Well, the roadtrip gods are having their way with us. After getting through freezing temperatures, ice, and snow in Alabama and Tennessee, we got to enjoy gray skies and intermittent rain in Mississippi.
We drove from Memphis to Gulfport, MS, to visit friends from our posting in Albania. First, however, we stopped in Tupelo to see Elvis Presley’s birthplace.
Then to Gulfport where, besides enjoying our stay, we discovered Walter Inglis Anderson (1903-1965), an artist who lived and worked in nearby Ocean Springs. His work is fantastic—in some respects, literally, as (similar to Van Gogh) he suffered a nervous breakdown and was in and out of mental institutions for a few years. But he also was a polymath (polyart?) who worked in oil, watercolor, pen and ink, wood sculpture, and pottery.
The stories about Anderson demonstrate his eccentricity: when he had an opening at the Brooklyn Museum, instead of attending it, he went to China, where he drew and sketched until he was robbed and forced to return home. He separated from his wife and lived in a small cabin on his brother’s property, frequently bicycling around the area in his shabby clothes to find subjects for his art; and when he died, his heirs went in and found a locked room whose walls were painted baseboard to ceiling in wild designs.
As a cultural note: we drove to Ocean Springs via Route 90, which runs along the Gulf of Mexico. Route 90 around Gulfport and Biloxi is lined mostly with casinos and Waffle Houses: we counted eight Waffle Houses on one 15-mile stretch. Not surprisingly, the area billboards largely advertise casinos and diabetes treatments.
Next: New Orleans, in multiple posts