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Transcription: {SPEAKER name="Warren Perry"}
[00:00:00]
We're very glad everybody's here.

[00:00:05]
Because I know everybody could be at Nationals park right now lined up at the concession stand waiting to watch the Nats play the Braves. Which, [[jokingly]] we should go there after this, we should all go.

[[Laughter]]

[00:00:16]
I was fortunate enough to be asked about a year and a half ago to curate this exhibition,

[00:00:23]
and the purpose of this exhibition is to pay tribute to Elvis on this, the occasion of his 75th birthday.

[00:00:32]
Well actually this past January the 8th, 2010

[00:00:35]
and I understand we have one of our guests from Minnesota who shares the same birthday, happy birthday also.

[00:00:42]
What you see in the room, what we tried to build was a tribute

[00:00:46]
and a kind of an encomium, a salute, and we have a lot of artists represented: a couple from Tennessee, Red Grooms,

[00:00:55]
who executed the large color print over there.

[00:00:58]
And William Eggleston, whose photography surrounds this image of Elvis. The portrait bust by Robert Arneson.

[00:01:05]
But today we're going-- to going to talk about an image by Georgia Artist Howard Finster.

[00:01:10]
Finster was an untrained, or a naive or an outsider artist-- outsider artist.

[00:01:18]
He was originally called-- he believed, he Finster believed he was called to do the work of The Lord.

[00:01:27]
And so in Finster's work we see a lot of religious imagery a lot of allegory

[00:01:34]
and he's a real interesting person to talk about if for no other reason than the stories his children tell about him.

[00:01:42]
Finster's kids say if we wanted something built in the backyard like a castle he would build it.

[00:01:48]
And our backyard was at any given time covered with these images like we see

[00:01:54]
first of all the child Elvis over here

[00:01:57]
and then secondly the image of Elvis as an adult in the army

[00:02:02]
then again Finster was not trained as an artist in any school of fine arts. He was self-taught.

[00:02:08]
He eventually believed that he was given the mission to do his spiritual work through art

[00:02:18]
and so we see these images on plywood that he cut out with a router saw or some sort of table saw.

[00:02:27]
And they're very they're very sturdy images obviously, and he would hang them up to dry in his backyard.

[00:02:34]
I've heard a couple of different stories about how he would-- he would sell his artwork.

[00:02:41]
Well, not even sell it,on occasion he would uh, he would he would have you looking at his artwork at his home and he might not be in the mood to sell it,

[00:02:50]
but he would say "well just open up the trunk of your car you can take these with you".

[00:02:54]
And as an outsider artist, I'm not really sure that he had an appreciation of the attraction that folk art has for a lot of people.

[00:03:11]
After Elvis's death in 1977 Finster started portraying images of Elvis

[00:03:15]
because he believed Elvis was also an emissary of God.

[00:03:18]
And we see in this one a take on the portrait of Elvis as a child there's a photograph of Elvis wearing overalls.

[00:03:27],
And we see a variation on that image in this case Elvis has these wings

[00:03:34]
and there's something of an allegory at work here because inside the wing there's actually this galactic experience. We've got angels at work here in these cosmic images afloat.

[00:03:46]
This image is a little more unusual

[00:03:49]
it's not the Elvis as a soldier image that we see in photographs over and over and over again.

[00:03:59]
This image is some sort of idealized image of Elvis.

[00:04:04]
In his two years right at the beginning of a spectacular career when he was drafted and taken and put to work for Uncle Sam. And that's what we're here to talk about.

[00:04:20]
How did it happen?

[00:04:22]
How did Elvis end up in the army after a couple of fistfuls of hits on the charts a couple high dollar movies under his belt. How did he just stop his career and end up in the Army?

[00:04:35]
Well, pardon me, I don't know that he really wanted to go.

[00:04:41]
I think if any of us were put in his shoes now--. No I'm not saying that there's not a great call to patriotism at work on Elvis's part. That, that he just didn't-- you know want to go.

[00:04:55]
But if you're in Hollywood and you're making films and if you're cutting records

[00:05:01]
and if you've got all the money in the world and you're 23 years old and you've got the attention of legions well not even legions [[?]] going down and riding before going

[00:05:13]
Elvis didn't have legions of fans, Elvis had millions of fans

[00:05:16]
a lot of them were girls just happens to be. It's kind of hard to imagine wanting to give all that up and go and do the the drudgery work of the army for a couple of years.

[00:05:38]
There's a lot of good stories about how this all fell into place.

[00:05:36]
One take on it and again I'm not playing I'm not putting into question Elvis's patriotism,

[00:05:43]
but one of the more interesting things I've read is how perfect it was. And this there's several accounts of this how perfect, it was that Elvis actually did decide to do his duty by going into the army.

[00:05:57]
He was sent his first draft notice in January of 1957

[00:06:00]
but he didn't actually go into the army until March of 1958. And--

Transcription Notes:
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