Self-Taught Art: Ordained to Create
Stephanie Watkins, Class of 2008, Calvin College
Minds in the Making

Zechariah, Ch. One, by Myrtice West
featured in Ordained to Create at the Calvin College Center Art Gallery

As you enter the Center Art Gallery for the exhibit Ordained to Create, you are greeted with a piercing image of Jesus Christ, a painting by Elder Anderson Johnson circa 1985. The details of the face are crude and somewhat childlike, but the eyes of the savior follow you around the gallery.

Ordained to Create showcases self-taught folk artists of the Southern United States with a variety of paintings, sculptures, and woodwork, many designed to emphasize that God loves his children no matter their race, gender, or ethnicity.

As you travel around the gallery, you also encounter paintings by Bernice Sims. One, done in 1998, is called Civil Rights March. It depicts a scene in which white police officers try to push back a group of African-American and white marchers. As you glance at the center of the painting, you see a dog attacking and biting an African-American. The painting can easily move you to tears as you think of the brutality that one human being can inflict on another.

These thoughts are nearly wiped away when you view the next painting, Sticks and Stones by Missionary Mary Proctor (1996), a mixture of oil paints and wood. It shows a woman whose figure is suggested by small pieces of wood. Above her is written the old adage, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Below that and slightly to the figure’s left is written, “That’s a lie. Words hurt.”

As you continue on, you will notice many unorthodox works of art. One piece is painted on a stovetop. Some are crosses assembled out of fence posts; others are painted sayings such as “Jesus Saves” on jagged pieces of wood. Many, if not all, of these works have strong biblical ties.

However moving or intriguing these paintings and sculptures are, there is still controversy among Calvin students and faculty as to whether the exhibit should even be shown at the college. On October 4, 2005, Kasarian Dane, an assistant professor of Art at Calvin College, held a gallery talk entitled “Beyond Criticism.” His purpose was to warn the attendees of the problems that came from the rhetoric of the exhibition's title and an essay written by the curators and owners of the artwork. This reflects a common tension in art, Dane said: a tension between the artists' work and the curator's presentation and interpretation.

Dane discussed the article "Unfettered and Unfiltered" by Sage and Steven Pattie, an essay that praises the abilities of the artists in this exhibit. The essay quotes Colin Rhodes, British scholar and author of Outsider Art: Spontaneous Alternatives, as calling these artists “unmuddied by artistic training or received knowledge.” This description leads the reader to believe that schooling and training make an artist substandard and only the “self-taught” artists can truly express themselves. The piece goes on to say that the artists featured in Ordained to Create “express their art in very direct, passionate, and frequently idiosyncratic ways [by] following instruction received from God, Elvis, angels, dreams, or from what they read in their well-thumbed Bible and the local newspaper…”

Dane explained that this depiction of these artists as “holier than thou” saints makes it hard to critique their work. How can one analyze the work of an artist that was divinely inspired? As the Patties put it, divine inspiration is what fueled these people with no artistic background to be pushed to “the forefront of some of the most exciting self-taught art on the American scene,” and to be “taken from the margins of society to the epicenter of the contemporary art world.”

The danger in saying this, Dane clarifies, is that it puts too much emphasis on “outsider” or “self-taught” art. There is so much emphasis on the talent of the artists that one forgets about the importance of learning art, and academia becomes discredited. In fact, the glory that they receive outshines the talent that they actually possess.