white flower
Date: 2005
Price: prints available for $48 + S&H
Size: 21 1/2 x 21 1/2
Medium: painting
About the artist
Born...Springfield, Missouri 1968
Resides...Springfield, Missouri
Bio...Todd received his MFA at The School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City in 1993.
Other Info about Todd... Hillbilly
The “Hillbilly Identity Project” (or H.I.P.)
uses the language of stereotypical imagery depicting “hill folk” prevalent in early to mid-twentieth century popular culture. Even though it has largely disappeared from public view, this imagery still defines the identity of those who live in the hills and mountains. Specifically, people of an area which is not considered quite midwestern nor quite southern and runs from the Appalachian Mountains in the east, westward to the Ozark Mountains. H.I.P. examines the persistent cultural and economic based biases and prejudices which portray the people of the region as lazy, poor, backward, ignorant, and xenophobic by resurrecting the latent imagery that helped create it.
The Hillbilly Identity Project began when I noticed some formal affinities in my “Hybrid” work with that of Thomas Hart Benton. I knew that, like me, he was born and raised in southwest Missouri, lived in New York City, and later returned to his home state. I wondered if I might have more in common with Missouri’s most well known artist.
I began to see links between Regionalism and the imaging of the Identity of people from this midwest/southern part of the country. The marketing and portrayal of the Regionalist painters, including Thomas Hart Benton and the notion of what constitutes a Midwesterner/Southerner were intertwined. Pop culture portrayals like “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Green Acres” on television, the “Ma & Pa Kettle” and “Shepard of the Hills” movies of the ‘40s, the “Dogpatch” comic strip, various hillbilly characters from the Warner Brothers cartoons, and tourism advertising from the ‘40s to the ‘70s, while largely invisible now, are still part of our cultural consciousness.
I started thinking about a 2002 New York Times article on contemporary art in the Midwest and my umbrage at the large photo which accompanied the article. “Why did they need to use an image of a white guy in overalls contemplating ceramics to illustrate the article?”, I wondered.
Sarrita Hunn, a former student who recently completed her M.F.A. at CCA in San Francisco, told me of condescending comments from professors and students regarding how and what people from our region think. I recalled my own, similar, experiences in New York . I began asking others about their experiences and found the notion of the “hillbilly” in one form or another to be pervasive. I needed to confront this, thus began the project.
