Wayne White’s adult children, Lulu and Woodrow, make art that reflects on growing up in Los Angeles with a father from “a parallel universe” of southeast Tennessee.
Words by Lulu White | Art by Lulu & Woodrow White
My older brother, Woodrow, and I were raised in Los Angeles among the children of lighting grips and sitcom bit actors. It was important to our dad that we experience the reality of the world that formed him — a parallel universe. For all intents and purposes, southeast Tennessee was the “old country.” Growing up, we visited the South about once a year. My parents worked hard to give us a grounded idea of American life outside of our own, but I was raised in the city where fairy tales are produced, surrounded by the people who were producing them. Inevitably, I was primed to understand places and people as pieces of neatly framed narratives. My dad sees things the same way, which I believe is how, indirectly but ultimately, he ended up in LA working in TV.
Early in his life, my dad began cultivating ways to process the paradoxes of Southern culture that saturated his environment. We make art because we need to make sense of our surroundings. For a little boy growing up in a world where adults ignore children unless they exhibit the correct interests (sports), television presents an opportunity for escape and creative inspiration. Imagery beamed from a mysterious otherworldly source can be a saving grace for an alienated child in 1960s suburban Tennessee.
In the spirit of neatly framing this narrative, we then flash forward to my own childhood in Los Angeles, the otherworldly source, as I'm processing my Southern legacy from the inside of the beam.
Murfreesboro Magritte by Woodrow White
Ancient Rock Attraction by LULU White
June 29, 2021
Lulu White is an interdisciplinary artist originally from Los Angeles. She has been living and working in New York City since 2013. She comes from a long lineage of white Southerners, all loosely claiming to be the descendants of Cherokee princesses.
Woodrow White is a painter based in Los Angeles. He utilizes monsters, movies, and the practice of make-believe in his work to explore the layers of the human psyche.
