RED SPRINGS — The Red Springs Art Space is hosting a celebration featuring several Lumbee artists, highlighting local history.
The gallery is hosting a solo show by Richard Mathis, alongside a group exhibition featuring pieces from seven Lumbee artists, all of whom explore the rich history of the Lumbee people and their connection to the land.
Heritage is something that’s an inherent part of who you are as a person, according to Mathis. It can be challenging to distinguish where heritage ends and the individual begins as people embrace their cultures, as traditions and beliefs become their own.
Mathis creates montages from his photography, working with layers and lighting to produce unique compositions that cause the people in his pieces to stand out and blend into the background simultaneously.
“People and the land that we live on are inseparable,” Mathis said. “That’s the spirit that I’m trying to convey, that the spirit of this land is the spirit of the people.”
Bea Brayboy, one of the featured creators in the multi-artist showcase, takes a different approach to preserving her heritage through art. Brayboy’s paintings depict everyday scenes from a bygone era, including fond memories of the area’s tobacco farming days.
“The planting and gathering were a communal effort,” Brayboy said, “a way to socialize while working with your neighbors while getting your tobacco in, and then theirs!”
Several of Brayboy’s pieces feature the classic peanut and soda snack that has long been a favorite of farmers alongside tobacco leaves and other markers of her life as a Lumbee woman.
Sometimes called Farmer’s Coke, peanuts in cola is believed to have become popular in the 1920s as a way for blue-collar workers to have a snack they didn’t need to stop working for and wash their hands.
The flavor is described as a satisfying blend of salty and sweet.
“On the back of ‘PUT’IN DABACCA’,” Brayboy said, ” I put an itinerary of my experiences of the actual day-to-day process of putting in the tobacco, or as one of our Lumbee linguists would say, ‘putting in da bacca.’”
The “PUT’IN DABACCA” work includes real tobacco leaves in the art, tying the physical plant to the memories depicted on the canvas.
Mathis and Brayburn, alongside several other Lumbee artists, will have their work avalable for viewing at the Red Springs Artspace until July 20.
Contact Victoria Sanderson at [email protected].
