By Angela Wibking
Naked in Nashville: Works by Lila Graves
Through Apr. 29 at Outside the Lines Gallery
Belle Meade Galleria, 5133 Harding Rd.
11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Sat.
For information, call 356-9536
Alabama artist Lila Graves is exposing herself—but not in the way the title of her show, “Naked in Nashville,” might lead you to believe. A trained artist who paints in the untutored style of folk or “outsider” artists, Graves describes her art as a means of healing childhood hurts and recapturing youthful joys. In the process, she has progressed from portraying childlike figures and emotions to ones that are, well, a little more adult.
“I’ve moved into puberty,” the 31-year-old artist says with a laugh. “So now I’m painting bras and panties and naked ladies.” Graves’ latest paintings often feature a plump, slightly cherubic-looking young woman in various states of innocent undress. Grinning sheepishly at the viewer, she sometimes attempts to cover the exposed parts of her body. The smile on the woman’s face is infectious and likely to be reflected in the face of the viewer.
“[The paintings] made me smile,” says gallery owner Robin Cohn, who opened Outside the Lines a little over a year ago. “It’s the kind of art I look for—eclectic, bright, and happy.”
Graves’ upbeat art is the result of some very downbeat times the artist recently endured. In 1992 she was diagnosed with melanoma and underwent surgery. Unfortunately, the cancer had spread to her lymph system, and she was given only weeks to live. Her response to a death sentence at age 25 was an unexpected one.
“I decided I was going to live without fear and anger because those are the things that can really be toxic,” she recalls. Graves, who holds a degree from the Atlanta College of Art, began to paint incessantly and in a style that abandoned the structures and conventions of her training. She traveled to San Miguel de Allende, an artists’ colony in central Mexico, and in a symbolic act of healing, fashioned a pair of angel’s wings from palm fronds; she wore them throughout the village for two weeks. Curious tourists would stop and question her, while locals assumed she was on a pilgrimage involving a saint popular in the region. “They just thought I was celebrating Guadalupe, the patron saint of the mixing of cultures, and would call me by her name,” Graves says.
Whether healed by her faith, by medical treatment she received in the U.S., or by a combination of both, Graves has been cancer-free for six years. She is checked for recurrence every three months, and her doctor tells her it will be another eight years before she can be sure the cancer isn’t coming back. In her mind and in her art, however, she is completely cancer-free.
Graves paints every day—or rather every night, into the wee hours of the morning—in the house in Alexander City, Ala., where both she and her father were born. Her husband of six years is Jonathan Bloom, a blues musician who plays regularly at the House of Blues in New Orleans. Her house is filled with folk art, and she counts other outsider artists, including fellow Alabamian Woody Long, among her influences and friends.
“Oh, we all trade our art with each other, so most of us have really great folk art collections,” she says.
Besides Outside the Lines, Graves shows her paintings each year at “Kentuck,” the annual folk art festival held near Tuscaloosa, Ala. The artist recently exhibited some of her work in Manhattan at an annual showing of folk art at Gallery 54 in Soho. At that show, one of her paintings of Jesus caught the attention of Christianity Today and will be featured in the magazine’s April issue.
Graves often uses friends and relatives as subjects for her paintings. One called “Big Mama” is a portrait of her own mother, who is shown barefoot in a simple house dress, holding a bunch of pink flowers. In “Girl Praying,” the African American woman sitting cross-legged with hands folded in prayer is Fannie, Graves’ longtime friend and caregiver. And the naked lady who scampers through Graves’ art is, of course, the artist herself, though the woman on canvas doesn’t physically resemble Graves.
In “Naked and a Jaybird,” Graves’ alter ego poses next to a blackbird as unclothed as she. In another she plunges nude into a swimming pool. In a third she tests the water of her bath with one foot. In all the works, the young woman appears to be taking great pleasure in the activity of the moment, simple though it may be.
“I put myself into drug rehab on my 19th birthday,” the artist says, revealing another part of herself. “I’ve been deciding who Lila Graves is ever since then. So I’ve been creating this person for a while.” Looking at Graves’ whimsical painted ladies, it seems that the person the artist has decided to become is one who believes, in spite of everything, that life is worth smiling about.
To the village
Hillsboro Village will gain another art gallery when Outside the Lines relocates to 1813 21st Ave. S., next to Cotten Music, in September. Earlier this month, Zeitgeist Gallery announced it would move from Cummins Station to the Village in May.
“I’ll have over twice as much space as I do now, and I’m really looking forward to being in a neighborhood where people can walk down the street and drop in,” says gallery owner Robin Cohn. Outside the Lines has been located in a strip shopping center near Sperry’s Restaurant on busy Harding Road since it opened in November 1997.
Outside the Lines features art by untrained folk or outsider artists, as well as by trained artists working in the folk art style. Featured artists include locals like Ron York, Farrell Morris, George Barnes, and Jeremy Allen Hale, as well as folk art legends like Howard Finster. New works by individual artists are featured in exhibits that change every two months, but representative works by gallery artists are always on view.
“I’ll have over twice as much space as I do now, and I’m really looking forward to being in a neighborhood where people can walk down the street and drop in,” says gallery owner Robin Cohn. Outside the Lines has been located in a strip shopping center near Sperry’s Restaurant on busy Harding Road since it opened in November 1997.
Outside the Lines features art by untrained folk or outsider artists, as well as by trained artists working in the folk art style. Featured artists include locals like Ron York, Farrell Morris, George Barnes, and Jeremy Allen Hale, as well as folk art legends like Howard Finster. New works by individual artists are featured in exhibits that change every two months, but representative works by gallery artists are always on view.
