Connie West Art Exhibition--Loyal Jones Center--Berea, KY

Photo By Roger D. Hicks

On September 7, 2017, my wife Candice & I traveled to Berea, KY, to see an exhibition of art by Connie West at the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center at Berea College.  The exhibition is the first to my knowledge of Connie West's work since her death in 1990 at the age of 81.  Connie West was the wife of my professor, mentor, and friend Don West, the Appalachian poet, preacher, teacher, union organizer, and social activist.  She was also the mother of the late folk singer Hedy West.  Connie was a highly accomplished woman in her own right.  She held degrees from Lincoln Memorial University, the University of Georgia, and the Baltimore Institute of Art.  She had met Don West at Lincoln Memorial University when they were both undergraduates there in the 1920's.  Connie was also always active in the social justice causes which Don worked to accomplish.  She had been active in the founding of both the Highlander Folk School and the Appalachian South Folklife Center.  Connie was also a brave example of the thousands of women who fought against cancer in the 1960's through the 1980's, a period when successes against cancer were rare and treatments were not nearly as well developed or effective as they are today.  

Photo By The West Family

It is sad that many of the paintings of Connie West were lost in a fire at the Appalachian South Folklife Center in 1974. At that time, many of her paintings were exhibited in the dining hall of the Folklife Center and an accidental fire destroyed the building along with many of Connie's paintings and a sizable collection of artifacts from the lives of both Don and Connie West many of which were also historic items in the progression of the field of study known today as Appalachian Studies.  Don West made a dangerous and heroic attempt to save as many of Connie's paintings during the fire as possible.  He did manage to save a few and suffered minor burns and smoke inhalation in the attempt.  I was living and working at the Folklife Center at the time and attending Antioch Appalachia in Beckley, WV.  When the fire occurred, three of us who lived at the Folklife Center were in class in Beckley and received a call that the building was on fire.  We left class and raced over the mountains to arrive after the building was a total loss.  It was the only time I ever saw Don West cry in the twenty years I knew him.  I will never forget standing beside Don and Connie with Connie crying openly, Don with silent tears streaming down his cheeks, his eyebrows and much of his hair singed from the fire, and openly weeping at the loss of both Connie's paintings and much of their lives work.  

Portrait Of Don West By Connie West Photo By Roger D. Hicks

As a result of that loss to the fire, the exhibition at Berea is of high quality photographs of many of Connie's paintings taken by Wes Harris.  Her surviving paintings are scattered through the collections of Wes Harris, her daughter Ann West Williams, and a few individuals who were lucky enough to own some of her work.  Even though this exhibition is of photographs and not the actual paintings, it is well worth seeing especially for the student of Appalachia and Appalachian Studies. This may well be the only chance many will ever have to see Connie's work.  Connie West painted primarily portraits of persons she knew and considered to be worthy of memorializing.  Subjects include her husband Don West and a sizable number of native Appalachians who had accomplished lives of distinction.  Attend the exhibition and make note of the fact that the online web page to which I provided the link above states that the show ended at the beginning of September 2017 but it is still hanging as of September 20, 2017.  I have been informed by personnel of the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center that the exhibition is likely to remain open to the public until December due to the lack of another scheduled exhibition in the Long Wall Gallery.  I would also suggest that my readers find time to obtain and read the works of Don West and the James Lorence biography of Don.  Don't collected poetic works have been published twice.  The first book is called "In A Land Of Plenty A Don West Reader" which was published by West End Press in 1982.  The second collection of his work, published posthumously in 2004 by the University Of Illinois Press and was edited by George Brosi and Jeff Biggers under the title "No Lonesome Road Selected Prose And Poems".  The James Lorence biography is an excellent work with highly detailed scholarship and fine writing.  It was published in 2007 by the University Of Illinois Press under the title "A Hard Journey The Life Of Don West".  All three of these books will give the reader a deeper understanding of the many accomplishments of Don and Connie West and their joint importance to Appalachia and the field of Appalachian Studies. 

Appalachian Quilter Pipestem WV by Connie West Photo By Roger D. Hicks