Jackson’s Lendon Noe was among artists from across the region who submitted proposals to create an art exhibit to commemorate Jackson and Madison County’s 200th anniversary in January 2022.
Noe won the competition and was asked to complete three pieces to reflect the city’s history in healthcare, transportation, education, the arts, medicine, and the like. Three pieces turned into 37 works of art which now have a permanent home on the second floor of City Hall.
Some 150 gathered at City Hall Monday for the unveiling of the exhibit called “In this Moment.”
Plans for the Bicentennial started being made in 2020 and were revealed to the public. The celebration began in August of 2021 and ended in August of 2022. Bicentennial Chairman Elaine Hatch says she has often been asked when the Bicentennial will be over.
To that Mayor Scott Conger wittily replied, “It’ll be over when it’s over.”
Hatch says Noe’s vision for the project was chosen by a selection committee for a special reason.
“The exhibit celebrates two hundred years of Jackson and she celebrates it by outlining the ordinary man,” said Hatch.
Noe gives a great deal of credit for her pieces to local historians and storytellers from whom she drew tremendous inspiration.
Vintage postcards were made available to the artist and reflections of everyday life in Jackson’s days of old inspired her vision for the project.
“You won’t see Casey Jones, Carl Perkins or famous folks from famous moments,” said Noe. “I chose to focus my work on the ordinary folk who laid the rails, the cotton workers in the field and in the mill, the farmers, housewives, nurses, merchants, civil rights workers and children.”
She wants the viewer to imagine what life was like before electricity, indoor plumbing and paved roadways. Noe does not shy away from what she calls “Jackson’s checkered past.”
She feels it is best not to ignore issues such as racial tension, but to acknowledge mistakes, try to atone for them and move forward.
A catalog of the art installation is available for those who visit city hall. Within those pages is a poem by Jackson’s James Cherry, “Shannon Street Speaks,” with the street telling of its own scenes from everyday life.
Cherry read from the poem, “I was a colored street in a colored neighborhood in a segregated town where some of my residents did about as well as colored folk could do.”
Noe is also publishing an accompanying teachers’ guide for teachers who bring students to the exhibit as a field trip. The Bicentennial can be viewed during regular hours for City Hall.
