Lamar Dodd, detail from “Copperhill,” 1938. Oil and egg tempera on linen, 28 x 50 ¼ inches. Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia; Gift of Mary and Lamar Dodd to the University of Georgia Foundation. GMOA 1974.3.
Lamar Dodd captured climate change in Copper Basin region
Lamar Dodd studied art in New York at the Art Students League and was heavily influenced by the Ashcan artists in both style and subject matter. Eternally inspired by his native Georgia, he found beauty in the landscapes, industry and culture of the South. Considered a representative of a “southern school” of American regionalism, Dodd was involved in the selection of Georgia works to be in the contemporary American art exhibition at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. His own entry in the show was “Copperhill,” a hauntingly beautiful landscape of the Copper Basin (also known as the Ducktown Basin) in Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia that is in our museum’s collection.
The basin, a subject that fascinated Dodd, has a tragic history. Once a dense forest full of wildlife, the over 50 square miles of land turned barren with degradation from years of mining, primarily for copper. Despite the damage, Dodd saw beauty in the variety of colors and shapes the destruction left behind.
The stormy sky and desolate scene in “Copperhill” create an ominous mood. Yet there is a striking beauty to the image, however foreboding it may feel. The devastating environmental consequences of copper mining are impossible to ignore. The dark sky and smoke clouds allude to the acid rain and toxic fog created by the pollution. The power lines running through the center of the painting resemble crosses, as though the land has become a cemetery for the life it once held.
To learn more about Dodd’s “Copperhill,” listen to curator of American art Jeffrey Richmond-Moll discuss the work.