THE ARTIST L.V. HULL

A brochure at the Kosciusko, Mississippi Chamber of Commerce quotes Ms. L. V. Hull saying, “I never did care for no grass.”

Her lawn attests to that. After Ed and I drove to Kosciusko during a vacation to my hometown of Jackson, after seriously good plate lunches of pork chops, lima beans, and cornbread at a local café’, we stood dazzled in front of L.V.’s small white house. Brightly painted shoes perched like tropical birds on sticks stuck in the ground. Multi-hued hubcaps, spinning tops, plastic frogs and dogs, twirling mobiles, and a wooden cross painted with polka dots covered all that “no grass” on the lawn. Near the front door sat a polka-dotted television with bold blue letters painted on the screen—JESUS ON THE MAINLINE. TELL HIM WHAT YOU WANT—and, underneath, in red letters—SIT DOWN AND MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.

Once inside, we followed L.V.’s stocky brown self around as she, carrying her “breathing machine”, pointed out her creations—a cross made of cigarette lighters, high-topped shoes Elton John would die for, dinner plates and saucers painted with vibrant colors and splashy dots proclaiming L.V.’s testimony: “KEEP HOPE.” “HAVE FAITH.” “WE NEED LOVE.” “TAKE TIME TO PRAY.” “BLESS YOU.” The phrases stretched across the pieces, and if a word was too long, L.V. started the next line with the remaining letters.

“Look there.” She pointed to an orange-rimmed plate dabbed with blue and green dots and BE KIND OK printed in the middle in red. “Look,” she insisted. “You see what my imagination made me do?”

L. V., dubbed an “outsider artist” because she has no formal training and her art is considered outside the boundaries of official art culture, has spread her imagination beyond Mississippi. A woman from Beverly Hills had called her recently, she told us, inquiring about her painted shoes. A motorcycle group traveling cross-country hired her to decorate their helmets. “They were wild,” she said. “I like wild.” Touching a purple plate with a green border and pink dots, she said, “My imagination was really strong right here.”

More than once as we wandered through, L.V. declared, “It’s a mystery and a gift. A mystery and a gift, I’m telling you.” All her pieces were signed on the backs with bold brush strokes, “THE ARTIST LV HULL”.

I needed L.V.’s messages myself. The urge to write struck me more than twenty years ago with a force I couldn’t ignore. I honored the urge, wrote volumes, felt like I’d found my passion and my place on this earth. But I didn’t know how hard it would be to transfer that passion from the page to the public.

“I’m a writer,” I’d answer if people asked me what I did besides psychotherapy. Usually, their eyes glazed before changing the subject. Several times, when Ed and I told a fisherman that I’d written and published a book about Ed’s passion for fly-fishing, the guy would turn to Ed as if I didn’t exist and say, “Where do you like to fish?”

I kept after my writing because I had no choice. It’s my sustenance, my calling, the obsession that gnaws when I wake up at night and wonder,“Is that really what I want to say? Does that capture what I mean? Would that character really do that?” But there are a jillion of us writers, and we often feel lost at the back of the room, tired of struggling to be published, to be recognized, to be seen. One of my teachers, a former Elvis impersonator from North Carolina, sports a hat with “WRITER” in caps above the bill. Though I admired his assuredness, and though I’d been published in some fine journals and magazines, I didn’t see me wearing that hat.

L.V. overcame plenty of her own obstacles. “I was just mostly tired,” she told us. She “took care of a lot of white children” when she was younger, and married a man who took no care of her at all. Her own little boy died at the age of four, and her sorry husband didn’t even come to his funeral. She had health struggles and “breathing problems.” Her life has been hard. But her art is a mystery and a gift. Her art has brought her joy.

We bought two plates and a plaque. My favorite was the BE KIND OK saucer. As we were leaving L.V.’s house, she said, “I’m gone sing ya’ll a song.”

Pulling her cotton bathrobe around her, in a voice both plaintive and full of faith, she belted out Farther Along, a hymn my friend, Price, and I used to sing in bar room bathrooms when we were far, far along the road to oblivion. Ed knew the song too, and we joined L.V.

“Farther along we’ll know all about it. Farther along we’ll understand why.” We stood and sang in L.V.’s living room, the walls and floors crowded with her creations, stunning in their reds, greens, yellows, purples, and blues. “Cheer up, my brothers,” we sang. “Live in the sunshine. We’ll understand it all by and by.”

We felt the calluses on L.V.’s hands as we squeezed them and told her Goodbye. Three years later, we read that she’d died. Her blown-up photo is now on the wall at the Jackson Airport, along with John Grisham and Eudora Welty.

I carry L.V. with me, carry her pain, her fortitude, and, mostly, her absolute certainty of exactly who she is. I remember her when I get a rejection from the publisher I covet. When I tell the English teacher at the party that I’m a writer, and he raises his eyebrows. When the young woman checking me out at the local Jockey Store looks at my credit card and says, “Are you Carol Jane Morrison, the author?”

“Yes,” I tell the clerk. “I am.” And I owe L.V. for the answer. I am a woman with imagination. It is a mystery and a gift. I am the author, Carol Jane Morrison. Like the artist, L.V. Hull.

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