Exhibition: Fans make mighty cool art

'Memory Breeze,' art objects made of fans, will run in the Robbins Gallery in the School of Art and Architecture Building on U-M's North Campus from Sept. 26 to Oct. 26.

The artworks arise from art professor Marianetta Porter's memories of Sundays in South Carolina. Graduate student Susan Skarsgaard collaborated on the project. Porter says the fans have been a "presence in Black churches for nearly a century." It turns out the fans make cool art. Porter says they "reveal much about the African American past, their uses as cultural icons as well as the history, meanings and social contexts attached to them."

Porter's contemporary fans emulate the styles, shapes and textual layouts of the church genre. "My fan interpretations are meditations, in imagery and poems, that reflect the impressions of my childhood, of church and the simple Southern countryside of my youth," Porter says.

A free reception will open the exhibit Sept. 26 from 6-8 p.m.

Porter found that some of the original fans dating from the first 50 years of the 20th century often carried images of Black families worshiping in church or enjoying life at home, a Black Jesus and similar imagery. The opposite side of the fans usually carried advertisements for funeral homes or other Black businesses. "Such businessmen were sometimes the only college-educated residents in small Southern Black communities," Porter says. "They took leadership roles in the community both socially and politically."

In later years, the fans presented images of prominent individuals such as Booker T. Washington, Mahalia Jackson and Martin Luther King. Sometimes King was shown in the company of President Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy.

"Even though Black churches today are air conditioned, they still have fans," Porter says. "I'm interested in the significance of why fans persist today."

Are the fans a cultural artifact of African origins? Porter has found that African societies once used fans as symbols of power. Elaborate fans made of feathers or palm leaves were once used to cool royalty. Porter says "fanning not only ventilates the body, but also can cool the spirit. The noted art historian Robert Farris Thompson has suggested that when you fan someone, you throw a blessing. I have a notion that those cultural meanings are still carried in the body long after we have forgotten their significance." In creating contemporary fans, Porter and Skarsgaard used older versions to look for themes in imagery, text and other commonalities. The current exhibition is a "work in progress," Porter says. "This is just the start of what I envision to be a larger work. I want feedback. I want others to share their memories."—by Joanne Nesbit, U-M News Service.

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