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Bessemer, AL Ronald Lockett 1965- Mixed media, allegorical animals

Information: A relative and neighbor of Thornton Dial, Ronald Lockett spent much of his youth observing the older artist at work. Lockett's consuming passion has always been drawing; after graduating from high school in the early 1980s, he stayed at home drawing pictures and tending to his mother, who was in fragile health, and his great aunt, Sarah Dial Lockett, who also raised Thornton Dial and lived in the house between the two artists' homes. Lockett's other primary source is television, especially nature documentaries and the news. The naturalism of Lockett's style differs from other artists of the Dial family, yet he shares with them an interest in art as social commentary, the use of animals as surrogates for humans, and a reliance on the expressiveness of found materials. Some of Lockett's oldest surviving drawings are on the sides of tin outbuildings in his neighborhood. He frequently scavenges abandoned tin shacks and barns for their decrepit siding, from which he fashions nailed-together montages. These unpainted works invoke the legacies of quiltmaking and folk architecture as a means of contemplating historical continuities and changes, including environmental and biological threats and the psychological diseases of racism and violence. Southern Spirit—Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science

	Reference / Links:
	Southern Spirit—Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science AXA Gallery Slotin Folk Art
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Bibliography: "Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century American Folk Art and Artists" by Chuck and Jan Rosenak, Abbeville Press, New York, 1990. "Light of the Spirit : Portraits of Southern Outsider Artists" by Karekin Goekjian and Robert Peacock, University of Mississippi Press, 1998. "Testimony: Vernacular Art of the African-American South: the Ronald and June Shelp Collection", Cronwill, Danto, Gaither, Gundaker and McWillie, 2001. "Let it Shine: Self-Taught Art from the T. Marshall Hahn Collection" by Lynne E. Spriggs, Joanne Cubbs, Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, Susan Mitchell Crawley, Michael E. Shapiro and Peter Harholdt, organized by the High Museum of Art, 2001. "Souls Grown Deep: African American vernacular Art of the South", Vol 2, Arnett, et al, 2001. Testimony: Vernacular Art of the African-American South, presented at the AXA Gallery from May 3 - July 13, 2002. "American Self-Taught Art: An Illustrated Analysis of 20th Century Artists and Trends with 1,319 Capsule Biographies" by Florence Laffal and Julius Laffal, 2003. Slotin Folk Art Auction Catalog, Masterpiece Sale, November 4, 2006

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