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Feb. 14, 2005 Volume 29, Issue 24 |
State-born novelist, photo exhibit highlight events
A novel set against a backdrop of this Deep South state’s racially segregated past and a photography exhibit focusing on issues of race and ethnicity are being featured this month in campus events.
Laurel native and author Jonathan Odell will discuss his widely acclaimed first novel, “The View from Delphi,” Feb. 22 during a 6:30 p.m. University Honors Forum lecture and book-signing event at Giles Hall’s Bettersworth Auditorium. Earlier in the day, he will meet with about 40 University Honors Program students who are reading the book.
Minnesota native and award-winning visual artist Jim Kuether’s photo exhibit, “MSinterpretations: Images of Mississippi,” will be displayed alongside the documentation photography of David Perkes through March 25 in the College of Architecture, Art and Design Gallery, also in Giles Hall.
Immediately following his presentation, Odell will sign books during a reception held among the photo exhibit in the Giles gallery.
“This exhibit is a double billing of two artists (Kuether and Perkes) working in a similar vein of subject, the Southern vernacular as evidenced in the culture of the South,” explained MSU art instructor Bill Andrews.
He said another campus exhibit, “Stories of the Community: Self-Taught Art from the Hill Collection,” will take place Feb. 15-March 25 at the Department of Art Gallery in McComas Hall. Thirty-three vernacular art objects from 19 Southern states will be featured.
Kuether spent four weeks last year traveling throughout Mississippi, capturing images for his photographs and watercolor paintings. His work emphasizes the human condition, particularly issues of race and ethnicity.
“Attempting to capture and reconcile the contradictions between Mississippi’s elegance and beauty with the darkness and complexities of its past has been an experience unlike any other for me,” said Kuether.
Odell’s novel (MacAdams/Cage, June 2004) tackles institutionalized racism in a small Mississippi Delta town in the 1950s through the eyes of two young mothers—one wealthy and white, the other poor and black. They have only two things in common—the devastating loss of their sons and an abiding hatred for one another.
Currently a resident of Minneapolis, Minn., Odell often collaborates with Kuether on creative projects.
Jonathan Odell is a pen name, he said, explaining that his real name is Johnny Johnson. He is the son of former Sanderson Farms president Odell Johnson, whose “portrait hangs over in the Poultry Hall of Fame” at MSU’s Hill Poultry Science Building.