August 29, 2024
Art Film History
Grace Ebert
L.V. Hull at her home in Kosciusko, Mississippi, in 2002. Photo by Bruce West. All images courtesy of the L.V. Hull Legacy Center
Kosciusko is a small town in the center of Mississippi with just under 7,000 residents. Known as the birthplace of Oprah Winfrey, Kosciusko was also home to the late artist L.V. Hull (1942–2008) who devoted her life to painting and assembling found objects. Tires, shoes, perfume bottles, sticks, and the random items friends and neighbors gifted her quickly became vibrant sculptures awash in her signature polka dots and eventually went on display in her house or yard.
Just this month, Hull’s home studio was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The groundbreaking designation makes the residence the first of an African American woman visual artist to be recognized nationally and the first home art environment of any African American to be listed on the National Register.
Hull’s yard in 2002. Photo by Bruce West
Hull purchased the property 50 years ago, on August 12, 1974, for $7,000. She had been an artist since childhood, making figurative sculptures from mud and later, painting any object she could find. After buying her home in Kosciusko, she began working on the art environment in earnest.
“When I started decorating the yard, I wanted to do something that somebody else wasn’t going to do,” she said in a 1997 interview with William Arnett, who founded the nonprofit Souls Grown Deep. “I waited until folks went to sleep and dragged the tires from behind their houses. I didn’t want nobody to see me ’cause I didn’t want to hear the stuff they would say about me.”
Hull’s home in 2002. Image courtesy of the Mississippi Arts Commission
But whatever her neighbors thought didn’t bother Hull. She leaned into her eccentricities and referred to herself as the “unusual artist.”
msamba 