Opening the exhibit Three Ring Circus in the Longwood Center for Visual Arts (LCVA) and inviting the Folk Art Society of America for Saturday, Sept. 17 sounds like a big deal and it fills the room with expectations. Filling the beloved LCVA with color of a different and perhaps less organized kind than we often see, the exhibit boasts work from artists Howard Finster, Anderson Johnson and Charles Kinny among many, many others. Paintings, sculptures and pottery lay in beautiful repose in an event for all to see. But most prominently, the legion of art appreciates Folk Art Society of America's nationwide tour.
Organized by art collectors William and Anne Oppenheimer, the collection may be the largest of its kind at any university and presents an important opportunity to the LCVA and Longwood as a whole, especially when one considers that the collection is slotted to remain under the university's protection in Art on Campus.
The Folk Art Society of America program began in LCVA's downstairs with an introduction by LCVA director Kathy Johnson Bowles, who introduced facts about the LCVA, its status in the community and the tour's process onto campus that would include stops in the Rotunda, Cole, Rowe, and Brumfield collections.
Next Anne Oppenheimer addressed the audience about her persuading artists to cede works to the university after their deaths, and the catalogues set at the front of the center for the tourists to enjoy. Following Oppenheimer were several presentations. The first was of artwork to Gray Carter of J.J Cromer's "Typical Virginia Farm Scene" and Thomas Scanley of a Howard Finster serigraph "Howard Holding Up the World" that is destined for the Old Dominion gallery. J.J. Cromer's "Jack-o-Man" was summarily presented as well. Next came awards of distinction for Eldridge Bagley of Victoria, Virginia for his rural scenes, Ray Cass, a professor of art at Virginia Tech, and Kathy Johnson Bowles, LCVA director.
Johnson Bowles then gave an introduction to the collection and left the stage for Richard Guy Wilson of the University of Virginia, who gave a history of folk art, and Leisa Rundquist, who introduced a panel of artists: Eldridge Bagley, J.J Cromer and Mildred "Gentle Rain" More. Bagley, an artist known for his landscape art of rural Virginia, Cromer for his intricate and surrealist works, and Mildred, a Powhatan potter, gave answers to the audience's questions and seemed both pleased and esteemed to be there.
After the Q&A, the audience and speakers had lunch consisting of salad, steak tartar or portabella mushroom, and bread pudding in brandy sauce for dessert.
Shortly after, the exhibit upstairs was looked over and the audience members left for Longwood's Art on Campus.
Audience members Gene and Erica DeRoin of Chicago, Ill. were available to speak as part of the Folk Art Society of America tour group. Gene DeRoin took the time to explain some of the classifications at work in the collection and said, "Well, this is the folk art society so it concentrates on what's called folk art. There are also numerous branches of similar art. Main one of which is probably intuitive art. Which are untrained artists who just make it up as they go along. Folk art has more traditions. It's a little more controlled and organized. Intuitive art is pretty much off the cuff and often has text along with it the artist is expressing himself or herself along with." Erica DeRoin, before going up to see the exhibit, said, " Knowing the Oppenhimers., Anne and William, they have a great ability to figure out what good art is, and I've seen other things that they've purchased over the years that I've known them, so I expect that they have the best examples of all the major outsider and folk art. I'm very excited to see the collection."
Later, Jackson Bowles of the LCVA noted the nature of the artists in "Three Ring Circus" as "self-taught" and spanning from the 1950s to the present. Purchased mostly on a face-to-face basis, the art that is often categorized as outsider art presents something of "actual, personal importance" to Longwood University simply because of its size. With 250 people at its opening, the collection is also set to be up until January and presents something "touching" and accessible in the world of folk art to those audiences bound to enjoy it at Longwood.
