During May, Meridian Museum of Art will showcase three exhibitions, one connected with the recent opening of The Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience.

In conjunction with painter Walter Anderson being the first visual artist recognized in The Max’s Hall of Fame, the Meridian museum will feature an exhibit of the artist’s works. Additionally, works by MMA Bi-State and Mississippi Invitational exhibitor Philip R. Jackson and the return of The Art for Eternity collection of Biblical art will be housed at the facility.

An opening reception for the exhibits will be presented Thursday, from 4:30-7:30 p.m., at the downtown Meridian museum.

Walter Inglis Anderson

Walter Anderson is well known for his jewel-like watercolors, his prolific ink drawings, the flowing lines of his linoleum block prints, and his extraordinary murals. His art can be seen in collections all over the country and in Ocean Springs at the Walter Anderson Art Museum, which bears his name.

Anderson had a variety of interests that included extensive reading of poetry, history, sciences, and art history. A voracious reader, he was drawn to books on folklore, mythology, philosophy, and epics of voyage and discovery. In his work Walter was both versatile and prolific. He created wood and clay sculptures and pencil, crayon, pastel, and ink drawings. He painted in watercolors and oils and made countless linoleum woodblocks and illustrations of the literature he read. He hooked rugs. An accomplished writer, he wrote sagely on subjects of interest to him.

According to a press statement, Anderson thought an artist should create affordable work that pleased others, and in return, artists should be able to pursue their artistic passions. In the 1930s the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) was created under President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration during the depression in part to assist artists. It commissioned Peter, Walter, and Mac to create works for the Ocean Springs Public School system: murals by Walter and tiles created by Peter and Mac. The murals have since been moved to the Walter Anderson Museum of Art. The tiles have been restored, and remain in the renovated school building on Government Street in Ocean Springs, now Mary C. O’Keefe Cultural Center.

Anderson continued to decorate pottery at Shearwater until his death on Nov 30, 1965, in New Orleans from complications of surgery for lung cancer. After his death, his family discovered that his little cottage at Shearwater was a treasure trove containing works from all periods of his life, including remarkable renderings created during his Horn Island adventures. The magnificent mural, “Creation at Sunrise,” adorned the walls and ceiling of the little bedroom, which had been added on to the cottage to accommodate his growing family. Subsequent to his death, Anderson was accorded other awards: Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters (1989) and Mississippi Hall of Fame (1991). He has been the subject of many books, essays and articles. The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., honored him with a retrospective show during 2003-2004 to commemorate his 100th birthday. Walter Anderson is certainly the South’s greatest artist to date due to his staggering output, his energy and the unique quality of his work in so many media, like ceramic, watercolor, woodcarving, woodblock, oil painting and pen and ink drawing.

No one knows exactly how many pieces of pottery Walter Anderson decorated. According to his daughter Mary Anderson Pickard, he was expected to produce 10 pieces per week while he was employed Shearwater. His decorated pottery was always popular and desired, not only by local people but also by art collectors and connoisseurs around the world. Artists such as Andy Warhol collected his work and recognized his genius.

The little cottage room with the brightly colored mural walls and fireplace has been removed and relocated, intact, to the Walter Anderson Museum in Ocean Springs, which opened in 1991. This museum is considered one of the most beautiful and unique museums in the country. Anderson’s watercolors, drawings, oils, block prints, ceramics, and woodcarvings are all represented in the museum’s permanent collection. It is well worth a special trip. The museum is attached to the community center where Walter Anderson painted remarkable murals in 1951 and 1952, depicting the coming of the French among the Indians, and the place of Ocean Springs in the artist’s cosmology, a veritable sea, earth and sky panorama. Walter Anderson’s designs have created a local industry. Today his heirs sell his prints and items with his designs ranging from note cards, Christmas cards, prints, and posters to clothing. The Walter Anderson Family has its own shop, “Realizations,” in the converted L& N Train Depot in Ocean Springs. The Museum Gift Shop and Shearwater Pottery also sell items with his designs, and local artists have long created fine jewelry using his designs. Careful observation has shown that these days his designs can be encountered on the clothing of passengers in any airport in the country.

Several works from the WAMA are included in this exhibit, as well as works from a private collection and the Meridian Museum of Art.

 

Philip R. Jackson

Through his paintings, Philip R. Jackson attempts to redefine an object’s natural purpose, placing emphasis on the orchestrated exchange between them.

“Bathed in light, each one reveals its own mysteries,” Jackson said in an artist’s statement. “The details of their surface reveal signs of a life lived: dents, bruises, and more. It is as if they were having a conversation of their own, long before we approached the picture.

The inspiration for his current series of work has to do with various aspects of time — aging, the passing of, the displacement, and reorganization of things.

“In most of my works, I present opposing stages of life,” Jackson said. “The objects are moved from their original growing place and somehow dropped, blown, moved and found their way to a congregated place among the other objects.”

From his earliest interest in making images, Jackson said he was naturally drawn to representation because he sees and describes things in vivid pictures.

“My work is focused on the micro-the intricacies of things,” he said. “I invite the viewer into a greater sense of looking into a painting. With a perceptual eye, even mundane objects open the universe within them and are only revealed to the careful observer. By placing these ordinary objects into an imagined space, I hope to transform the viewer from this world to another.”

Within the last year, Jackson has experienced a gradual shift in his work.

“After revisiting the paintings of one of my favorite painters, Walter Tandy Murch, I was reminded of something very magical that I have always admired about his small diminutive works,” he said. “Murch discussed his analysis of reality, “I must not paint the thing itself, but will paint the air between myself and the thing and beyond. This challenged my observation of the object and my portrayal of it to the viewer.”

In this recent work, how Jackson builds the painting has become more improvisational.

“In my two most recent paintings (‘Cherries, Muscadines, and Branch’ and ‘Apple, Berries, and Leaf’) the objects are woven together, combined in a type of visual briar patch,” he said. “Much like the accumulation of debris within the natural environment, in every added layer of the painting, the image is realized as objects are added. The intimacy between each object is heightened by the condensed space. These are unusual and banal aspects of space and one might only see the relationship if they rummaged the forest floor. There one can see the universe brought together by nature itself.”

 

Art for Eternity

Created by public school students in Russia and Ukraine, The Art for Eternity collection of Biblical art returns to Meridian Museum of Art for a third showing.

The collection features artwork owned by The Kindness Foundation, a non-profit organization in Hattiesburg. MMA Executive Director Kate Cherry said she first learned of the exhibit in 2014.

“I was contacted in 2014 by one of their board of directors, Janet Blouin. The Foundation was hosting an exhibit at a Hattiesburg library,” Cherry said. “I saw the talent these youth have and was very impressed by the skill they had in drawing and painting. Eleven to 15-year-olds created most of the works.”

MMA not only hosted the exhibit, but also invited Dr. Olga Lutsenko, founder of The Kindness Foundation, to talk with members and visitors about her story and the exhibition.

“She said when Communism fell in 1991 and the USSR was unraveling, it was evident that more was at stake than the social, political and economic structure of the former Soviet states,” Cherry said. “Seventy-five years of Communism rendered Russia a broken country without a strong moral code or any hope for its people.”

As part of her job, Lutsenko, who at the time was an official with the Academy of Pedagogical Science of the USSR, was asked by the Russian Minister of Education to research the best morals to teach in Russian schools. After researching various education models, she and her colleagues recommended to the government that a Bible-based moral curriculum should be implemented. In 1992, Lutsenko met with educators to develop this plan and in the process became a Christian.

The Russian government approved her plan for a moral curriculum, but to sustain a Christian presence in her country, Cherry said Lutsenko knew that she must form a Russian led organization. This was the genesis of The Kindness Foundation.

“The Russian government made the decision to provide Biblical education for its country,” Cherry said. “Only through God’s grace and her (Lutsenko) determination was a link established between Russia and Western Christians.”

Soon, the Kindness Foundation signed an agreement with the Ukrainian government as well and requests continue to pour in from other countries for the same Bible-based curriculum.

Regional children’s art competitions were organized by the Russian Kindness Foundation and the Russian Department and Ministry of Education, and held during the Christmas holidays in January 2011 and Easter holidays in April 2011. The name of the competition was “Wellsprings of Kindness,” with three themes the students could choose from for their artwork: 1) “Celebrate the Christmas;” 2) “Holy Easter (Let’s Walk through the Bible: Proverbs, Commandments and Bible Stories)”; and 3) “Remember our Veterans.”

The winning pieces were first sent to tour the prestigious museums of Russia and were then sent to the Kindness Foundation in Mississippi. They become a part of their “Art for Eternity” collection, which has grown to include more than 150 pieces of original Biblical art from Russia and Ukraine.

Cherry describes “Art for Eternity” as an educational exhibit, especially for those interested in Bible-themed works.

“This is an exhibit in which families are encouraged to attend,” Cherry said. “Members of churches, Sunday school classes, and any one interested in learning about pictorial scenes from the Bible would enjoy this exhibit. We are pleased to bring this exhibit to Meridian again.”

For more information about these exhibits or other museum programs, call (601) 693-1501 or e-mail meridianmuseum@bellsouth.net.

Located at 628 25th Ave., the Meridian Museum of Art is open Tuesday-Saturday, from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. The museum is located at 628 25th Ave.

• The Meridian Museum of Art is supported through memberships and donations and by granting agencies – The Phil Hardin Foundation, the Mississippi Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, The Riley Foundation, and the Community Foundation of East Mississippi, and receives support from the city of Meridian through a subsidy and use of the building. Rea, Shaw, Giffin and Stuart, CPA firm has graciously donated accounting services since the inception of the Museum.