The core members of the community who participated, feeding Abe their stories, were given editorial power over what was produced. Dedicated portraits that utilize Abe’s symbolic language (flowers, rainbows, and flames) are bolstered by long-form quotes, oral histories direct from the subject’s mouth or Abe’s account of what he’s been told. What followed over two years is a body of work that painstakingly documents every person he has met, and every hero (or occasional villain) of lore tied to the specific and small communities surrounding the Appalachian snake-handling religious community.
His goal here was to testify to the human dignity and community found in these places, and to value it fairly. Abe knows well the ways in which remote religious communities are more often exploited, or unfairly portrayed as a cultural straw man for ‘conservative ignorance’. Abe started going to churches and congregations throughout Appalachia, looking first for the music, but he found more. In Salvation on Sand Mountain he read a passage describing psychedelic rock n roll being performed in small and remote places, churches that handle snakes and drink poison as a matter of faith making music that that was otherwise undocumented. Hangout is easily the biggest and most iconic music festival in Alabama, and brings some of the world’s top artist’s to the Gulf Shores for 3 days of incredible music, fun, and sun. In 2020 In the bringing of a world-wide pandemic, after all of Abe’s gigs got canceled he sat at home a little lost and reading. Alabama is never viewed in the same way as Mississippi or Texas where Blues music receives glorification, and yet it has contributed Gennett, ARC, Columbia, Vocalion and Okeh did some Alabama based recordings, but not on the scale of Mississippi. This is an exhibition of new work exploring those experiences, made in direct collaboration with this community. Lenoir’s famous song, Alabama Blues, stated he won’t go back there. After much time spent, he was given permission to document his experiences the music, rituals, and stories that called to him. For the last two years Partridge has made regular visits and embedded himself in several communities of Appalachian religious snake-handlers. His background as a baptist preacher who experienced a crisis/conversion of faith allows him to travel roads less traveled. With work by Pastor Jimmy Morrow and Anthony FeyerĪbe Partridge is a touring musician and artist from Mobile, AL fundamentally a storyteller who fuses a heady mix of backwoods baptismal and back alley punk rock.
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