On the site of the former Scott’s Grove Baptist Church, artist Tony M. Bingham has built a monumental work of contemplation and reflection. Two walls with wood panels are parallel to the serene clearing with stained glass windows, a marble floor from Sylacauga and a steel recess with members ever worshiped on the site.
A tribute to local history, the work of Bingham is entitled ‘The Lofhuis‘It derives its name from the vernacular structures that people who were made as a slave often built on plantations throughout the south as a space for prayer. “My way of tackling the power and inheritance is to just start looking at some of the possible sources of opposition in which the community made a slave could have participated,” says the artist.
A new short documentary follows Bingham while he visits The Wallace Center for Arts and Reconciliation And installs the work. Located just outside Birmingham in Harpersville, Alabama, the former Plantation House is now a space for healing and reconciliation run by descendants of both the slave and slavish fresh.
Nowadays, the center houses a variety of art and culture programming to think about its history, and “The Praise House” is such a committee. After learning more about the communities made for a slave, Bingham wanted to create a work that honored their estate. “With the help of organic, recycled and closed materials I make art that tells the story of my closed people,” he says, adding to it:
The house was historically renovated and planks of wood were replaced. I imagined that these old boards were the slave people, walked on or touched, and I tried to bring those materials back together in a way that could inspire reflection on the history of the people who once lived there.
Directed by Tyler Jones van 1504The film is a moving, enlightening look in the long process behind ‘The Praise House’. Bingham, professor of Miles College in Birmingham, often raises the historical realities of the location and returns to fundamental questions about the purpose of his work and art wider. “Who will speak for my people, if not the artist?” he asks. “Who will help those outside the art dialogue to understand the creative potential they possess?”
View “The Praise House” above and find more of the artist Instagram.
