Gordo, AL: masks, miscellanea & moveable type
Posted by East MobileBooth on November 16, 2005, from Tuscaloosa, Alabama
This morning we visited StoryCorps participant Glenn House and his wife Kathleen at their gallery and studio in Gordo, Alabama. It was once a Napa Auto Parts shop and they’ve kept the old sign up, simply painting over everything but "A-R-T" in the word "Parts". Among many other things, Glenn makes clay masks which he claims are self portraits. Above, he demonstrates the likeness.
Glenn’s mother ran a curious establishment in Gordo called Ma ‘Cille’s Museum of Miscellanea. A compulsive collector, she exhibited a variety of unusual things including taxidermist road-kill, a whiskey still operated by Manequins and a jar containing her chewed gum collection. Ma ‘Cille has passed and the museum is no more but Glenn still has remnants of his mother’s collection lying around his studio including these doll parts which she used to dig up.
Across the street is a building that Glenn and Kathleen are currently setting up to be a type-shop, paper making facility and community book arts center. Above Facilitator Nick Yulman receives a lesson on operating one of their antique letter presses.
