SEEING LIFE ON THE FARM The vast Midwestern landscape has always encompassed diverse artistic visions. Grant Wood's grim-faced farm families on their stark homesteads are neighbors to Jennie Cell's brightly remembered people and places. The crowded intimacy of the Primitives live close by the sparest renderings of the Regionalists. Both are hollering distance from the muted nostalgia of the American Impressionists.
And all reside at the the Tarble Arts Center at
Eastern Illinois University in Charleston. That center's
collection incorporates American Scene prints, with
representative works by Grant Wood and Thomas
Hart Benton, and paintings by such Midwestern
Impressionists as Paul Turner Sargent of Charleston
and Robert Marshall Root of Shelbyville. Unique to
the Tarble, though, is the collection of contemporary
works by east-central and southeastern Illinois folk
artists, including Jennie Cell and Elma Richey.
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llinois Issues September 1999 12