PRATTVILLE, Ala. – If things had worked out a little differently for Charlie Lucas, he might have written an autobiography.
It would have been a good one, too, filled with wistfulness and wisdom, with homespun philosophy and humorous reminiscences about favorite aunts, uncles and assorted backwoods elders.
But Lucas didn’t have that option. Born in Birmingham in 1951, he never learned how to read or write. Dyslexia made the words and letters skitter across the page and elude his grasp.
So he found another way.
Twenty years ago, he bought a blowtorch and began collecting scrap metal to craft a series of towering figures. He stationed his creations beneath a thin scattering of pine and began living among them in a makeshift home, calling himself “The Tin Man.”
He got a dog, and called it “Rusty.”
The two of them got along fine with the metal figures. Birds nested upon them. Vines and bushes threaded themselves around their extremities. Lucas kept making more and more, much to the dismay of his flesh-and-blood acquaintances, who told him he was crazy.
The art world would soon disagree.
Lucas has become one of the most important self-taught African-American folk artists in the South. Last year, an exhibit of his work called “In the Belly of the Ship” opened at the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Ala., just north of Prattville. The figures chart the experience of slavery and the fragmented history of his family.
He has lectured about his work in Paris and at Yale University. His creations are on display in numerous museums, including the Mennello Museum of American Art in Orlando and the Appleton Museum of Art in Ocala, where Lucas will give a workshop and lecture from 10 a.m. to noon today.
“I found out that a blowtorch can be as powerful as the pen,” he says.
OPEN-AIR GALLERY
If you ever come to see Lucas and his scrap-metal figures, watch your step. This may be the only art gallery in the country that doubles as a cow pasture. Four of the animals, wearing their shaggy winter coats, amble past as Lucas conducts a tour of his metallic companions, crafted from auto parts, lawn chairs, barbed wire, motors, concrete reinforcing bars and packing-crate straps.
“These are my pets,” says Lucas, regarding the cows, then turning back to the sculptures. “And these are my children. I love them. But eventually, I have to send them out into the world, to tell their story.”
Some of the figures are playfully rendered animals — dinosaurs and dogs with the blades of post-hole diggers for jaws. Others represent humans. A musician, poised over a pair of old tires, sits on part of a barstool that was salvaged from a trash heap, swaying to the beat. A stooped, feminine form offers a tin of water, fashioned from a discarded sprinkler can.
“She’s old and tired, and her back is bent, but she’s still giving,” he explains.
Other pieces are humorous, even bawdy.
A rendering of an aunt he remembers as a child is called “Hattie Mae With the Burning Eyes.”
The figure has a body made from an old ironing board, and two spectral, dizzying eyes of concentric circles, fashioned from the burners of an old electric range.
His aunt, he explains, had a taste for corn liquor, and the burners represent its effect on her.
There is even a self-portrait among his work. Lucas calls it “When the Right Brain Meets the Left Brain.”
A figure bends over the metallic pages of an open, sheet-metal book. The page on one side is covered with an odd, disorganized scattering of symbols. But carved on the other page, clearly and triumphantly, Lucas has etched his own name.
He has been working with a tutor who has been teaching him how to read.
“She tells me I used to build bridges of my own, to get around not being able to read,” he says. “Now I’m learning to get across that river the right way.”
Lucas is just as paradoxical and intriguing as his sculptures. He has struggled with words, but he is clever with them. It is difficult for him to write a check, look up a name in a phone book and read road signs. But he has a grasp of figurative language that any poet would envy.
His work is filled with metallic patches — multicolored sheets cut into rough squares. He says it represents the quilts his grandmother made and the patchwork, disjointed way traditions were passed down through the generations in his family.
“My great-grandfather was a blacksmith, and when he worked, he would chant. He knew some of the words, but there were places where he could only hum. As a child I’d ask him, What comes next? But he couldn’t tell me. He could only give me a few of the pieces.”
Some of his works are like Aesop’s fables cast in metal, conveying pithy live messages.
One is about the importance of paying attention to the people we meet in life, lest we miss whatever message they might have for us.
It’s called “Who Got the Key to Open the Door.” It is a series of metallic faces, linked by a cluster of multicolored wires, on a rough frame about the size of a license plate. In the middle of the faces is a golden key.
Lucas, who isn’t shy about explaining what he means with every piece in his repertoire, will tell you its meaning, if you can’t figure it out on your own.
“If you want to get to heaven, you’re gonna need a key, aren’t you?” he asks. “Well, you better find out: Who’s got the key?”
A RESPECTED ARTIST
Lucas, whose works have sold for as much as $30,000, has attracted an impressive array of admirers and collectors.
One of them is William Sledge, professor of psychiatry at Yale University.
Sledge, who was born and raised in Alabama, met Lucas several years ago and wound up collecting his work. He also invited him to Yale to speak as part of an enrichment series on campus.
“I used to work on a farm, and it’s uncanny the way he captures the gestures, the movements, the way animals stand,” says Sledge. “The other thing is how he can juxtapose the mundane and the dramatic. I bought a piece from him that is a face that is in serious distress. But the face is on a muffler. It’s like he’s saying: Don’t take yourself so seriously. It will pass.”
Kathryn Tucker Windham, 87, a revered Alabama storyteller and photographer, is another Lucas fan.
They became friends several years ago while on a state-sponsored tour of self-taught artists to Europe. Now they have become so close — he makes Driving Miss Daisy jokes about their relationship — that he has a second home near hers.
She keeps one of his works on the hearth in her home. It is a piece that, like many of her stories, weaves together the joy and the trials of life.
She ushers a guest into her living room and introduces the piece as if it is as animate as a cherished lap dog or a child. “It’s a little soldier, going out into the world to do battle,” she says. “Why, I just love it to pieces.”
The 3-foot figure has a wooden sword and a garbage-pail helmet for protection, the lens of a flashlight to help him seek out the truth. Grasped in the remaining hand is a windshield wiper.
“That’s to wipe away the tears that life will bring him,” Windham explains.
Frank Holt, the Mennello Museum’s director, says that Lucas is part of a tradition of African-Americans who began crafting artwork out of found objects in the 19th century. At first, because they had so little free time, the only artists were elderly. The tradition continued into the 20th century and was “discovered” in the 1970s.
“The problem was that with many of these artists, once they got popular, they started repeating themselves. What’s impressive about Lucas is that he does not do this. He keeps inventing new work.”
Lucas has his own way of explaining his efforts, which he says he will continue for as long as he lives. He says he takes his direction from his creations.
“They talk to me,” he says. “They tell me what their names are. Then, when I am done with one piece, it introduces me to the next one.”
