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May Issue 2003
Craven Allen Gallery in Durham, NC, Features Works by Jeffrey Waites
Jeffery Waites remembers helping to harvest
tobacco one summer in Georgia. "The sap-laden leaves would
stain your fingers and the sweet perfumes of the curing leaves
saturated the surfaces of the vaulted barns. Broad backs, hunched
like the sprawling, curling leaves of tobacco plants transformed
the landscape into seas of gold in late summer." Waites'
lifelong fascination with tobacco finds expression in his new
exhibition, Cured: The Nicotine Dynasty, on view at Craven
Allen Gallery in Durham, NC, through June 7, 2003.
"Cured grew out of my roots in the South, and out of my ongoing interest in the history of lost labor communities," says Waites.
The exhibition features over twenty-five paintings and drawings of tobacco workers. Waites combed the archives at the Duke Homestead Tobacco Museum and the North Carolina Collection at UNC to find images that resonated with his memories and experiences of tobacco. Some, like the title piece Cured, incorporate text copied from old tobacco paraphernalia. The woman stripping the leaves from the stick is set against an enigmatic background, which may suggest the heat of summer, or burning leaf and smoke. In another, Perique, the name of the tobacco is scrawled in an antique hand above workers staring out at the viewer from a field. The pieces are haunting and evocative, capturing scenes that are fast disappearing.
Waites received the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with highest honors from UNC-Chapel Hill, and also studied extensively in Italy. In addition to his exhibitions, he is known in the Triangle for curating the experimental LOOM art exhibitions in the Chatham Label Mills. Waites lives in Pittsboro, NC, with his wife and three children.
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