Rosa Parks Museum’s ‘Resilient’ by Alabama artist Mike Howard opens May 4
Artist Mike Howard's "Resilient" show at the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery includes existing works and new paintings. (Anne Kristoff/Alabama NewsCenter)
It’s hard to miss Mike Howard. On a blustery day in Red Hook, Brooklyn, he zooms up to the water taxi dock on his trademark bicycle wearing ankle-length Ugg boots, a pom-pom hat, paint-splattered chinos and a Brooklyn Nets sweatshirt.
We’re headed to his nearby studio, where he is working on wall-sized paintings for a show that opens Wednesday at the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery. But our first stop is Fort Defiance, his favorite local eatery, for pie and coffee.
Artist Mike Howard spotlights “Resilient” civil rights figures for Rosa Parks Museum from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.
Howard laments the lack of coffee for lunch at the City Grill, the only restaurant in his home away from home, Hurtsboro, Alabama.
“I was thinking about getting my own pot and selling coffee on the side and splitting the money just to have coffee there,” he says. But the lack of coffee is not the only problem at City Grill.
Howard, a native of Phenix City, has exhibited his paintings everywhere from P.S. 1 in New York to the High Museum in Atlanta. His work has appeared in the pages of Italian Vogue (thanks to his esteemed set designer wife, Mary Howard) and has been included in the tony collections of the Rubell Family and Harvard University. He was accepted into the coveted Whitney Museum Independent Study Program while studying art at the University of Georgia, and was thrust into the New York art world glitterati when he began working with minimalist Donald Judd in the early 1970s.
But there is one nut Howard still can’t seem to crack: persuading the owner of City Grill to give him some wall space.
“He denied me,” Howard laments. “I couldn’t get a tractor in. I couldn’t get a cow in. I couldn’t get a hunting scene in. I couldn’t get a man on horseback. Nothing. I’ve given up.”
Luckily, he has other options. Like Troy University, which has taken over his collection and last month completed showing “A Journey Home” at its Johnson Center for the Arts.
“I was doing paintings before I knew I was going to show down there. They were all cows and haystacks and some hunting scenes. Troy is where my grandmother and grandfather had a farm. So it just fit perfectly, the theme of the paintings and Troy being where most of the paintings originated from.”
And the aforementioned Rosa Parks Museum on Troy’s Montgomery campus. The exhibit is being put together in collaboration with the museum’s director, Dr. Felicia Bell, and will consist of existing works (the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., slain New York City graffiti artist Michael Stewart) and new paintings (Parks, the first Selma march and his “The Death of Eric Garner” depiction of Garner’s 2014 death).
Atlanta Contemporary calls Howard a “‘faux’ realist, borrowing from Edouard Manet and Thomas Eakins in order to paint still lifes of fast food, bars and beer.”
His subject matter has an atypical breadth and variety. Cows, haystacks, MoonPies and RC Cola are developed alongside portraits of civil rights icons, the Gowanus Canal, Unabomber shack commemorative plates, death scenes of everyone from Albert Patterson to Jean-Michel Basquiat, and replicas of Warhols and other artists’ work. He attributes the freedom to paint whatever he wants to his decision to leave the formal art world behind when his daughter Mimi was born.
But “It’s not what you paint, it’s how you paint,” he explains.
New York artist/curator/critic Joe Fyfe has called Howard’s work unguarded, egalitarian, generous and spirited. Art Dealer Michael Walls, who gave Howard his first NY gallery show, adds tough and rambunctious to the pot. All words that could also be used to describe Mike Howard himself. To him, “It’s just fast.”
Howard has an easy, wry wit and a fun, mischievous spirit. In addition to being a painter, he is a husband, father, grandfather, competitive cycler, former Marine and boxer. He’s a great storyteller, in person, via his paintings and on his Facebook page, which is peppered with tales from all aspects of his life’s passions – what he’s painting, where he’s racing, his work on his Columbus or Hurtsboro houses, bragging about his grandkids (one of whom he calls T Bone), memories of growing up in Girard, and bemoaning that “Phenix City has destroyed/demolished my childhood places.”
“I was doing paintings of Phenix City,” he says. “The bank. Dillingham Street. That was my grandfather’s. The store next to that was Dr. Prather’s; he was our uncle. And across from that was my grandfather’s service station. And down on the other side was Benny’s Café, where my Daddy worked. Crap game tables upstairs. And further down was a loan shark. … And behind that was the post office. My aunt ran the post office. But everything’s been torn down.”
The quote under his photo in the 1962 Central High School yearbook pegs Howard for his sense of humor and his boundless energy. Neither has changed much in the 54 years since.
If you’re looking for the most interesting man in the world, I promise you he’s not sipping a Dos Equis somwhere. He’s most likely either drinking coffee or eating Key lime pie at Fort Defiance in Red Hook, Brooklyn, or holding court at the “round table” at City Grill in Hurtsboro, Alabama. He says he’s given up. But I don’t believe him.
Mike Howard is a Girard, Alabama, native who splits his time among Brooklyn, Hurtsboro and Columbus, Georgia. His “Resilient” exhibit at the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery opens May 4 and will be on view through November.
