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Local Residents Share Their Carroll Cloar Collections

Area art lovers will soon have the opportunity to view a never before seen collection featuring one of the South's favorite artists. Belmont University will host the works of Carroll Cloar (1913-1993) in the exhibit, Carroll Cloar: Timeless Tales of the South.

The collection, which includes original paintings, sketches and lithographs, are on loan from Arkansas State University, Cheekwood Botanical Gardens and Fine Arts Center, the Tennessee State Museum and the Governor’s mansion. In addition, many local art collectors have agreed to loan their collection of Cloar works for this one of a kind exhibit.

An opening reception will be held on May 22 from 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. in the Belmont University Leu Art Gallery (1900 Belmont Boulevard). Patty Bladon-Lawrence, former director, curator and educator at the Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, will provide commentary at 6:15 p.m. Ms. Lawrence had both a professional and personal friendship with Cloar and has lectured extensively on his work. Cloar’s work will be on display in the Leu Art Gallery at Belmont University from May 22 to July 13, 2003. Gallery hours are Monday – Friday, 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., Saturday, 9:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., and Sunday, 2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. (Call 460-6782 for holiday weekend hours.)

In addition to the artwork, the overall event will have a powerful impact on local youths. Belmont and the Tennessee Arts Academy will host 250 art, music and theatre teachers from Tennessee who will participate in a guided gallery tour of the exhibit and workshops. Tennessee’s top high school visual art students participating in the annual Governor’s School for the Arts will also spend a day on Belmont’s campus studying the exhibit and participating in hands-on workshops.

A native of Earle, Arkansas, Cloar was inspired by his childhood memories of the Arkansas Delta. Cloar studied at the former Memphis Academy of Arts and also the Art Students League in New York, and through his studies, he found his true calling was to preserve and celebrate his rural Southern roots. In 1955, Cloar resettled in the South and created his most memorable images while living in Memphis, Tennessee.

"Though his work could be labeled as 'regionalist,' the humanistic themes are surely universal," said David Ribar, Associate Professor of Art at Belmont University. "Those of us with Southern backgrounds will intimately know Cloar's evocation of hazy summer heat, hordes of grasshoppers, sunflowers and butterflies, and the boundless spaces of sky and farmland; yet, anyone can perceive Cloar's sensitivities to the small but glorious moments of the real."

Drawing from his family photo albums and boyhood memories, Cloar's work demonstrates hard landscapes of lonely cropland, wide, sagging front porches, and quiet forest shades, populating them with the play of innocent children or the labor of weary adults. In time, Cloar's style of painting and drawing evolved into equal mixtures of realism and fantasy. Cloar's poetic use of pure color and lines has immense formal appeal, while his exploration of pastoral themes is usually regarded as his most important creative achievement.

Posted by the Office of University Marketing & Communications, May 2, 2003

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