William Christenberry
1936, Tuscaloosa, Alabama - )
William Christenberry began as a painter, achieved renown as a photographer, and has moved on to create collages and sculptures. An accident when he was fourteen left him blind in one eye, but he nonetheless when on to study art at the University of Alabama in his native Tuscaloosa and to teach there and at Memphis State University in Memphis, Tennessee.
Reared in Hale County in Alabama's Black Belt, Christenberry began photographing buildings and walls as color studies for paintings. He describes his background of having grown up in the Black Belt region as an important influence on his work. "I guess somebody would say that I am literally obsessed with the landscape where I am from. I don't really object to that. It is so ingrained in me. It is who I am. The place makes you who you are, creates who you are," said Christenberry.
His fascination with objects stems from his childhood when he was surrounded by things that his family had made - from his grandfather's walking canes, his father's wooden tools and his mother's quilts. He has focused on the simple cabins, barns, stores, and chapels of the rural South, not the region's celebrated mansions. In some cases he has photographed the same ramshackle building again and again over a long period, documenting its decline and ending with its complete dissolution. He has also created imagined "Dream Buildings" and "Southern Monuments," along with small satin-covered figures he calls "Klan Dolls."
"I use objects in my own artistic activity both as subjects and as materials," says Christenberry. "Whether I am working in painting, sculpture, photography, or a combination of media, I seek to capture the essence of my subject, to know the totality of time and place, and express the changeable nature of my life view."
Though Christenberry has long lived and worked in Washington, he does not photograph there, preferring to return periodically to rural Alabama for inspiration. "I originally photographed Alabama subject matter in the late 1950s as color studies for paintings," Christenberry says. "Often times in recent years, I photograph subjects close-up in order to reveal the abstract qualities of weathered, found walls. These imgs often lend themselves to large size prints and recall my first exposure to the heroic, painterly canvases of Abstract Expressionism."
With the art of family an important hallmark of The Ogden Museum, the Christenberry family celebrates the spirit of family in a special way. For four generations the family of artist William Christenberry has maintained ties to the small towns and rural environments of Hale County, Alabama. Artistic traditions typical of an earlier era in the South - including storytelling, carving, whittling and quilt making - were developed by the Christenberry family. The history of the Christenberry family reflects the history of many Southern families, and many America families during the critical transitional years of the twentieth century. As this book shows, the Christenberrys have maintained a sense of history and tradition even while reflecting contemporary developments in American art and life.
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