The Herring-Kivette Gallery is highlighting artwork in the collection in recognition of Black History Month. The gallery is located on the second floor of the Yancey County Public Library on School Circle in Burnsville and the exhibit can be viewed through February 28 during regular library hours.
Portrait of Aunt Cindy Griffith by Frank Stanley Herring.
The exhibit features a number of works by Frank Stanley Herring, founder of the Burnsville Painting Classes in the mid-1940s. A dozen of his paintings of Southern Blacks are in the collection of the Smithsonian and many of his other works are in private collections in the U.S.
Of special interest is a portrait of Aunt Cindy Griffith, a beloved Burnsville resident who lived to be well over age 100. The portrait was gifted to the gallery by Herring’s family members along with numerous other works by the nationally-known artist. Also of note is a Herring portrait of Lincoln Park resident Peggy Barnett, a high school student at a time when Yancey’s schools were segregated.
A display recognizing the Burnsville Eagles baseball team, the pride of Yancey County in the 1950s, started as an unnamed African-American team in the 1920s and later was legendary in the southern Appalachians.
Another display highlights the Burnsville Eagles baseball team, the pride of Yancey in the 1950s, that includes team photos, a portrait of player Porter Young, and a “broadcast” recorded by WKYK’s Mike Sink that gives a glimpse of what an Eagles game might have sounded like on the radio. The broadcast begins playing when viewers approach the radio in the exhibit.
The Burnsville Eagles display is courtesy of Traditional Voices Group and was made possible with grant funding from Toe River Arts in partnership with the N.C. Arts Council.
One of four works by folk/outsider artist Leonard Jones.
A delightful part of this exhibit is the first showing of paintings by Georgia folk/outsider artist Leonard Jones, whose work is in the George W. Bush Presidential Library and in the collections of many celebrities. Jones’ work is part of Herring-Kivette Gallery’s permanent collection thanks to Tommy and Susie Buchanan of Burnsville. The paintings belonged to Tommy’s mother, the late Maxie Buchanan, an avid art collector and an artist herself.
Photo of two African-American children by Paul Buchanan.
The exhibit also includes a display of photos by Paul Buchanan (1910-1987) of Black residents from Yancey and Avery counties. Buchanan was an itinerant photographer who, on foot, on horseback and by car, traveled in Yancey, Mitchell, Avery and McDowell counties taking photos of local families from 1920 until 1951.
He had stopped making pictures for more than 30 years when Ann Hawthorne, a freelance photographer living in Yancey County at that time, heard about Buchanan and went to see him at his home in Mitchell County. Their friendship resulted in Hawthorne preserving and printing hundreds of photos from his negatives and publishing a book of his work long with an accompanying interview and introduction by television newsman Bruce Morton.
