Alabama Folk

Descended from slaveowners and from enslaved people, Judge Susan Walker and Reverend Dale Braxton walked very different paths to Hopewell Baptist Church. Yet through their willingness to trust each other and tell the truth about the past, the two built a quilting project to honor enslaved people that brings Alabamians together to remember, grieve, sing, heal, and build something new.

Jay Herring and Doug Baloy designed and built elaborate runway costumes for Mardi Gras balls in Alabama for over twenty years. Each one-of-a-kind piece grew from creativity, ingenuity, and thinking big, and came to life with their combined skills in costume and set design. Jay and Doug reflect on the artistic process, freedom of expression, the LGBTQ community, and the magic of Mardi Gras.

Amita Bhakta shares the art of rangoli from her native India with her community in Florence. Rangoli uses colorful sand patterns to express welcome, blessing, beauty, and joy, and is present in festivals across India, especially Diwali. Amita describes its Hindu roots, symbolic elements, and ephemeral nature. And she reflects on creativity, making, slowing down, and letting go.

Sandra Polizos was raised in a tight-knit Greek community where the Greek Orthodox Church sat at the hub of religious, cultural, and community life. She explains the symbolism and experience of Greek Orthodox Easter, in particular its foodways, and reflects on how having Greek grandparents, schooling, language, fasting practices, and cooking skills shaped who she is today.

Charlie Tran has led Beast of the Bayou, a lion dance crew in Bayou La Batre, since age 17. He illumines lion dance history, its place at the center of Vietnamese New Year, Buddhist roots, and its many elements: blessing and community, materials and movement, drumbeat, red envelope, and the Buddha. He also reflects on recruiting and growing dancers, and the future of his hometown.

George Jones Jr. carries on his great grandfather’s broommaking tradition on family land: growing and harvesting broomcorn, hunting sticks, hand tying, and winding brooms on 19th century equipment. Over three decades, George has evolved in his craft: blending conventional and new elements, realizing broommaking as an art, and relying on it in difficult times.

Jessie LaVon’s rural life includes seed saving, canning, and fishing, but also honky tonks, snake ceremonies, and spring tonic. Her mother championed Jessie’s artistic impulse from the first, making paints from muds and berries and stiffening canvases by boiling rabbit bones. These memories and practices, alongside a reverence for the natural world, continue to inform and infuse Jessie’s life and art.

Roy Marks was raised in a timber culture stretching back generations that endowed him with an expansive knowledge of trees and the properties and uses of their wood, from shingles to bee boxes to mallets and froes. He details his appreciation for makers of the past and his concern for the future of the woods, transformed in his lifetime from communal hunting ground to clear cut earth.

Flor Juares arrived in the US with years of experience preparing the foods of her native El Salvador, especially pupusas: the iconic national dish. Flor details a lifelong fascination with rural folkways and empowerment by the women around her. After decades of making pupusas for family and friends, she now shares them with hundreds at the annual Latino Festival in Rainsville.

Della Marsh stumbled into pine needle basketry as a way to use the gorgeous pine needles she encountered in Lillian, Alabama. A lifelong artist and maker, Della describes how basket making bestowed an artistic experience different than other mediums, and how she transformed this age-old tradition with color and charms, then moved beyond baskets completely.