New Hampshire Folk Art: By the People, For the People at Discover Portsmouth
May, 15, 2019
By S. Scarlett Moberly
“Folk art is a slippery term that can lead the unwary into a scholarly semantic quagmire from which there can seem to be no escape,” writes curator Gerald W.R. Ward in the introduction to the catalogue for the exhibition New Hampshire Folk Art: By the People, For the People, on at Discover Portsmouth, operated by the Portsmouth Historical Society, through September 29. “Primitive, naïve, popular, vernacular, ethnic, outsider, rural, and many other terms have been used to describe or modify folk art,” Ward continues. “For many people, to quote a famous New Englander, ‘it is what it is.’”
Once folk art has been defined (or rather, undefined), visitors are free to enjoy the charismatic selection in this exhibition. Works were sourced through extensive statewide fieldwork, mining other historical societies’ collections and working with New Hampshire collectors. It is the first major loan exhibition of its kind in over 30 years, since By Good Hands: New Hampshire Folk Art at the Currier Museum of Art in 1989. A non-thematic show, objects are grouped somewhat like with like, but with no chronological or geographical order. One encounters the works like one would in a home. Portraits hang above furniture. A scrimshaw powder horn sits in a vitrine in a corner, reportedly found after a woods-walker fell into an old cellar in Dover. Next to it, a rather intoxicated-looking marble lion absentmindedly paws an unconscious lamb. “You can’t have a folk art show without a dopey-looking lion,” said Ward. “We happen to have two,” he noted, pointing to a painted fireboard depicting a particularly mischievous example. Painted ceramics sit near a diorama of a general store from the Museum of Dumb Guy Stuff, brainchild of Portsmouth locals Clayton Emery and Rod Hildebrand. “They didn’t hyphenate the title on purpose,” said Meredith Affleck, exhibitions and programming manager at Portsmouth Historical Society. “Is it dumb guy stuff? Or is the stuff of a dumb guy?” Not so dumb, these guys.
Left: Lion fireboard, Piermont, NH area, c. 1825. Collection of Douglas Jackman and Stephen Corrigan. Courtesy of Portsmouth Historical Society/Discover Portsmouth. Right: John S. Treat, The Lion and the Lamb, marble. Courtesy of Portsmouth Historical Society/Discover Portsmouth.
New Hampshirites’ understated intelligence and sly humor are evident in this exhibition. Ward quotes the famous collector and philanthropist Maxim Karolik as once saying that the best folk artists and craftspeople “fortunately” had no academic training, even though many had “exceptional talent.” This freedom from institutional instruction allowed for the stylized forms that inspired the artists of the 1920s and 1930s to experiment with abstraction. Yet we must not evaluate folk artists based on which fine art movements they engendered. Their skill and creativity successfully operate independent of their legacy as progenitors. As the title of the show suggests, these are everyday artists, producing work to make the lives of everyday people lovelier, and we would be remiss to dismiss their earnest and honest efforts as unsophisticated merely because they are quotidian.
A standout in the show is a hooked hearthrug, made by a Portsmouth artisan circa 1820-1840, which depicts a double-chimney colonial home situated behind a fence on a dirt road amongst various types of flora and fauna. The detail is incredible, all the more so knowing it was picked out in tufts of wool, silk and linen. The artisan used the different textiles to vary the textures of leaves and grass, bark and brick. Pointing out a delightful cross-eyed stag in the woods near the house, Affleck noted that the rug is a metaphor for the entire show: It is beautiful, skillfully constructed—and very fun. The rug is in the collection of the Portsmouth Historical Society, and while the exact location of the house it depicts is unknown, Ward said, “Some local antiquarians are on the case.” Affleck also gleefully pointed out a temperance signboard made around 1890, likely in Sandwich, NH. A serpent, its body emblazoned with the evils of alcohol, winds its way around a vessel which bears a striking resemblance to a red solo cup, preferred vessel of backwoods revels and college dorm fêtes alike. Was this artisan-teetotaler also a time traveler?
Temperance signboard, Sandwich, NH, c. 1890. Courtesy of Portsmouth Historical Society/Discover Portsmouth.
A recent addition to the Portsmouth Historical Society’s collection concludes the exhibition: a pink pussyhat knitted by Portsmouth engineer Lily Beyer. Beyer wore the hat to the Women’s March in Washington, D.C. on January 21, 2017, and knitted several others for fellow marchers to wear during the protest. The hat, said Ward, is part of a long tradition of women using textiles as a form of social protest, stretching back to the Revolutionary War and Ancient Greece. Not content with a photograph, the Society wanted an artifact of this recent example of politically charged craft.
A carved wooden fawn made in 1932 by Archelas “Archie” Gilbert of Landaff stands opposite the entrance of the show, welcoming visitors with its wild, wide-open eyes. Is it a toy? A sculpture? Does it matter? Gilbert took to carving wood after an injury or illness left him unable to keep a full-time job, though perhaps that was for the best. He became the first member of the League of New Hampshire Arts and Crafts, now called the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, one of the oldest societies for craftspeople in the nation. Upstairs from For the People, the League has mounted an exhibition of contemporary New Hampshire folk art with work from its member artisans. It is a wonderful continuation of the state’s vitality and creativity. As Ward writes in the catalogue, each object in both exhibitions “represents in its own way a fundamental human urge to create art, regardless of formal training, and also to embellish the artifacts of everyday life, allowing ordinary objects to provide visual pleasure and delight through color, patterning, and abstract forms.” What could be nobler than to improve the daily lives of our neighbors, in whatever small way we can?
New Hampshire Folk Art: By the People, For the People and Contemporary NH Folk Art with the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen are on view at Discover Portsmouth in Portsmouth, NH through September 29.
