09/26/2024
Charlie Tin Man Lucas will be joining our Tale Tellin Festival as emcee and also as a storyteller in our local schools.
The work of self-taught artist Charlie Lucas draws from both the people and the land of Alabama’s Black Belt region and from the iron and steel industry of the Birmingham District. From his earliest experiments with scraps of iron and steel, Lucas searched for meaning and images in cast-off material and began to envision completed works in piles of junk objects or remnants of raw materials. He assembles such fragments mentally before he physically welds, twists, and bolts them together to become portraits of people and animals—brought to life by the narratives he weaves around them. He is often included in the group of self-taught artists who create what is termed “outsider art” for their lack of formal training and for their shared focus on their immediate surroundings, personal experiences, and inner visions. Some artists so labeled reject those terms and wish to simply be called “artists.”
Special thanks to Alabama State Council on the Arts for partnering with us for this event!