You may have seen Tommye Scanlin’s tapestry titled “Because of Memory” or heard her talk about the Lillian E. Smith Center in Clayton, GA. It is because of Tommye that I did a two-week residency there a few weeks ago. It is ultimately because of Lillian Smith herself that I could enjoy this time in an artist residency away from the push of running a business at home.
Lillian E. Smith was a formidable woman from what I can tell. She is the author of the novel, Strange Fruit, which was banned for its statement about segregation and civil rights of people of color in the US. It was first published in 1944.
I had two weeks in the north Georgia woods at my artist residency. Lillian E. Smith Center is now owned by Piedmont College. But it used to be owned by the Smith family.
While I was there I read one of her books, Memory of a Large Christmas. It contains stories about some of her Christmases as a child, both when her family was wealthy and lived in Florida and when they’d lost everything and lived at their former summer home in Georgia (now the site of the Lillian E. Smith Center). I enjoyed her humor and the stories about what it was like to have Christmas in the early 1900s from the perspective of a privileged child and one that lost that financial privilege when her father’s business failed. Her father certainly could make the best of a tough situation. In Georgia, though his family didn’t have cash often to purchase their own food, he invited 48 prisoners and their guards over for Christmas dinner. He told his family later :
“Never look down on a man. Never. If you can’t look him straight in the eyes, then what’s wrong is with you. . . . The world is changing fast. Folks get hurt and make terrible mistakes at such times. But the one I hope you won’t make is to cling to my generation’s sins. You’ll have plenty of your own, remember. Changing things is mighty risky, but not changing things is worse. . . .”
This story may be a clue to where Lillian’s life-long work in civil rights came from in part. And watching the political climate in the US in 2019, I can’t help but feel his thoughts and the work of his daughter are still so important today. People are people are people. We make mistakes and we disagree, but the one thing we have to do is listen and work together. I believe we need to get better at compromise and to somehow move forward with love and respect whatever our beliefs or political leanings are.
I was able to spend a little time with Tommye Scanlin, tapestry artist, on my residency. She was there working for a few days and she talked some about her design process and her tapestry, Because of Memory. The inspiration for this piece was a chimney on the property. The Lillian E. Smith Center used to be a girl’s camp and there was a large building they called a playhouse. I think we might understand it as a theatre today. It had a stage where the campers gave plays. In fact, the cottage I stayed in belonged to Lillian’s younger sister Esther who was a college drama instructor and helped produce some of those plays during the summer camp sessions.
The playhouse burned at some point during Lillian’s tenure there but the chimney remains. Tommye’s tapestry came from a collection of rocks on the back side of that chimney. Tommye has this to say about the tapestry.
“Why “Because of Memory” as title for the stones tapestry? The main reason for this is from a quote that’s found on Lillian E. Smith’s grave marker. . . . I was writing about the painting I was beginning based on photos I took of the chimney ruin at the Lillian E. Smith Center beside which Ms. Smith is buried.
Another reason for the title is that I feel stones hold the memory of the earth’s life.”
Tommye Scanlin, Because of Memory, 63 x 59 inches, wool, linen, metallic yarn, cotton, 2014, photo: Tim Barnwell.
Area of the chimney that Tommye used for the Because of Memory tapestry.
The chimney of the playhouse. Lillian’s grave is just to the left of it.
Ms. Smith is buried at the center and her grave marker is a quote from her book, The Journey.
“Lillian Smith
December 12, 1897-September 28, 1966
Death can kill a man, that is all it can do to him; it cannot end his life. Because of memory....”
There were two movies on DVD in the common room at the center that I was able to watch while there. I watched the one titled Miss Lil’s Camp twice. I was fascinated by the story of this woman who grew up in a house with nine children. She went to teachers college, spent three years teaching in China, then came back home to Georgia and helped her parents run the Laurel Falls Girl’s Camp. A few years later she purchased the camp and ran it for 20 years until she became ill in 1948. In that short film, four women who were part of the camp get back together to reminisce. There are images from the camp and as I sat on the property and looked out at Old Screamer Mtn and walked through the woods, I could imagine those young women running through the hills, swimming in the pool (the cement pool is still out there), and learning all about how to be good humans from Lillian, Paula, and the other people who helped run the place. Here are two photos I took right from the screen of the movie (which you can purchase HERE). Lillian and Paula probably in the 1920s and another image when they were much older women.
And I’d like to state unequivocally that Ms. Smith was a lesbian from all accounts I’ve read. In “polite” society from this era and even some today, we hear about a woman’s “life-partner”. I’m here to tell you that that is code for lesbian. She might have been the same stanch supporter of civil rights for people of color if she were not gay, but I think it probably made a difference in her willingness to stand bravely forward in a time full of hate and confusion. She didn’t stand up as a gay woman back then, but I like to think that today she would.
Paula Snelling (l) and Lillian E. Smith (r) as pictured in Miss Lil’s Camp, produced by Suzanne Niedland, 2006.
Paula Snelling (l) and Lillian E. Smith (r) as pictured in Miss Lil’s Camp, produced by Suzanne Niedland, 2006.
A new documentary has been made about Ms. Smith this year. It is called Breaking the Silence and I would dearly love to see it. It has been touring film festivals and venues in the south this year. Go and watch the trailer on that page and you’ll have a better sense for her, what she dared to do, and her environment. She believed that racism stunted the lives of both people of color and white people. I believe she was right about that and that this problem persists today. I am guessing Hal Jacobs addresses that in the film judging by the excellent trailer.
As I look back on my residency on the old grounds of Laurel Falls Girl’s Camp, I have to say that the echoes of Lillian herself were the most powerful voices I heard during those two weeks. This week I am reading book released in 2016, A Lillian Smith Reader, which has excerpts from her books, letters, and some scholarship about her life. If you’re interested in this story, I recommend the book. It is edited by Margaret Rose Gladney and Lisa Hodgens. Lilliian Smith’s work in the 1920s to 1960s on social justice issues resonates powerfully today. I wish it didn’t, but we’re not there yet.
So it is with gratitude for my time at this wonderful center that I look forward to using some of the things I learned there in my own art production and life. Thanks Lillian.