There's "Hard Truth" in Indiana

THIS AFTERNOON, following worship services, the AOA team is headed to the Indianapolis Museum of Art to experience the opening weekend of a major retrospective on Alabama artist and spiritual master of found-objects, Thorton Dial (b. 1928). Dial is the spotlighted artist for this year's winter/spring exhibition and it's a show that everyone should see. He is a hero to AOA friend, and fellow found-object artist Tom, who described the exhibition, Hard Truths as "a once in a life-time opportunity to experience an artform as original to America as gospel music." Between us, we've only seen 2 or 3 of his works in the past, so this will be a real treat today.

Rooted in the spiritual awakening of the Black South, Dial's art work is both powerful and strange, especially for an American audience used to the easily interpreted Presybeterian approach to art by people like Thomas Kincade. It's difficult to categorize work so uniquely visceral in spiritual and visual power. His works are assemblages (painting and sculpture mixed) of tossed-away wool, twine, plastic doll parts, cans, wire, cow bones, corrugated metal, nails and spray paint mounted onto wood. Dial's work jumps out at you like gospel music and then drags you back inside with it, but only if you are willing to see the compelling truths inside.

In his artist statement, Dial says, "All truth is hard truth. We're in the darkness now, and we got to accept the hard truth to bring on the light. You can hide the truth, but you can't get rid of of it. When truth come out in the light, we get the beauty of the  world." Like my friend Tom, Dial is an artist who was never schooled but his works are today compared with other iconic figures like Jackson Pollack and Willian de Kooning. The exhibition has 70 large scale paintings, sculptures and drawings and if you dare to explore these "Hard Truths" you will be stepping into a story of  refuse and repression but also redemption.