SHORELINES

Martha Moon Kracke remembers them as a bunch of friends having fun painting what they saw while roaming the rural countryside around Lake Jordan. But those men and women were actually shaping history and would become leaders of the Southeastern art world. It has been 71 years since Kracke traveled with her dad, Florala self-taught artist Carlos "Shiney" Moon, to visit the Dixie Art Colony (DAC) on Lake Jordan. But her memories of those visits with that eclectic band of artists are as vivid as if they happened yesterday. "Daddy and I were so close, and we liked all the same things," said Kracke, who spent time at the DAC as a 13-year-old. "To be at a place where he liked to be with all of his friends was important to me. It was a very special place where these people gathered to paint, carry on and play jokes on each other." Two area artists, Kelly Fitzpatrick and Warree Carmichael LeBron, founded the colony, the first of its kind in Alabama and one of the first in the Southeast, in 1933. e idea came from Fitzpatrick, who had returned from World War I with scars on his face from shrapnel wounds and on his heart aer seeing many of his comrades killed in combat. "When he got back home, Kelly said all he wanted to do for the rest of his life was what he loved, and that was painting and teaching," said Mark Harris, founder of the Dixie Art Colony Foundation. Fitzpatrick, LeBron and the other artists met for the first time at a Boy Scouts camp on Lake Martin and then in various homes for the next few years. ey finally settled in 1937 on what they called their "semi-permanent" home, a site owned by LeBron's mother, Sallie B. Carmichael, at Nobles Ferry in Deatsville on Lake Jordan. e colony was a rustic, quiet spot where artists from across Alabama met for short stays, mostly during the summer, to pursue their passion for painting and hone their skills. Along with a central lodge that housed their studio and kitchen, there were several small, one-room cabins used as sleeping quarters for the men and a dormitory for the women. e lodge, dormitory and cabins were powered by electricity. But otherwise, conditions were primitive, with outdoor showers and an outhouse, and no running water, except in the kitchen. "It was a kind of escape from the workaday world of the 1930s and 1940s," said Sally LeBron Holland, who grew up visiting the colony with her mother and grandmother, LeBron and Carmichael. Holland said it was "awesome to see those free spirits" at work. "Every day, the artists would pile into cars and drive out into the countryside and the little community of Deatsville," Holland said. "ey would be dropped off in different places and would paint the world around them. In the evenings, they would display what they had painted outside in the yard on a wooden wall with an overhanging tin roof, and Kelly would critique their work. It was a wonderful experience." 10 | 2019 Vol: 2

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