Susan Mullally

When Reynolda House made the transition from a private residence to a non-profit corporation, the Board of Directors dedicated the museum to “the encouragement and advancement of the arts and education.” [1] An impressive collection of American art was soon formed, complemented by an ambitious education program. One component of the latter was a series of talks delivered by distinguished visiting artists.

From 1981–1985, Susan Mullally was photographer-in-residence at Reynolda House, and one of her assignments was to document the visiting artists. In addition, she made photographs of the house and provided the illustrations for Charles Barton Keen, Architect, with text by Brendon Gill and Margaret S. Smith. Mullally was born in 1947, and earned the following: a bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1972; a master’s degree in Museum Studies and Digital Imaging from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, in 2003; and, in 2005, a master of fine arts degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in Interdisciplinary Studies. At the time she shot these photographs for Reynolda House, Mullally included her married name, Clark. In the 1990s, she taught at Guilford College, Greensboro, and during 2003–2004 served as the gallery director of the Allcott Gallery, Hanes Art Building, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2007, she accepted an appointment as assistant professor at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

Mullally is a figurative photographer interested in such issues as class, race, and cultural identification. During the time she was at Reynolda House she received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a traveling exhibition, Hope & Dignity: Older Black Women of the South, which was accompanied by a book published by Temple University Press in Philadelphia. Mullally sought and sympathetically posed her subjects in their surroundings: on porches, in churches, kitchens, and living rooms. She explains a later, related project, What I Keep, as a collaboration “with members of The Church Under the Bridge in Waco, an inter-denominational, multi-cultural Christian church that has been meeting under an Interstate-35 overpass for seventeen years. Many of the members of the church have had significant disruptions in their lives, experienced periods of homelessness or incarceration, addiction to drugs and alcohol, profound poverty, hopelessness, or just made bad decisions. Many are working toward a new measure of stability and accomplishment.” [2] Thinking that color photography is more appropriate to her subjects, Mullally asked each person what he or she keeps and why it is valued, and then included that object in her color photograph. The results are poignant, dignified, and hopeful.

Notes:

[1] Nicholas Bragg, preface in Charles C. Eldredge, Barbara Babcock Millhouse, and Robert G. Workman, American Originals: Selections from Reynolda House, Museum of American Art (New York: Abbeville Press, 1990), 7.

[2] Mullally statement for What I Keep: Photographs of the New Face of Homelessness and Poverty, Susan Mullally website, http://www.susanmullally.com/photos/wik_photos.