Bruce West
"Mrs. L.V. Hull Seated in her Garden," 2003
The story of Mississippi’s most unlikely and inspiring artist began humbly, in the late summer of 1974, when a woman named L.V. Hull bought a house in the town of Kosciusko. Hull was a thirty-two-year-old area native. The place she bought amounted to a mere 900 or so square feet and cost $7,000. Hull paid her mortgage with money earned through domestic work. Everything seemed unremarkable.
Then something remarkable happened.
Shortly after she moved in, Hull’s imagination began to spread across nearly every surface within her reach. She began to accumulate things, positioning them in various eclectic arrangements and assemblages. And then she began to paint. She preferred bright, bold colors, and her brush often created patterns of dots or dashes. When she inevitably ran out of space, Hull simply brought in more things to paint on. There were car tires, Easter baskets, and bicycles. Pieces of wood and hats. Televisions and basketballs. Milk crates and hubcaps. Flowerpots and ceiling fans. Gourds, lamp shades, and sewing machines.
Hull’s creations eventually filled her home, front porch, and yard, where there were dozens of painted shoes placed atop poles, like a flower garden blooming high heels, work boots, and Keds. Interspersed were occasional phrases, spelled out in paint, that gave insight into Hull’s opinions on a variety of subjects, from the need for faith (“You are welcome to pray.”) to the shifting dynamics of romantic relationships (“Face powder may catch a man, but baking powder will keep him.”) to acceptance (“The straight and narrow path has no traffic problems. Love everybody.”) to the rewards—and perhaps pitfalls—of aimlessness (“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”). She signed her work, “The Artist,” or variations of it, including “Made by L.V. Hull,” “Made by The Artist L.V. Hull,” and “Made by Who? L.V. Hull.”
The culminating effect of it all—a sea of everyday items reimagined in colorful patterns with downhome homilies—was a kind of earthy ode to life’s small joys delivered in a bold, kaleidoscope-esque style. Over the course of thirty-plus years, Hull’s residence, at 123 Allen Street, became a work of art unlike any other in the American South.
By the early 1980s, people were stopping to stare. The local Chamber of Commerce soon printed literature with directions. Despite having painted “Mind Your Business” on her mailbox, Hull welcomed most visitors, who discovered that she had mastered what one longtime friend, Yaphet Smith, called “the Southern art of visiting.” An Australian film crew arrived in 1995. Later, a Southern Living journalist stopped by. In 2006, Hull told a reporter her home had been visited by people from every U.S. state. Self-taught, she had established herself as one of the South’s most original folk artists. When she died in 2008, though, a problem arose.
Over the years, Hull’s art and residence had merged into one. Because she lived alone (she had one son, Little Joe Hull, who died at age four in 1968, before she moved into the house at Kosciusko), there was the issue of what to do with her creations. She left everything to her sister, Q.T., who lived more than 150 miles away, in Memphis. There was also the fact that a part of Kosciusko’s population had never understood Hull’s art—who held the opinion that the property really just needed to be cleaned up. All of this hovered over the looming question of what to do with it all.
In the months after Hull’s death, a group of ten or so locals formed a group called “Friends of L.V. Hull,” and purchased Hull’s home along with everything in it. They collected 800 or so pieces of her art and deposited them in the basement of City Hall for safekeeping. The group was not sure what, if anything, their efforts would lead to, but wanted to preserve what they could. “If we didn’t save it,” Allen Massey, a local businessman involved in the effort, said, “it would be gone forever.”
Now, fifteen years later, Hull’s art appears poised to re-enter the world in grand fashion.
About four years ago, Annalise Flynn, an independent curator and art historian in Wisconsin, became interested in Hull’s art through her work managing the SPACES Archives on behalf of the Kohler Foundation, a nonprofit that specializes in helping preserve art environments. After learning much of Hull’s work was stored in the basement of Kosciusko City Hall, Flynn connected with Massey, who told her the goal had always been an eventual permanent display of Hull’s work in town. Several organizations over the years made offers for the collection but the group had turned them all down: They did not want Hull’s art leaving. “We felt that wouldn’t do justice to her or the legacy she left behind,” Massey said.
Flynn also connected with Smith, a Mississippi native now living in Texas, and a longtime friend of Hull’s—his grandmother had lived a few houses down from her. As a child, Smith was entranced and inspired by Hull’s work, an example to him of what it looked like to steadfastly pursue art as a passion, no matter the circumstances. From roughly 2001 to 2004, Smith recorded a series of interviews with Hull about her life and work. He used that footage to make a documentary about her life called, Love Is a Sensation, which is currently in post-production.
Love is a Sensation Trailer
Flynn connected Smith and Massey with the Kohler Foundation’s preservation team, which ultimately took on Hull’s collection as a project and transported it to its facility in Wisconsin, where all 800-plus pieces were cleaned, conserved, and documented. Late last year, the Kohler Foundation returned to Kosciusko and donated the art to the Arts Foundation of Kosciusko, a nonprofit that recently acquired a piece of property with several structures on it, not far from Hull’s home. The site is undergoing renovation and will eventually become the L.V. Hull Legacy Center, which will house Hull’s work and be a place of exhibitions, educational programs, tours, and other events revolving around Hull’s life and work.
Hollis Cheek, the president of the Arts Foundation of Kosciusko, said the effort represents a “wonderful opportunity” for the town. Cheek described Kosciusko as the largest town in Mississippi without a four-lane highway. That lack of highway, he said, makes economic development difficult. Creating a space dedicated to Hull’s art, he said, is a way of building economic development from within.
The center’s opening date, sometime in late 2024, is set to coincide with an exhibit of Hull’s work that will be shown in November at the Mississippi Museum of Art.
Meanwhile, two years ago, Smith purchased Hull’s home—vacant since her death—and is working toward renovating it. In May, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the home as one of the “11 Most Endangered Historic Places” in America. In June, the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund of the National Trust of Historic Preservation gave the effort a $50,000 grant to assist in the property’s preservation.
For Smith, he hopes the restoration of Hull’s home, the creation of the L.V. Hull Legacy Center, and the release of Love Is a Sensation will “activate her legacy.” Hull, he said, believed her talent was a direct gift from God, and that the way to show gratitude for such a gift was to engage with it. Smith hopes Hull’s work and story inspires people, and that it stimulates interest in the African-American community in Kosciusko, which has a rich history—Oprah Winfrey is from Kosciusko, as is James Meredith, the first African American admitted to the University of Mississippi.
Flynn, a Mississippi native, described Hull’s legacy as one of joy, celebration, and independence—anad a physical site to honor that is a necessary addition to the Southern African American story that is all too often lined with struggle and sadness. “She did exactly what she wanted to do, how she wanted to do it,” Flynn said. •
For more about the L.V. Hull and ongoing preservation efforts, visit lvhull.org.
