Thornton Dial is an African American artist whose work is in the southern vernacular tradition, which means he is self taught with no formal art education and lives and works in the South (Alabama to be exact.) He makes sculptures and assemblages (wall hangings with things protruding from the surface) using discarded everyday objects that would otherwise wind up in a land fill. So essentially Dial is also an environmentalist. If you look closely at his art, not too closely because there are sharp edges that can leave nasty cuts on delicate skin, you will see mattress coils, paint can lids, old shoes, used clothing, buttons, chicken wire (he is also a chicken farmer), and plastic twine. Almost nothing in the Dial household wound up in the trash. He nails objects to a very large canvas that has been attached to a board, adds enamel spray paint and covers the whole thing in Splash Zone compound, the material used to keep boats water tight.

Dial expressed his feelings on the war in Iraq in 2003 by producing a very large wall hanging, 71 x 114 inches that shows a torn image of the United States flag. He titled it “Don’t’ Matter How Raggly the Flag, It Still Got to Tie Us Together.” He chose the flag because it represents the values that America stands for, freedom, liberty and equality. He showed it torn and tattered; because in that form it represents what Americans suffer when our government finds it necessary to aggressively protect these values.

Not only is this flag shredded, its painted red areas make it look like bloody bandages, which turns the entire canvas into a gory battlefield. The artist not only expresses the horror of war in this work but inserts images that suggest this country’s history of racial strife. Wrapped in these bloody bandages are figures representing a dead black soldier toward the upper middle left of the canvas and a white soldier on the far upper right. Although Dial shows them separate (a reference to America’s continuing racial problems), they are also equal.

Since these soldiers died for the same cause on the same battlefield, are wrapped in the same cloth and float on the same ground made from mattress coils, their racial differences no longer matter. The mattress coils are Dial’s pun – “We have created a hard bed and our only hope is the realization that we must lie in it together.”

The Indianapolis Museum of Art purchased Raggly Flag just a few months ago. It now hangs on the wall on the third floor bridge near the escalator. You should come to the IMA to see it (www.imamuseum.org for directions and opening times), because describing a work like this and showing you a picture is no substitute for the real experience. This work of art is truly an awesome sight to behold. Hopefully, you will enjoy it even better since you now know the meaning behind the objects that the artist chose to include in this piece.