LOOKING & LEARNING

Telling Stories

TELLING STORIES

As children we crave stories and make them up if we can’t

get them other ways. Into adulthood, stories continue to be

important and we share them with friends and family. Some

people are better at storytelling than others. We often hear

that so and so is a “great storyteller.” We use stories to

entertain, to teach, to pass on old knowledge. In certain

Native American cultures, stories are so integral that every

question is answered by a story.

TELLING STORIES

Memory is important to our stories. As we remember the people,

places, and events of our lives, we create stories to share with others.

We have our own private memories, and we are also aware of a more

expansive public or cultural memory. Memory of this sort might hover

within a family, a local community, or a whole nation; it is our shared

history and it, too, prompts the stories that we tell. Major trauma within

a culture, like natural disasters or human tragedies, becomes part of

our social memory and prompts stories within a community. As we tell

and retell these stories, we are more likely to heal. The telling of stories

has healing power.

TELLING STORIES

Our stories are told in word and image. The work of Radcliffe

Bailey and other visual artists featured here will remind us of

the power of stories.

RADCLIFFE BAILEY

(B.1968)

In the Garden, 2008 mixed media, 61 x 60 x 6

7/8”

Growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, Radcliffe Bailey decided early that

he wanted to become an artist. As a child, his mother took him to the

city’s High Museum and he met artist Jacob Lawrence during one of

those visits. Lawrence was an inspiration to Bailey – an influence

that can be seen in the younger artist’s deep interest in history. His

artworks reveal his love for antiquing and his recognition that

historical objects can hold both personal and cultural memory. Old

and weathered objects figure prominently in his many-layered two-

and three- dimensional works, but none so much as the old family

tintype photographs given to him years ago by his grandmother.

The photographs anchor many of his pieces, prompting our

questions, “Who was this person?” “What was life like for him or

her?” What stories might this person tell us?”

RADCLIFFE BAILEY

RADCLIFFE BAILEY

Objects combined in Bailey’s works evoke

deep cultural memory of the trans-Atlantic

slave trade and also prompt stories of those in

the past, present, and future living with that

memory. The healing and cultural power of

music across the generations winds its way

through Bailey’s works in the form of piano

keys, sheet music, and instruments.

TOM JOYCE (B.1956)

TOM JOYCE

Tom Joyce talks about iron having a “memory.” This

son of a quilter takes iron pieces forged years ago for

purposed often unknown today and transforms them

into bowls, gates, tables , and other sculpted objects.

As he recycles tools from the past, he remembers

those who used them, still mindful of the blacksmiths

who initially forged them. For him, metal holds the

emotions, energies, and stories of everyone who has

touched it.

TOM JOYCE

Some of Joyce’s projects accentuate the ideas of

memory and story. In preparing to make a

baptismal font for the Santa Maria de la Paz

Catholic community in San ta Fe, New Mexico, he

asked community members to donate metal

objects that represent important memories. The

font was forged from such items as fencing that

surrounded the garden of a parishioner’s

deceased grandmother, a key found by a nun on a

pilgrimage, and hardware from a home destroyed

by fire. In Rio Grande Gates, trash gathered from

the banks of the Rio Grande River was

transformed into a gate for a museum.

AUDREY FLACK (B.1931)

Audrey Flack, Queen, 1976, Acrylic on canvas, 80 x 80”

Audrey Flack is an American painter and sculptor

who began her career as an Abstract Expressionist

and then became interested in photorealism. Using

the airbrush, she captured a photographic likeness

of the carefully selected objects she included in the

still-life paintings of her Vanitas series. Like the

seventeenth-century Dutch vanitas painters, Flack’s

still-life paintings carry strong messages about life.

Food and flowers in the Dutch paintings remind

people that life is short.

AUDREY FLACK

AUDREY FLACK

Flack also chooses objects to suggest behaviors and

habits that get in the way of having meaningful lives.

Her paintings also suggest stories. Old photographs

prompt questions about the relationships between

the people and the other memorabilia depicted. A

watch, a game piece, makeup, and jewelry – all

suggest a life. We cannot help but wonder who

might have owned these things and how they used

them. Unlike other stories, the one suggested by

Audrey Flack has no clear beginning, middle, and

end. The story here is only suggested; the viewer

must complete the rest.

CHARLES LABELLE (B.

1964)

CHARLES LABELLE

Charles LaBelle, Manifestation: Three San Francisco Motels & Their Surroundings, 2003

Compound photograph with archival ink and tape, 24 x 85”

CHARLES LABELLE

Charles LaBelle visits cities around the world and shoots literally

thousands of photographic images. Unlike the typical tourist, though,

LaBelle focuses his attention on the details often missed by others – bits

of shadow on a wall, graffiti, wall switches, sidewalks, doorways, scraps of

paper, food wrapping, billboards, and other signage. As the artist wanders

the city with his eye on visual details, he sees a part of the place that

eludes the rest of us.. Upon returning to his studio, he cuts his photos into

1” pieces and assembles them into large “compound photos.” These

collections reveal photographic fragments of human lives and provide the

backdrop for a multitude of stories.

The connection between objects and stories is that they

have been owned and used by someone to convey a kind of

history of that person.

We might say that the object has a story to tell.

Audrey Flack’s vanitas paintings rely on this idea of objects

and the stories they hold.

EXPLORE

1. What objects do you see?

2. What might the relationship be

between the photographs and

the objects?

3. What story might these

objects tell?

Look carefully at Audrey Flack’s painting,

Queen.

1. How do we associate objects with people we know?

2. When we think of someone, what memories do we have of that

person?

3. What associations – colors, objects, places, events, scents, or

sounds – come to mind?

Think of the possibility: Having a special connection to people

they have never met or hardly know, such as a deceased or distant

family member.

EXPLORE

Create a list of people, places, or events that

come to mind. (share your responses with your

group and consider with group members why

certain objects prompt associations with

specific people).

EXPLORE

Think about Audrey Flack’s vanitas paintings

Select a Person, Place, or Event to portray in a still life

Students will create a 3-dimensional still-life arrangement,

attending to overall composition, as well as to color, texture and

be seen at eyelevel, from a bird’s eye view, or however they

like.

Open boxes or pieces of mat board would work well for

staging or arranging the objects

CREATE – PART 1

DEFINITIONS

Still Life : An arrangement of objects, typically including

fruit and flowers and objects contrasting with these in texture,

such as bowls and glassware

Composition : is the placement or arrangement of visual

elements or ingredients in a work of art

CREATE – PART 2

Once the students have an arrangement that suggests a

story, they can photograph it from different viewpoints.

Then the student they might capture the overall

arrangement in two-dimensional artwork using traditional

methods such as pencil, pen & ink, or watercolor.