgia.

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MARGARET LYNNE AUSFELD
Margaret Lynne Ausfeld is the Senior Curator at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in
Montgomery, AL. She has been the curator of the collections at the MMFA since 1989.
Ausfeld is the author of
(2006) and has co-curated and authored the exhibitions and books

(1984);
(1999);

(2012); and
(2015).

MICHAELA PILAR BROWN
Michaela Pilar Brown is an image and object maker, a multidisciplinary artist using
photography, installation and performance. She studied sculpture and art history at Howard

Black body. She uses nontraditional materials and their juxtaposition to each other, and/or
dissimilar objects to make statements about the body and its relationship to larger cultural
themes of age, gender, race, sexuality, history, and violence. Her work considers memory,
myth, ritual, desire and the spaces the body occupies within these vignettes.
Brown won the grand prize at the ArtFields juried art competition (2018). She is the inaugural
resident artist of the Volcanic Residency, Whakatane Museum, Whakatane, New Zealand
(2018). She was one of the six American artists selected to participate as a Resident Artist for
OPEN IMMERSION: A VR CREATIVE DOC LAB produced by the CFC Media Lab, The National
Film Board of Canada (NFB) and JustFilms | Ford Foundation in Toronto, Canada, an
Inaugural Resident Artist (2016) at the Sedona Summer Colony and an Artist in Residence,
Kunstlerwerkgemeinschaft Kaiserslautern, Germany (2016), and has held residencies at the
Vermont Studio Center and the McColl Center for Art and Innovation. Her work can be
found in private and public museum collections in the United States. She is the Executive
Director of 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia, South Carolina, where she has
served since 2020.

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JAKOB DWIGHT
Working in multiple media including painting, digital photography, drawing, and collage

Angeles, Berlin, Seattle, Atlanta, London, Salzburg (Switzerland) and Amsterdam. As part of
the Aesthetics + Therapeutics Lab, a collectively run platform developed to initiate
installations and experiments in immersive art and healing, Dwight has installed a multi-
sensory environment at Vortex Immersion Media Dome at LA Center Studios (2014). He was
commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum to create new work for their group exhibition

Brooklyn Museum (2016) and was included in the New York installation of 1:54

Contemporary African Art Fair with London's 50Golborne Gallery (2019). In 2022 Dwight's

paintings were featured in the group exhibition at LA's Honor Fraser

Gallery.

JOHN FIELDS
John Fields is the Lydia Cheney and Jim Sokol Endowed Director and Chief Curator for the
Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Fields is
a visual artist, filmmaker, musician, talk-radio host, and university educator with over 15

or co-curated 80+ exhibitions throughout his career. His exhibitions have been featured in
national media outlets such as

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ROSCOE HALL
Roscoe Hall is an artist creative and culinary with an MFA in Art History from Savannah
College of Art and Design. A truth-teller in pigment, Hall works across media from food to
paint and beyond to call into question, and challenge, previously unexamined histories of

Romare
Bearden, Kara Walker, Purvis Young, and more in fractured narratives of identity, moments

freeze-frame, front page illustrations of personal reflection, they are confronting without

Hall is a painter living and working in Birmingham, AL. He received his BFA in photography
from the University of San Diego and his MA from the Savannah College of Art and Design

Savannah, GA; Graeter Art Gallery, Portland; Lowe Mill Gallery, Huntsville; and the Abroms-
Engel Institute for the Visual Arts (AEIVA), Birmingham.

ASHLEY M. JONES
Ashley M. Jones is Poet Laureate of Alabama (2022-2026). She earned an MFA in Poetry
from Florida International University (FIU), where she was a John S. and James L. Knight
Foundation Fellow. Her work has been recognized in the Poets and Writers Maureen Egen

a finalist in the Hub City Press New Southern Voices Contest (2015); the Crab Orchard Series
in Poetry First Book Award Contest (2015); the National Poetry Series (2015); a nomination for

and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award (2019). Jones is a recipient of a Poetry Fellowship from

the Alabama State Council on the Arts and an Alabama Library Association Alabama

Author award (2020). She was a finalist for the Ruth Lily Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg

Fellowship (2020), and her collection, was on the longlist for the 2022

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PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry.

Jones has been featured on news outlets including , ABC News, and

the BBC. Her poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in many journals and

anthologies. Her debut poetry collection, (2017), won the Independent

Publishers Book Awards silver medal in poetry (2017). Her second book, won

the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry (2018). Her third collection,

was published in 2021.

She currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where she is founding director of the Magic City
Poetry Festival, board member of the Alabama Writers Cooperative and the Alabama
Writers Forum, co-director of PEN Birmingham, and a faculty member in the Creative Writing
Department of the Alabama School of Fine Arts. Jones is also a member of the Core Faculty
at the Converse University Low Residency MFA Program. She recently served as a guest ed-
itor for
Libraries Initiative (2013-2015), She was an editor of

In 2022, Jones received a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets.

SHAUN LEONARDO

namely definitions surrounding black and brown masculinities, along with its notions of
achievement, collective identity, and experience of failure. His performance practice,
anchored by his work in Assembly a diversion program for system-impacted youth at the
arts nonprofit Recess, where he is Co-Director is participatory and invested in a process of
embodiment.

Leonardo is a Brooklyn-based artist from Queens, New York City. He received his MFA from

the San Francisco Art Institute, is a recipient of support from Creative Capital, Guggenheim

Social Practice, Art for Justice and A Blade of Grass, and was recently profiled in the

and CNN. His work has been featured at The Guggenheim Museum, the High

Line, and New Museum, with a solo exhibition, , recently

presented at MICA, MASS MoCA and The Bronx Museum.

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UMAR RASHID

Umar Rashid makes paintings, drawings, and sculptures that chronicle the grand historical
fiction of the Frenglish Empire (1648 1880) that he has been developing for over 17 years.
Each work represents a frozen moment from this parallel world that often recalls our own
fraught histories both canonized and marginalized with familiar signifiers and
iconographies that channel the visual lexicons of hip hop, ancient and modern pop culture,
gang and prison life, and revolutionary movements throughout time. This alternative history
and its many subplots are told with elaborate visual and literary detail with painterly
tableaus depicting large networks of protagonists that relate to one another across bodies
of work, and with lyrical and humorous artwork titles often a paragraph in length.

Rashid lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He received his BA in cinema and photography

from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL. His work was featured at The Huntington and

the Hammer Museum as part of the biennial institutional

solo exhibitions include Uni-

versity of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ (2018); and

sented in public collections throughout the world and
his first solo museum exhibition in New York at MoMA PS1 in Queens, NY, runs through March
2023.

JERRY SIEGEL
Jerry Siegel was born and raised in Selma, AL, and graduated from the Art Institute of
Atlanta. After graduating college, he photographed the Atlanta Hawks as a team
photographer for fifteen years. In 1986, he opened Siegel Photography to work with
advertising agencies and other corporate clients, and traveled across the US making pho-
tos for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. In 2004, Siegel was offered a show of his photos of
found objects, encouraging him to focus more on personal projects. Siegel was awarded
the Grand Prize at the first Artadia Awards in Atlanta (2009), a national program founded in
New York that awards substantial, unrestricted funds to artists and connects them to a

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professional network of opportunities. His first monograph,
(2011) features portraits of 100 Southern artists. This body of work has been featured in

focuses on documenting the unique, cultural landscape of the South,
concentrating on the Black Belt region of Alabama. His work is in many public, private, and
corporate collections, including the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; Do Good
Fund; Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Jule Collins
Smith Museum, Auburn, AL; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, AL; Morris
Museum of Art, Augusta, GA; Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta, GA; the
Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA; The Telfair Museum, Savannah, GA;
Wiregrass Museum of Art, Dothan, AL; and many more.

LESLIE SMITH III

material specificity, application, and pictorial perception. He engages the prospect of
uncoupling previous histories from the process of identifying unfamiliar forms. He re-imagines
the pictorial possibilities of a two-dimensional surface and creates paintings that exhibit a
distinctive space not dependent upon traditional three-dimensional perspectives. He
fractures singular shaped canvases into multiple shapes that relate to each other
tangentially.

Smith received his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University School of Art (2009)

and his BFA in Painting with a minor in Art History from Maryland Institute College of Art

(2007). His recent solo exhibitions include at Galerie Isabelle Gounod,

Paris, France (2022) and at Maus Contemporary Gallery, Birmingham, AL

(2022). He was recently awarded a 2022 Joan Mitchell Fellowship and has served as an

Associate Professor of Drawing and Painting at the University Wisconsin-Madison since 2017.

1696

RENEE STOUT
Renée Stout grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and received her BFA from Carnegie-
Mellon University (1980) where she chose to focus was on painting after being inspired by
the works of realist and photo-realist painters such as Edward Hopper, Robert Cottingham,
and Richard Estes. However, immediately after moving to Washington, DC, in 1985, she
began to explore the spiritual roots of her African American heritage through her
increasingly sculptural works, which found their early inspiration in the aesthetics and
philosophy Kongo ritual objects. Her narrative, mixed media sculptures eventually attracted
the attention of museum curators and anthropologists which lead to her becoming the first

Art. Inspired by the African Diaspora, historical and current world events, the effects of
technology on human interactions, as well as everyday life in her DC neighborhood. Stout
now employs a variety of media, including painting, drawing, mixed media sculpture,
photography, and installation to create works that encourage viewers to reflect on the
absurdities of life as we witness the developments in our rapidly changing world. She
describes her aesthetic as Zora Neale Hurston, meets Octavia Butler in The Matrix. She has
been the recipient of awards from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Joan Mitchell
Foundation, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and the Gottleib Foundation. She was
also the recipient of the Driskell Prize, awarded by the High Museum of Art and received a

found in many museums and private collections, nationally and internationally.

17618

- Dan Dial
16792

Index of Dated, Undated, and Referenced Works

The following index comprises works from the exhibitions I, Too, am Alabama (2022) at the Abroms-
Engel Institute of Visual Arts at UAB and I, Too, am Thornton Dial (2022) at the Samford University Art
Gallery in addition to other pieces from Thornton Dial’s life’s work referenced in the catalog essays.
We have simplified some of the image credits in the footer on each page, which denotes the
artist’s name, the main photographer’s name, and the copyright information for every image.
We chose to sort the work in chronological then alphabetical order, with all undated pieces
following, and finally a list of works referenced in the essays for which we were unable to provide
the indexed information. We hope you find this index helpful when studying the prolific career of
Thornton Dial.

1960s-1980s
Untitled (fishing lures) (1960s-1980s)
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
See title page, pp. 26, 44, 116

1980s
Untitled (door), c. 1980s
72 x 32.5 x 8
Collection of the Estate of Thornton Dial
McCalla, Alabama
See p. 4

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

173

1987
The Beginning of the World, 1987
47 x 17 x 6 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See p. 64

Climbing, 1987
61 x 34 x 15 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See p. 121

Dog Show, 1987
Dimensions Variable
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See p. 120

Hoodoo People, 1987
Variable (highest 16 in.)
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See p. 122

Man with His Bream, 1987
44 x 27 x 12 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See front cover, p. 27

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

174

Men Discussing a Shoe, 1987
19 x 38 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See p. 66

Operators, 1987
47 x 25 x 6 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See p. 64

Singers, 1987
47 x 25 x 6 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See p. 64

The Three Stooges, 1987
19 x 48 in.
Private Collection
See p. 158

1988
Traveling the Dangerous Roads, 1988
50 x 121 in.
Collection of Doug McCraw
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama.
See p. 88

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

175

Sculptures from the series referenced as “can men”
Untitled (man), c. 1988
20 x 11 x 6 in.
Private Collection
See p. 114

Untitled, c. 1988
32.5 x 12 x 5 in.
Private Collection
See p. 115

Bird-Catcher Lady, c. 1988
31.75 x 9.25 x 7 in.
Private Collection
See pp. 110, 1412

Untitled, c. 1988
10.25 x 22 x 4 in.
Private Collection
See p. 114

Untitled. c. 1988
15.25 x 4.5 x 2.5 in.
Private Collection
See p. 111

Untitled, c. 1988
10.5 x 2.5 x 3.5 in.
Private Collection
See pp. 115, 1412

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

176

Untitled, c. 1988
9 x 12 x 3 in.
Private Collection
See pp. 114, 1412

Untitled, c. 1988
9.5 x 12.5 x 4.5 in.
Private Collection
See p. 115

Untitled, c. 1988
11 x 2.5 x 2.5 in.
Private Collection
See p. 111

Untitled, c. 1988
9.5 x 4 x 2.5 in.
Private Collection
See p. 111

Untitled, c. 1988
14.5 x 11.5 x 5 in.
Private Collection
See pp. 62, 1412

Untitled, c. 1988
18 x 4 x 4.5 in.
Private Collection
See pp. 114, 1412

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

177

1988-1989
The Little Tigers and the Man that Came to the Jungle, 1988-1989
51 x 51 x 3 in.
Collection of Doug McCraw.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 65

1989
Everybody Loves the Movie Star Lady, 1989
48 x 60 x 6 in.
Collection of Doug McCraw.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 41

Fishing for Business, 1989
39.5 x 50 x 12.5 in.
Collection of Doug McCraw
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 24

Life Picture; World Picture; Strategy; Hard Trials and Tribulations, 1989
49 x 121 in.
Private Collection
See p. 136

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

178

Nobody Know What Go on Behind the Jungle, 1989
48 x 96 x .5 in.
Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art, Gift of Doug McCraw
Birmingham, Alabama
photo by M. Sean Pathesema
See p. 149

Struggling Tiger, 1989
60 x 84 in.
Collection of Robert S. Taubman
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
photo courtesy of Robert S. Taubman
See p. 140

Untitled, 1989
51 x 51 x 7 in.
Collection of Doug McCraw
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 18

1989-1990
An Up and Down Life Picture, c. 1989-1990
60 x 36 x 3 in.
Collection of Doug McCraw
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 36

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

179

1990
This is What People Like to Wear When They Out for Business, 1990
22.5 x 30 in.
Collection of Doug McCraw
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 48

The Tiger in Control of His Jungle, 1990
60 x 84 x 3 in.
Collection of Doug McCraw
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 23

The Tigers Will Protect the Ladies, 1990
Collection of The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University
Gift of Calynne and Lou Hill
Auburn, Alabama
photo courtesy of the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art
See p. 17

Untitled, 1990
Collection of Doug McCraw
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 156

Untitled, 1990
31 x 22.5 in.
Private Collection
See p. 71

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

180

Untitled, 1990
30 x 22 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See p. 71

1991
The Indian Is Still Here, 1991
48 x 48 in.
Collection of Doug McCraw
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 58

The Ladies Will Hold the Long Neck Bird, 1991
Collection of The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University
Gift of Calynne and Lou Hill
Auburn, Alabama
photo Courtesy of The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art
See p. 17

Shedding the Blood, 1991
47 x 60.5 in.
Collection of Doug McCraw
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 40

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

181

Upsidedown Lady with the Longneck Tiger, 1991
30 x 22 in.
Collection of the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, UAB
Gift of Rebecca & Jack Drake
Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 157

Untitled, 1991
22 x 30 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia.
See p. 106

Untitled, 1991
32 x 22 in.
Collection of the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, UAB
Gift of Rebecca & Jack Drake
Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 154

1992
Climbing the Tree of Life - The Long Yellow Man and the Alligator, 1992
68 x 50 in.
Collection of Doug McCraw
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 39

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

182

How Things Work: The Parade of Life, 1992
65 x 88.5 x 8 in.
Collection of Doug McCraw
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 82

No Right in the Wrong, 1992
60 x 90 in.
Collection of Doug McCraw
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 102

1993
Life Begin at the Tail, 1993
30 x 44.25 in.
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts Association
Montgomery, Alabama
photo Courtesy of Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts.
See p. 100

Looking for the Treasures in the Big Man’s Yard, 1993
84 x 60 x 10 in.
Collection of Doug McCraw
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 86

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

183

1994
Always in Your Face, 1994
45.625 x 29.5 in.
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts Association (purchase)
Montgomery, Alabama
photo Courtesy of Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts.
See p. 101

Flea Market, 1994
30 x 22.25 in.
The Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art at The University of Alabama
Gift of Richard & Theresa Zaden
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
photo courtesy of the Paul R. Jones Museum
See p. 16

Game Time (Contest), 1994
41.5 x 29.5 in.
Private Collection
See p. 72

Performing (Watching Sports), 1994
30 x 22 in.
Private Collection
See p. 70

Time Clock, 1994
26 x 19.5 in.
Private Collection
See p. 28

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

184

World Peace, 1994
75.5 x 41.5 x 6.5 in.
Collection of Robert S. Taubman
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
photo courtesy of Robert S. Taubman
See p. 77

1995
Posing with a Laying Bird (1995
26 x 19.5 in.
Private Collection
See p. 29

1996
Coming in From the Background, 1996
54 x 62 x 8 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
photo courtesy of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
See p. 12

Untitled, 1996
31 x 22.5 in.
Private Collection
See p. 25

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

185

1991/1997
Untitled (Bird, Cat Sculpture/Lady and Tiger Painting), 1991/1997
30 x 68 x 15 in.
Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art
Gift of Doug McCraw
Birmingham, Alabama
photo by M. Sean Pathesema
See p. 1312

1997
The County, 1997
64 x 36 x 7 in.
Collection of Brett & Lester Levy, Jr.
Dallas, Texas
photo courtesy of Brett & Lester Levy, Jr.
See p. 51

The Penny Girls, 1997
30 x 44 in.
Private Collection
See p. 60

1998
Scratching for Life, 1998
48 x 48 in.
Collection of Doug McCraw
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 146

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

186

1999
Changing the Life: Any Man Can Move a Mountain, 1999
72 x 84 x 8 in.
Collection of Doug McCraw
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama
See p. 145

Lines of the Tree of Life, 1999
30 x 22 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia.
See p. 108

2000
Business on the Road, 2000
47 x 45 x 10 in.
Private Collection
See p. 76

2003
Changes of the Moon, 2003
76 x 61 x 4.5 in.
Private Collection
See p. 135

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

187

Homeless, 2003
41.5 x 29 in.
Private Collection
See p. 50

Looking Out, 2003
30 x 22 in.
Private Collection
See p. 71

Secretaries at Work, 2003
30 x 22 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See p. 161

The Way a German Man Makes Art, 2003
44 x 30 in.
Private Collection
See p. 73

2005
Clara’s Dream, 2005
72 x 72 in.
Private Collection
See p. 57

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

188

Having Nothing is Having Everything, 2005
74 x 84 x 30 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See p. 46

Untitled, 2005
14 x 8.5 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See p. 107

Untitled, 2005
14 x 8.5 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See p. 109

Untitled, 2005
14 x 8.5 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See p. 109

Untitled, 2005
14 x 8.5 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See p. 109

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

189

Untitled, 2005
14 x 8.5 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See p. 109

Untitled, 2005
8.5 x 14 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See p. 20

2007
Fairfield, 2007
94 x 70 in.
Private Collection
See p. 10

Walking into Yesterday, 2007
80 x 58 in.
Private Collection
See p. 139

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

190

2008
Lost Americans, 2008
72 x 96 x 13.5 in.
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts Association (purchase)
Gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation from the William S. Arnett Collection
Montgomery, Alabama
photo Courtesy of Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts
See p. 98

2009
Always Down to Pray for Help, (Always Down to Pray for Help, verso), 2009
30 x 44 in.
Private Collection
See p. 49

January 20, 2009, 2009
47 x 31.5 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia
See p. 92

January 20, 2009, 2009
30 x 44.25 in.
Collection of the Estate of William Sidney Arnett
Atlanta, Georgia.
See p. 94

All artwork by Thornton Dial Sr. All photos by Jerry Siegel unless otherwise noted. © 2022 Estate of
Thornton Dial / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York. Photos not available at press time are noted.

191