Thornton Dial, 1928-2016

20491_ 063_Thornton Dial_Souls Grown Deep Foundation Photographic Collection_Southern Folklife Collection_UNC Chapel Hill We were saddened to learn that artist Thornton Dial passed away yesterday at his home in McCalla, Alabama. Our thoughts are with his loving family and friends. Dial will certainly be remembered as one of the most important artists of the last fifty years. Thanks to the early efforts of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, founded by William Arnett, the Southern Folklife Collection holds a number of slides that document Mr. Dial, his artwork, and workspace where he created the fantastic assemblages such as those pictured here, all from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Photographic Collection (20491) in the Southern Folklife Collection.20491_ 079_Thornton Dial_Souls Grown Deep Foundation Photographic Collection_Southern Folklife Collection_UNC Chapel Hill
The complete collection of Thornton Dial images will soon be digitized available for research through the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Photographic Collection (20491) finding aid. Already, you can view work by Dial’s colleagues and contemporaries like Asberry Davis, Mary T. Smith, Lonnie Holley (who introduced Dial to Arnett), and Dial’s cousin, Ronald Lockett. We will link to more of Dial’s work in the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Photographic Collection (20491) finding aid when that content goes live. For now, we pulled a few scans currently in progress that show a but a few examples of the remarkable variety of Dial’s oeuvre in the space where they were created. 20491_ 052_Thornton Dial_Souls Grown Deep Foundation Photographic Collection_Southern Folklife Collection_UNC Chapel Hill _220491_ 072_Thornton Dial_Souls Grown Deep Foundation Photographic Collection_Southern Folklife Collection_UNC Chapel Hill 20491_ 081_Thornton Dial_Souls Grown Deep Foundation Photographic Collection_Southern Folklife Collection_UNC Chapel Hill 20491_ 077_Thornton Dial_Souls Grown Deep Foundation Photographic Collection_Southern Folklife Collection_UNC Chapel Hill