PERMANENT COLLECTION
The Gadsden Arts Center has several outstanding works of art on permanent loan or as part of the permanent collection. The Center is in the process of expanding the collection through the generous donations of local art colletors.
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Mose Tolliver
Golden Eagle, n.d.
paint on wood, 24” x 18”
Gift of Lou and Calynne Hill, December 2009
2009.1.12
 Mose Tolliver often painted images of animals, and his subjects usually took up the majority of the picture plane and were surrounded by a painted border. Golden Eagle depicts a yellow bird beginning to take flight against a bight blue sky. A reddish/brown border closely surrounds the bird. Like with many of his works, Tolliver attached a soda can tab to the painting as a hanging device. The Gadsden Arts Center exhibited this work in the exhibition, Vernacular Art from the Hill Collection, August 28–October 25, 2009.
Mose Tolliver was born between the years of 1915 and 1921 near Pintala, Alabama. After being sent to school at a young age, he decided to quit school and get a job to help support his family. In the 1960’s he suffered an incapacitating accident while working at a factory, making him unable to work. While many sources believe this to have been the turning point in his life, during which he began producing his paintings, he claimed he had always been creating art and just had time to focus on it after his accident.
Tolliver created his works on house-paint encrusted pieces of plywood and included sexually explicit images of women, self-portraits, buses, birds, snakes, and fruit. He also almost always signed his work, “Mose T” with a backwards “S”.
As Tolliver continued to gain recognition, a local curator from the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts came to see his work and offered him his first solo exhibition, which took place in 1981. After his popularity began to surge on a national level, he was invited to exhibit at prestigious locations such as the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the American Museum of Folk Art in New York. As the years progressed, Tolliver became less dexterous and began to train his children to carry out his works. Although the artist Tolliver passed away from pneumonia on October 30, 2006, his identity as a major icon of the vernacular art movement lives on.
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Works on Loan:
Florida Shirt
Leo McMillan
mixed media
On loan from the artist
This large-scale mixed media sculpture represents all things associated with the state of Florida, included dolphins, oranges, flamingos, NASA, snakes, alligators, and more while posing as a “Florida Shirt”. Artist Leo McMillan teaches 3D Design and Art Tools and Techniques at Florida State University and has maintained a professional art studio for thirty years. He is a past recipient of an Individual Artists Fellowship from the State of Florida and was one of three artists chosen statewide to design a monumental sculpture for the front of the State Capitol. Currently, McMillan resides in Quincy, and sits on the Gadsden Arts Center Exhibition Committee.
 Ichiboku Sculptures:
Natabori, Mongaku, Yama Uba
Mark Lindquist
wood
On loan from the artist
Mark Lindquist has been an innovator and leader in the field of woodturning/sculpture since the late 1960s. Lindquist's thirty-plus years of contributions to contemporary art have altered the direction of woodturning and sculpture worldwide. Through exhibiting, writing and teaching, Lindquist was instrumental in bringing about the acceptance of the craft of woodturning as a serious art form, and inspired and nurtured the followers of this fledgling movement. Mark Lindquist's sculpture has evolved out of his art historical studies and his mastery of, and experimentation with, the craft of woodturning. Beginning in the late 1960s, he developed many of the techniques and aesthetic concepts which underlie the current studio woodturning movement, including the use of flawed materials (especially spalted wood), the application of modern abrasive technology, and the integration of Japanese ceramic sensibilities.
These sculptures are from one of Lindquist’s several series of sculpted wood. Ichiboku, literally "one tree," is a type of Japanese sculpture made from a single block of wood. This technique flourished in the ninth century when a spirit of religious revivalism prevailed, and the spirit of the tree was invoked to lend strength to the image carved from it.
Lindquist’s works have been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the world, and have been acquired by prestigious museums such as the National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian, the Art Institute of Chicago, the White House Collection of American Craft, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the High Museum in Atlanta, and numerous other public and private collections.
In September of 2010, the Gadsden Arts Center will host and exhibition that explores the 40-year evolution of Lindquist’s work, from wood vessels and furniture to large-scale totems to abstract photography.
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Gadsden Arts, Inc.