Talking With Tebe: Clementine Hunter, Memory Artist [Hardcover]

Mary E. Lyons (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 8 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up

Born in northwest Louisiana in 1886. Called Tebé by her family, Hunter lived and worked on Melrose Plantation for more than 75 years. In colors as bright as the Louisiana sky, she shows the backbreaking work required to pick cotton, gather figs, cut sugar cane, and harvest pecans. Tebé's art portrays the good times, too. Scenes of baptisms, weddings, and church socials celebrate a rich community life that helped the workers survive. Hunter's work holds a special place in art history. She was the first self-taught artist to receive a fellowship from the Rosenwald Fund, in 1945, and the first self-taught African-American woman artist to receive national media attention. Between 1945 and 1987, over fifty museums and galleries showed her works. Some writers have called Clementine Hunter a creative genius. To others she was not a real artist but a "plantation Negro." Many were surprised that an older woman with no training could produce art at all. Now considered one of the finest folk arti

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4 Up-Clementine Hunter was an African-American primitive painter who lived all of her 101 years in Louisiana as a manual laborer. Born in 1886, she began painting late in her life. Although untrained, she created works of art now owned by many American museums. The story of her life and art is fascinating, and Lyons has let Tebe, as she was called, tell it in her own words, culled from taped interviews and magazine and newspaper articles. Each short chapter is a well-put-together collection of her pithy comments on some facet of her daily life on Melrose Plantation ("My People," "Housework," "Field Work," etc.). Hunter's bright, colorful, childlike paintings and a handful of black-and-white photographs decorate the book and illuminate her words. The result is an attractive and appealing volume. Its strength is its wonderful depiction of an extraordinary individual who could not read or write, who lived in the same place all of her life, but was nationally known and respected. The book would serve every collection as an excellent biography of a strong woman, as insight into an artist's vision and work, and as a unique slice of Southern history.
Judith Constantinides, East Baton Rouge Parish Main Library, LA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gr. 7^-12. Like Lyons' illustrated biographies of African American artists Harriet Powers and Horace Pippin, this is as much about social history as about painting. in this book, Lyons acts as editor, quoting extensively from taped interviews and articles so that artist Hunter speaks in her own voice ("Paintings catch memories a-crossing my mind. Pictures of the hard part of living. The easy parts, too, like fishing and dancing"). Clementine Hunter (aka Tebe ) was the first self-taught African American woman folk artist to receive national attention. Her fine paintings are reproduced in full color, some small, a few full-page, and, like her words, they show and tell a manual laborer's story: what it was like to work in the fields and in the kitchen of the big house a century ago, what it was like to be a wife and a mother and a member of a close Creole community in northwest Louisiana. Lyons' brief, unobtrusive captions about subject and technique help you appreciate the visual images. Hunter was illiterate, but the combination of her pictures and her confident, direct, unpretentious idiom makes for a vivid personal narrative. Hazel Rochman

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Hardcover: 48 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children; Library Binding edition (September 28, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395720311
• ISBN-13: 978-0395720318
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 8.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,352,553 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic about Clementine, May 31, 2008

By 

Fran Lee Stop (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Talking With Tebe: Clementine Hunter, Memory Artist (Hardcover)

This book is written as though the primitive artist Clementine Hunter is telling her story. It sounds just so! And the illustrative examples of Clementine's artwork are fitting and wonderful to see.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Book, September 2, 2011

By 

albert markasky - See all my reviews

This review is from: Talking With Tebe: Clementine Hunter, Memory Artist (Hardcover)

Great book, wonderful pictures and story about Clementine Hunter, someone I never read about in art books or heard about in art school. I have read this many times and have used it in teaching memory art to teenagers. Very inspiring.