25 Jan 2015 Art focuses on authentic rural life

by Donna Lampkin Stephens

Maxine Payne’s creative work is gaining attention in the fine art world, with an exhibition at Christian Berst Art Brut in New York, an upcoming museum show at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wis.; a new edition of her book, “Making Pictures: Three for a Dime”; and a clothing line in collaboration with internationally acclaimed designer Natalie Chanin.

But the Hendrix professor keeps her feet firmly planted on the ground.

“I take it for what it is,” she said recently. “My day-to-day life is the same. I’m just riding this out. The art world is so fickle. I’m sitting at my desk here at Hendrix grading finals. It’s good, but I take it as it comes. I’m way too grounded to not realize that all of this stuff is temporary.”

Payne, 44, whose art focuses on authentic rural life, has learned that lesson from hard experience.

Payne, a professor of art at Hendrix, grew up in Floral and went to high school at Concord in Cleburne County. The youngest of four siblings, she was raised by her grandparents after both her parents died, two years apart, by the time she was 4. They were both 30.

After graduating from the University of Central Arkansas with a bachelor of science degree in art education, Payne earned master’s and M.F.A degrees from the University of Iowa, where she was also an Iowa Arts Fellow. Payne was selected a Fellow of the American Photography Institute at New York University and a Fellow of the College Art Association. She started the art photography program at UCA, teaching there from 1997 until moving to Hendrix in 2002. The Arkansas Chapter of the National Museum of Women in the Arts recently named her the Polly Wood Crews Scholarship recipient.
According to the Hendrix website, Payne works “to find ways to engage community in her work and speaks to the idea of place.”

Her work includes “God Willin’ and the Creek Don’t Rise,” a collection of hundreds of her photographs of historic bridges in Arkansas, as well as “Making Pictures: Three for a Dime,” a limited edition book of photographs taken from 1937 to 1941 by Lance and Evelyn Massengill and their family, and nearly 20 years of work, much of it archived on her website, maxinepayne.com.

In addition to her Arkansas work, Payne has collaborated with anthropologist Anne Goldberg documenting the lives of rural women in Costa Rica, the U.S./Mexico border, Africa and Vietnam.

“Making Pictures: Three for a Dime,” now available through Dust-to-Digital, and sold on sites like Amazon.com, also has a personal connection for her. The grandparents who raised her died within a couple of months of each other in 2003. Sondra Massengill-McKelvey brought her mother, Evelyn Massengill, known to Payne and her siblings as “Aunt Evelyn,” to the funerals. McKelvey had been best friends with Payne’s mother when they were children. Evelyn and her husband, Lance, were Payne’s grandparents’ closest friends. It was through this meeting and visits that followed that Maxine became aware of the Massengill family photographs.

The Massengill family operated the mobile photo business in 1930s rural Arkansas. With no formal training, they built their own camera as well as the trailer that served as a traveling photo booth. According to a Hendrix press release, the family took hundreds of informal but powerful photos of babies, children, couples, families, farmers and servicemen, and they then sold them “three for a dime.” The photographs offer candid snapshots of life in rural Arkansas in the years leading up to World War II.

In 2008, Payne put together a 25-edition handmade artist book, incorporating about 800 images, the log book and diary into the original “Making Pictures: Three for a Dime.”

“It was placed with collectors but not accessible to the public,” she said. “This book that’s out now is basically a smaller version. You can’t make a $40 book that contains over 800 photographic reproductions.” The Dust-to-Digital edition, which also offers the book’s “soundtrack,” a CD called “Arkansas at 78 RPM: Corn Dodgers and Hoss Hair Pullers,” a collection of 26 recordings, made between 1928 and 1937 by bands with names like Luke Highnight & His Ozark Strutters or the Arkansas Barefoot Boys, is a more reasonable price for most of us folks.”

Payne’s work is about much more than simply the Massengill family.

According to the Alabama Chanin Journal, “Maxine Payne’s efforts to preserve and understand the history of the Massengill family and those they photographed gives voice to many invisible, hard working American families. The Massengill photographs give us some insight on what it was like to be a working family in the ‘30s and ‘40s and reveal much about both the photographers and their subjects. These photos are proof that art knows no social or economic status and that beauty can be found any day, anywhere.”

The Kohler show, which will run Oct 11, 2015, through January 2016, will include 700 images as well as her “10-cent photo trailer,” which she built from scratch and modeled after the Massengills’ mobile photo booth.

The Massengill family prints and photo albums “illuminate a sliver of the Depression-era South previously unseen by the public,” according to the Dust-to-Digital website. According to the Hendrix press release, the new volume includes introductions by Payne and curator Phillip March Jones, short remembrances from Lance and Evelyn Massengill and a transcribed diary that recounts the difficulties and successes of the family business in short, powerful bursts.    

Several years ago, Payne sewed herself several dresses inspired by the handmade fashion of the rural women she has documented in preparation for exhibitions and presentations of her work. In 2012, according to the Hendrix press release, she caught the eye of the designer Chanin, whose Alabama Chanin fashion line celebrates the rustic beauty of the American South. Chanin has been featured on the cover of Vogue magazine, among many publications, and her Alabama Chanin clients include the artist Roseanne Cash, whose latest album includes an ode to Chanin.

Payne met Chanin when both
were teaching at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina.

“We had some similar interests,” Payne said. “She wanted to collaborate on a clothing line.”

Payne then shipped her dresses to the Alabama Chanin factory in Florence, Ala. She consults on the line.

Chanin also was instrumental in getting “Making Pictures: Three for a Dime” to Dust-to-Digital, the publisher.

“You can work steadily, nose to the grindstone for years and years, but it is difficult for artists in the South to get this kind of national recognition without the right advocate,” Payne said in the press release. “Natalie Chanin is the hardest working person I know. Fortunately, and finally, I was in the right place at the right time. Our friendship will last well beyond this window of popularity, but I am sure enjoying the window while it is open.”

Payne reiterated in an interview the value of meeting the right people.

“The art world can be really silly,” she said. “When someone asks me what I do, I never reply, ‘I’m an artist.’ Where I come from that would elicit a laughing response or at the least a raised eyebrow. It seems awfully pretentious.”