Ohio River Valley Folk Art
Written By Jess Schwarz
Abstract.
The Ohio River Valley is a place filled to the brim with incredible folk art. From the times of the Works Progress Administration and the Shawnee, the mediums and subject matter has been incredibly diverse. From successful painters such as John Kane, to contemporary sculptors such as Minnie Adkins, the folk art scene of the Ohio River Valley is an all-encompassing diverse movement that still thrives to this day.
“Art … is not the expression in plastic form of any one particular ideal. It is the expression of any ideal that the artist can realize in plastic form.” said english philosopher Herbet Read[1]. This rings especially true when talking about folk art. Free from the restraints of societal ideas on what art should and should not look like, folk artists draw inspiration from a world of their own making. Folk art gives people a breath of fresh air from the mass production, mass creation we see so commonly now in the art market and museums.
But what really is folk art? Who are folk artists? Sometimes described as “outsider”, “amateure”, or “grassroots” artists, it’s hard to give just one name to such an all-encompassing movement. While all of these may apply, nothing accurately describes the movement more than “folk”. This movement is fueled by American folks! Everyday people from urban, suburban, and country environments. Folks unswayed by the mainstream or professional art scenes. Folk art is heavily rooted in the community and culture that surrounds it, meaning that wherever you look, it differs, which adds to its individual charm. This movement encompasses a range of mediums, everything from wood to metal, clay and paints, fabrics, and even more unconventional materials. It can even bleed into utilitarian, rather than simply decorative, with the creation of things like furniture and pottery. Typically artists in this movement aren’t formally trained at a college, they’re self-taught, or learn skills and techniques through family, community or apprenticeship.
Arts education was stalled during the industrial revolution with the push into the workforce and the focus on more academic schooling. This was revived during the Depression of the 30’s, due in part to Roosevelt’s creation of the Works Progress Administration.1 While the W.P.A. built infrastructure and post offices, the sect called the “Art Project” helped give unemployed artists and art teachers give back into the communities hurt by the economic crash. Thousands of classes were taught, murals painted, and sculptures installed, all by artists. This helped push the arts to be more accepted by society, seen as a positive, rather than a negative. Folk art was heavily influenced by the W.P.A. Art Project, being approved as a worthy past time, and a healthy outlet for anyone of any background.
Nowhere is the folk art movement more rich than in the Ohio River Valley. It spans from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to its mouth on the southern tip of Cairo, Illinois.[2] The river valley lines Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. The culture is heavily influenced by Appalachian and Midwestern Plains immigrants, as well as various Native American tribes. With an overall economy largely based on farming, industry, and transport, it was heavily affected by the depression and decline of industry in the midwest.
Although not folk artists, it’s important to acknowledge folks of the region, the native americans that resided there. The predominant native american tribe of the region was the Shawnee. Semi-migratory, they moved along the Ohio River. Due to the colonial push through the area, few artifacts remain. Despite this, the artifacts that do remain give us insight into the art objects the Shawnee created. Like many other native tribes in the region, the Shawnee created “wampum”.[3] Wampum were belts or headbands, made of white and purple beads, that told the story of a significant event or a family’s history. The beads were often traded as a type of currency, and were valued for their artistic use. In addition to wampum, the Shawnee also created pottery and wood carvings. While the pottery was mostly utilitarian with basic designs, their woodworking was incredibly intricate, and mostly used when making items for social gatherings and events.
As time went along and colonists began to move out west, cities cropped up along the Ohio river. Due to its placement at the junction of the Monongahela (manongahela), Allegheny, and Ohio rivers, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania became a fast growing city home to a large population of folk artists. One of these artists was John Kane, an immigrant from Scotland, born in 1870. He worked all over the Ohio River Valley, laying pavement for roads and doing factory work. He eventually left this job to become a painter and began a controversial career due to his “primitive” style, because of his lack of formal training.1 Kane’s work mostly focused on landscapes of Appalachia, the Ohio River Valley, and his home of Scotland, as well as portraits and historical events. His painting career came to a head in 1923 when the Carnegie Institute bought one of his paintings making him an instant success and the first self-taught artist to truly “make it” in Pittsburgh.[4]
Moving down the river to Braddock, Pennsylvania lived an artist by the name of Patrick J. Sullivan. Originally an ironworker, and later a house painter, his work in house painting encouraged him to try his hand at art on window blinds and wrapping paper. After being drafted into World War I, he continued to paint. His works would often take years to complete due to his technique of thinly layering paint to give his works a relief-like quality1. He emphasized cleanliness, due to his technical expertise from house painting, even going as far as to mix his own oil paints.[5] Sullivan gained success after being exhibited in the Society of Independent Artists’ show in 1937, wherein New York art dealer Sidney Janis found his art and was overwhelmed with emotion. The next year, Janis got Sullivan’s art into the Masters of Popular Painting exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Sullivan used Christian imagery in his work to emphasize one’s connection to the “infinite system of worlds and wonders.”5 He also drew upon his own experiences in World War I, his environment, and mathematical symmetry in his work.
Residing in Cincinnati, Ohio was portrait painter Milton William Hopkins. Originally from New York, he purchased a farm just outside of Cincinnati. To support his art career he had his hands in all types of businesses, from sign and house painting to teaching and selling art supplies.[6] Hopkins painted fairly flat, with only light shading. He also had heads that were disproportionately small, and large eyes. Hopkins toured the south as a portrait artist, returning back to Cincinnati later in life, setting up a studio only to die a year later.[7]
Indiana had its fair share of folk artists as well. Although not much is known about Hosea Hayden, his work is renowned for its technical skill. Hayden lived in southern Indiana as a farmer, pursuing chairmaking as a hobby. His chairs were all folding chairs, designed like tripods, were made of all different types of wood and had either solid or woven seats.[8] The backs are typically bent, a technique most likely handed down from his father, a furniture maker and descendent of shipmakers. What’s unique about Hayden’s chairs were his intricately engraved illustrations. His influences were extensive: the Bible, nature, local history and events, and patriotism, often mixed with his own point of view, poetry, homilies, and political commentary. Hayden used these chairs as journals, as well as gifts to friends and family, often with humorous and sly comments on their relationship inscribed on them.
Reson B. Crafft was a portrait painter that resided in Louisville, Kentucky. Not much is known about him, other than him being born in Ohio and moving to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and eventually to Northern Kentucky. His style changed tremendously over the years, indicating some sort of education or a careful observation of other, more accomplished, portraits. He also added more texture and objects into the backgrounds of his portraits, as well as much more realistic volume. Crafft was known for his portraits of Native Americans, though most have been lost or kept private by descendents.[9]
A contemporary example of the thriving folk artist community of the Ohio River Valley is Minnie Adkins. Living in Isonville, Kentucky, she grew up watching the men in her family carve and whittle wood.[10] Adkins’ carvings are usually focused on animals, particularly tigers, possums, bears, and foxes, with occasional ceramic collaborations with her cousin. In addition, she’s made quilts and welded steel pipes to go along with her carvings.9 Adkins has been incredibly successful, selling works across the country, but she also has formed a strong network of folk artists, promoting friendship and encouragement. She’s gone as far as to teach her neighbors her carving techniques. Adkins even holds an annual folk art festival at her home.
Despite the diverse subject matter of folk artists in the Ohio River Valley, they’re all under the umbrella of folk artistry. Each one reflects their environment, struggles, personality and humor in their own way. They’re united as artists who haven’t been swayed by academia or mainstream art markets, they’re each incredibly individual. From the Shawnee’s Wampum belts telling the stories of families long gone, to Minnie Adkins’ playfully painted carvings of possums, from Patrick J. Sullivan’s ethereal relief-like oil paintings to Hosea Hayden’s humorously carved folding chairs, the ongoing folk artistry of the Ohio River Valley is incredibly diverse and full of life.
Bibliography.
Hemphill, Herbet Twentieth-Century American Folk Art and Artists (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1974) 8.
Hendren, Sam “Curious Cbus: Where Is The Elusive "Ohio Valley"?” WOSU Public Media, Ohio State University. September 13, 2016.
“Shawnee Indian Facts.” Shawnee Indians (Shawnees). Accessed December 2, 2019. http://www.bigorrin.org/shawnee_kids.htm.
“John Kane.” John Kane Biography – John Kane on artnet. Accessed December 2, 2019. http://www.artnet.com/artists/john-kane-3/biography.
“National Gallery of Art.” Patrick J. Sullivan. Accessed December 2, 2019. https://www.nga.gov/features/exhibitions/outliers-and-american-vanguard-artist-biographies/patrick-j-sullivan.html.
“M. W. Hopkins.” Smithsonian American Art Museum. Accessed December 3, 2019. https://americanart.si.edu/artist/m-w-hopkins-2293.
“National Gallery of Art.” Artist Info. Accessed December 3, 2019. https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.6682.html.
Mills, Angie. “Hosea Hayden: Homilies to Sit Upon.” Self Taught Genius, n.d. http://selftaughtgenius.org/sites/stg/images/2381/Hosea Hayden_Homilies to Sit Upon.pdf.
Wertkin, Gerard C. Encyclopedia of American Folk Art. Florence: Taylor and Francis, 2014.
Crown, Carol, and Cheryl Rivers, eds. The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 23: Folk Art. University of North Carolina Press, 2013. www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469607993_crown.
[1] Hemphill, Herbet Twentieth-Century American Folk Art and Artists (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1974) 8.
[2] Hendren, Sam “Curious Cbus: Where Is The Elusive "Ohio Valley"?” WOSU Public Media, Ohio State University. September 13, 2016.
[3] “Shawnee Indian Facts.” Shawnee Indians (Shawnees). Accessed December 2, 2019. http://www.bigorrin.org/shawnee_kids.htm.
[4] “John Kane.” John Kane Biography – John Kane on artnet. Accessed December 2, 2019. http://www.artnet.com/artists/john-kane-3/biography.
[5] “National Gallery of Art.” Patrick J. Sullivan. Accessed December 2, 2019. https://www.nga.gov/features/exhibitions/outliers-and-american-vanguard-artist-biographies/patrick-j-sullivan.html.
[6] “M. W. Hopkins.” Smithsonian American Art Museum. Accessed December 3, 2019. https://americanart.si.edu/artist/m-w-hopkins-2293.
[7] “National Gallery of Art.” Artist Info. Accessed December 3, 2019. https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.6682.html.
[8] Mills, Angie. “Hosea Hayden: Homilies to Sit Upon.” Self Taught Genius, n.d. http://selftaughtgenius.org/sites/stg/images/2381/Hosea Hayden_Homilies to Sit Upon.pdf.
[9] Wertkin, Gerard C. Encyclopedia of American Folk Art. Florence: Taylor and Francis, 2014.
[10] Crown, Carol, and Cheryl Rivers, eds. The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 23: Folk Art. University of North Carolina Press, 2013. www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469607993_crown.