Marrs said it best on Monday evening: “Let’s raise our glasses to Eudora Welty and to the artists who keep her image before us.” And may we suggest, as Welty would, that glass be filled with bourbon.
So we’re thrilled to unveil the Eudora Welty Portrait Reader, featuring work by artists from across the South. Preach it, Jimmy! We couldn’t agree more. Through photography, essays, and fiction, Eudora Welty has enriched our lives and shown us the wonder of the human experience.” Her critical essays explore mind and heart, literary and oral tradition, language and life with unsurpassed beauty. Her photographs of the South during the Depression reveal a rare artistic sensibility. Why Welty? For a lot of us who grew up in the South and liked words, Welty represented not only what we knew, capturing the characters and cadences of our region, but also the range of what was possible - telling honest stories about a place that continues to struggle and progress.Īs President Jimmy Carter put it when he presented Welty the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980: “Eudora Welty’s fiction, with its strong sense of place and triumphant comic spirit, illuminates the human condition. The occasion was to preview the Eudora Welty Portrait Reader, a 48-page print publication that features 20 illustrations of the author, accompanied by poetry and creative prose inspired by those works. Last night, Eudora Welty’s biographer Suzanne Marrs raised a toast to her friend - the writer, photographer and sometimes painter whose work shaped the literary trajectory of the American South and made an awful lot of people proud to be from Mississippi (and beyond). This helps guarantee a bright future for Mississippi.“From the time in 1946 when Marcella Comès Winslow said that Eudora had ‘an eyelid-fold like Greta Garbo,’ Eudora has inspired painters including Winslow, Paul Matthews, Karl Wolfe, Mildred Wolfe, and the twenty-four artists whose work is displayed here.” The MPB Foundation, staff and board members work on a daily basis with the staff of Mississippi Public Broadcasting to make Mississippi our Mission by bringing quality education, radio and television to the citizens of Mississippi. The MPB Foundation shall direct all of its efforts to Support Mississippi Public Broadcasting (MPB).” The names may have changed but the Mississippi Public Broadcasting Foundation’s purpose today remains the same, “to solicit, receive, invest and expend private funds donated by the general public and private entities for charitable and educational purposes related to the support, promotion, development and growth of public broadcasting in Mississippi.
All funds receive by such fundraising activities shall be used solely for the benefit and support of the Mississippi Authority for Educational Television.” Frequently I changed the scene or participants to. The oil colors bring to life for me these captured moments in time. I have selected images some of which I remember growing up in my early life in rural South Carolina.
“The purposes for which THE FOUNDATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING IN MISSISSIPPI, INC., is organized are to organize, conduct and implement all forms of fundraising activities in the name of the FOUNDATION on behalf of the Mississippi Authority for Educational Television. The Eudora Welty Foundation gave me permission with artistic license to reproduce these images in oil on canvas paintings. The purpose of the foundation at that time were stated to be as follows. When the Foundation was established, MEB turned over its membership list to the Foundation so that all fundraising could be centralized. (MEB) raised funds through membership dues and contributions for the benefit of Mississippi Authority for Educational Television (MAET). Prior to the establishment of the foundation, Mississippians for Educational Broadcasting, Inc. The first Foundation for Public Broadcasting received its first Charter on May 8, 1985, by a group of individuals including the famous short story writer, photographer and novelist, Eudora Welty, who were committed to the mission of educational broadcasting for Mississippians.