Published in conjunction with the exhibition Freeman Vines: Hanging Tree Guitars, held at the Greenville Museum of Art, Greenville, N.C., July 15-Dec. 2020; Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center, Portsmouth, Va., Feb. 15-May 7, 2021; the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, N.C., June 9-Sept. 15, 2021. (From https://exhibit.hangingtreeguitars.com, Sept. 29, 2020.) Includes an index of plates.
Summary:
"To meet Freeman Vines is to meet America itself. An artist, a luthier, and a spiritual philosopher, Vines's life is a witness to the truths and contradictions of the American South. He remembers the hidden histories of the eastern North Carolina land on which his family has lived since enslavement. For more than fifty years Vines has transformed materials culled from a forgotten landscape in his relentless pursuit of building a guitar capable of producing a singular tone that has haunted his dreams. From tobacco barns, mule troughs, and radio parts he has created hand-carved guitars, each instrument seasoned down to the grain by the echoes of its past life. In 2015 Vines befriends photographer Timothy Duffy and the two begin to document the guitars, setting off a mutual outpouring of creativity. But when Vines acquires a mysterious stack of wood from the site of a lynching, Vines and Duffy find themselves each grappling with the spiritual unrest and the psychic toll of racial violence living in the very grain of America"--Back cover.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.