ART & CULTURE | EXHIBITS What does "home" mean? Different things to all of us, of course. A place of love, for some. One fraught with trouble, for others.
An elusive concept for too many. "Home isn't always a place of comfort. Nor is it always a location or a place.
Home can be a state of mind," says Brooke Wyatt, curator of a show at the American Folk Art Museum called "Somewhere to Roost." The collection of 60 pieces explores artists' conceptions of home in paintings, illustrations, folk art objects, collages, blanket chests, quilts and family photographs. It runs through next May.
Home as a nest ...
The exhibition's title piece, "Birds Gotta Have Somewhere to Roost" by Thornton Dial Sr., is a collage of weathered wood, burlap, carpet and tin. At first glance, it's a scramble of tossed-away scraps.
But consider the title, and you imagine something else: birds gathering the bits to make a nest. Dial's work, including many such assemblages of found materials, are in museum collections around the U.S.
Birds are depicted in a pen-and-ink drawing made in the 1800s by V.H. Furnier, an artist and penmanship teacher in Indiana, Pennsylvania.
It includes the words "Home Sweet Home" and above it an avian pair, one of them carrying a sprig with the words "Spare the Birds." New Englander Joseph E. Clapp's beautiful birdcage is another standout.
Made of Peruvian mahogany and whalebone with petite brass pins, it's a marvel of construction. Clapp was a master mariner who worked on whale b.
