My Father's Silver
A wide painting of thirteen Montgomery booking portraits, each holding an arrest number
The second line

Exercise in Restraint

The paintings came first. Four-by-seven-foot panels, scorched and ground and built up in encaustic wax, charcoal, screws and shaved wool rug — every face a Montgomery booking photograph, every title the number the county gave them. The dials come out of these.

Photograph, painting, dial

Three steps, and the county's number survives all of them.

  1. A sheet of Montgomery County booking photographs from February 1956, numbered 7087 to 7098
    I · The photograph Montgomery County, February 1956. Booked in sequence, filed by number, photographed against the same wall.
  2. The painting 7089
    II · The painting Enlarged to seven feet, burnt into the board, and given back the body the photograph cropped away.
  3. A halftone portrait dial cased on a steel bracelet, worn at the bench
    III · The dial Reduced to thirty millimetres, transferred by hand, sealed and set under a crystal — the halftone of the original photograph still visible at arm’s length.
The series

Work from the series

Shown at Gallery 72, the City of Atlanta's gallery downtown.

The paintings 7050 and 7087 installed, a girl reading on the gallery floor
7050 and 7087, installed Encaustic wax, shaved wool rug, charcoal on panel
The painting 7089 — a booking portrait in a pale suit holding the number
7089 Oil and wax over scorched board — the head cut and set proud of the panel
A head painted in gold and black on a dark reticulated ground
Gold head Torch-burnt board, gold and black — the source for a dial
A large rust-toned portrait leaning against a gallery wall
Untitled, rust Iron oxide and wax; the panel is scorched, not primed
A blue-green portrait of Dr King in profile
7089, second pass Cold-wax oil; the only one I have painted twice
A cut-out painted head standing on the studio floor
Head, cut free Sawn from the board and stood on the floor of the studio
The paintings 7070 and 7044 hung on a gallery wall
7070 and 7044 Hung as booked — by number, in sequence
A black-and-white painted portrait of Medgar Evers
Medgar Evers Not a booking photograph — painted from the press portrait
Exercise in Restraint, continued

Exercise in Restraint — the subjects

Most of these faces were never famous. They were booked in Montgomery and titled by number, and that is how the paintings are titled too. Each dial takes its image from the canvas I made of them; the caseback carries the number or the name.

A transferred booking-photograph dial on the movement, indexed 25
No. 01 · Montgomery booking photograph

Mose W. Richburg

1956. Booked in Montgomery during the bus boycott and filed as 7050. He was not a leader and never meant to be a figure — he simply stayed off the buses. The number is what the state left us; the name is what the dial gives back.

Opaque white enamelAvailable
A press-portrait dial cased in polished steel
No. 02 · From the painting Medgar

Medgar Evers

1963. Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP — he investigated Emmett Till’s murder and organised voter registration under constant threat. He was shot in his own driveway in Jackson. Two hung juries let his killer walk; the conviction took thirty-one years.

Transparent colour over silverOn the bench
Three finished transfer dials waiting to be cased
No. 03 · Portrait

Coretta Scott King

1956. Her house in Montgomery was bombed with her infant daughter inside, and she stayed. Widowed by an assassin in 1968, she led the Memphis march four days later and spent the next four decades building the movement’s memory into law.

Opaque black enamelIn development
Start a commission → See the silver line →
By inquiry only

Tell me whose face it should carry. I will tell you what the enamel can hold.

One piece at a time, so the list is short and the wait is honest. Write with a name, a number, or a photograph.

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