The Good Southern Women Interview with Jill Marlar
On playing it safe (until you don't), rediscovering your roots, relocating to a small town, sewing without a pattern, and the sustenance of summer vegetables
If you’re new around here, GSW is a questionnaire-based interview series featured in F I E L D T R I P. It focuses on women-identifying artists of the South. This time, we feature multidisciplinary artist and baker Jill Marlar.
These intros often have a touch of the personal, but this one will go much further. It feels justified, given Jill’s direct address to me a few times in her answers below.
I met Jill Marlar in late 2006, when my husband and I had just relocated from Chicago to Birmingham, Alabama, so he could take a job in nearby Tuscaloosa. Todd and I went to some sort of art event at a Starbucks in Five Points, a business district in the city, and there we met Jill and her then-fiancé James Little, who was managing that Starbucks.
Jill and I became fast friends. For the nearly three years we lived in Birmingham, Todd’s and my social life revolved around Jill & James and a coterie of other arts-minded folks. (I’ll forever be grateful to one of them, Charles Buchanan, who invited us to the Starbucks event that night.) Without their friendship, I can’t imagine how lonely our time in Birmingham would have been.
But even so, it was not the easiest period for me: While I quickly found what was quite possibly the best job a writer-type could score in B’ham, I knew within about two months that it was a square-peg-round-hole situation. (Nevertheless, I stayed put for a good while, and did acquire essential skills and experience for later pursuits. No regrets.) I had recently completed a novel, been dumped by an agent, was creatively floundering and, at 33, very seriously considering starting a family. (Reader, we did.) And let’s just say Birmingham is a difficult place to move from a major city such as Chicago. I was very much in a time of transition and displacement, feeling like I didn’t fit in. (Yeah yeah, I’m a total Enneagram 4.)
During this time I admired Jill as someone who, besides being a sweet friend, was so much more put-together than I—poised, engaged in her community, making art, an excellent Southern cook (I’d never heard of “crowder peas” before Jill), an easy, generous hostess… She just seemed to move through her life with grace while I lurched around being moody. Honestly, this is still at least partly the case. But I feel like we’ve both grown into the women we were meant to be. We’ve shed some skin and gained self-acceptance. And I’ve loved watching her transform her life the past two years, even though I know it hasn’t always been easy. Nothing important ever is, right? Bless our hearts.
I’m so honored Jill is sharing her story here today, with me and you.
How does the South inform your artwork?
The word “artwork” is throwing me here. It’s been roughly eight years since I have produced a body of work, which at the time were serialist style oil paintings depicting recognizable historical places in Birmingham with storied images. Before that I was a prolific printmaker, producing several thousand works yearly to sell at art shows, markets, and local retailers.
Birmingham was central to my art back then. I met my husband James twenty years ago through an art event called Birmingham Artwalk, and on weekends we would go every Saturday morning to a downtown Birmingham coffee shop called Urban Standard. Other creatives would meet us there. On the same block was a shop called What’s on 2nd owned by Steve Gilmer, a legend to many in the community and collector of the past. His shop was filled with ephemera, memorabilia, and his own stories, so that after coffee it was where we would stow away for an hour or two. It’s there that in the stacks of postcards and old mid-century family photographs that we’d sit thumbing through them while simultaneously drawn into their imagined story. Steve would trade or sell me bundles of these photographs to use as inspiration for my work. These photographs from the early half of the twentieth century reminded me of my own ancestral roots, particularly in Crenshaw County, Alabama.
As an only child, as well as an only grandchild on one of my paternal lines, I saw my artwork at the time as a way to capture my roots in something tangible and send it out into the world. My Nostalgia series etchings created between 2005-2010 are mostly figurative works inspired from the photographs, showing people in daily life, whether they are picking dewberries off a bush, holding a baby at a family reunion, or fishing with a grandmother.
For the last eight years, my creative work has been my own “What’s on 2nd?” My husband and I opened a bustling coffee shop in the heart of historic Five Points South in Birmingham in 2019, and my visual art ceased as the next five years took me through the highs and lows of that enterprise. I resented the shop for that, but now look back to realize that experience gave me the tools needed to do what I am doing today. Though I had no time or energy for personal artwork, I was able to nurture other artists through our shop while my energy was devoted to creation within the shop—which was through food and writing (with an existential crisis or two along the way).
You see, I was a “safe” artist before the shop. I made art that was palatable and pretty. Keep that in your mind as we explore these other questions ahead.
You recently made a big life change: You and your family left Birmingham, Alabama, where you’d lived for many years, for the much smaller town of Greenville, Alabama. Tell us about this uprooting and resettling and how it has affected your art-making.
Yes! Ruby, our only child, led us here. She asked us to move here in the Summer of 2023; we had already told her we were going to sell the coffee shop, as our lease was ending in early 2024. The coffee shop had been the backdrop for all her elementary years. She was in first grade when we opened it and in second grade when all the schools shut down due to Covid-19 mandates. While other families were at home, we three were on our own in the shop for two months, disintegrating at times. It was redefining for sure, and we relieved the pressure by taking trips to the shared family homestead in rural Butler County, Alabama [where Greenville lies]. Built on her paternal great-grandparents’ land, this modest farmhouse and pasture became the place where we filled our tank, found ourselves, and learned our roots. We’d walk ancestral cemeteries, call James’ grandparents for stories, and spend time researching our lineages through the local library. We all felt at home.
I look back on those years and realize that we were being called home because we would soon uncover—on James’ 47th birthday, and the night our home sold—that we were actually fifth cousins. (For two people who, as kids, wanted to grow up and be archeologists, it all made sense then.) Meanwhile, I had started writing, recording, and collecting in early 2022— right around the time I stayed with you, Susannah, when we went to see Allison Russell in concert at the Ryman, and I met with Fleming [McWilliams] to talk about voice.
During that visit, I woke up to the sun streaming through the window, hitting that harvest-gold sofa bed in your study. I pulled out the fairly new journal Ruby had given me for my birthday and began researching the word muse. Eventually I found the story of Pegasus scraping his hoof on Mount Helicon where the nine muses were born.
The word “Helicon” felt familiar, and prompted me to text my Dad and ask him what was the name of the cemetery where our Crenshaw County relatives are buried. “Helicon,” he replied. I knew right then to pay attention.
Susannah, do you remember at the end of Allison’s concert, all of them on stage at the end with their daughters? Together they made nine.
I call this my Delta Harvest. The last three years have been about the experience and the recording. Now—like, right now—is the moment my art-making will flow from the true me. Not from a disconnected, people-pleasing character, but from the found child that I uncovered, grabbed her hands and pulled forth from the dark soil of self-denial.
You’ve worked in several mediums over the years. Where is your artistic practice centered these days?
My “house” is Marlar Creative and its logo bears the wings of Pegasus. Within that house are all my creative places: My arts teaching for youth, which is my heartbeat; my baking with Delta Dawn Scones; my songwriting (I have an eleven-song EP in preproduction); and my writing (I am shaping a stage show, film, and book). Finally, MuseALABAMA, a nonprofit formed in early 2023 that will work to bridge the arts within communities, particularly rural areas across our state. These seeds were planted over the past three years, and Greenville is the perfect place to allow them to flourish.
Birmingham taught me how to do it by meeting others who had knowledge, experience, and artistry. The future, as I see it, is in some creatives like me moving back to our ancestral roots, to smaller communities, rebuilding what’s been lost. Greenville has a very rich arts and cultural history, with teachers like Roberta Gamble, Millie McDonald, Susan Andrews (who is still teaching) and Priscilla Solomons. All shaped this community for decades in theatre, music, dance, and art. Over the last two decades in particular, small-town communities have abandoned the arts because schools have focused on sports. I don’t look to public education to change anytime soon, so it’s up to us creatives within the community to pull us all together in the name of art!
I am lifting all these projects together like a hot air balloon.
Tell me about a Southern artist you identify with or admire, and why.
My rural Southern ancestors hail from Alabama, from the western side bordering Mississippi through the Black Belt, dipping down a bit into the Northern coastal plain. Many of them were creative whether through music, writing, cooking or handiwork like crafts and sewing. They were not necessarily known or recognized for these things, but it was what they did. They used their creativity to shape their life and often as a tool for income. Often the men were not a part of the family so it was the women doing it all. These are the artists that I identify with and admire. They are my inspiration and my DNA.
My maternal grandmother could sew nearly anything without needing a pattern. She’d come from a line of sewers; I recall reading that one was the first in the county to own a sewing machine, sometime in the late 1800s. People actually traveled to see it! Mom grew up in poverty, and my grandmother, who was on her own, did what she could with what she had. Those circumstances can be traumatizing, but simultaneously they can teach resilience and industriousness. For her part, my mother made money by mending and sewing clothing, and in her senior year sewed her first formal dress, which was worn by a socialite in Birmingham. She made her own wedding dress too, and any and everything for her home, from curtains to throw pillows to table skirts. Then I came along and she made all my dresses. She also could work without patterns, just like my grandmother.
Up until eight years ago, my mom was a prolific painter. But she always diminished herself, saying she was not a real or good artist. Now with her advanced dementia, she hardly recalls doing any of that creative work, but can tell you almost anything you ask her about her childhood. I have over eighty of her paintings, from her very first in the early 1970s to her last, made around 2017. (As I write this, I realize that was also the year I stepped out of the art scene.)
My mother would sit me at a card table with her in our little kitchen in Tallassee, Alabama, with its harvest gold appliances and rust-colored, faux-brick linoleum floor, as she oil painted little landscapes and florals. She would let me use her oil paint and mix on my own small canvas board even as a preschooler. Painting was leading her somewhere. Life had prepared her for making her own way. My song “Coyote” tells that story.
I am a believer that art does indeed save us. I learned about it from family stories. I saw it in my mother. I see it in my daughter’s creative work, and now it’s saving me.
Growing up, how did you conform to Southern codes of femininity?
By force. But I didn’t know there was a choice. Even so, I look back and would not change a thing. I don’t hold any resentment, and look back on much of it like it was acting out characters in a scene. My mother taught me that people liking me was most important, especially those who were considered the meanest. If you could get a mean person to accept you, that was success. My reputation was the most important thing; “prim and proper” were words I heard all the time. Modesty. Poise. Appearance. Top three answers on the board! I was raised to make others feel better about themselves, and my mother embodied that big-time, but she was creating a life that June Cleaver had painted for her along with every Good Housekeeping issue known to man. She’d lived through her formative years in depravity, insecurity, and trauma, so here was this opportunity to build a life with my Dad, following a path that was paved like a yellow brick road. I would probably have done the same.
Growing up, how did you push back against Southern codes of femininity?
I did not. That never even crossed my mind. I was not miserable either, because it came with rewards. Approval is addictive, and being a good girl paid off for me despite it being conditional. I understand that now. This upbringing gave me a skill set that I use on some level even to this day, but not in an inauthentic manipulative manner, unless I am in complete denial, which is okay too. Ha! I don’t believe in painting something as all evil because duality resides in pretty much everything. With my mom, I always knew who she needed me to be and that carried into adulthood, but that’s how she operated. My mother was very caring, supportive, helpful, and would do anything for you. She would place her needs last and do for us and others. She had a true heart for giving, but her ability to accept those same gifts from others was very uncomfortable for her, so often she blocked that reciprocity. It’s why she lived independently despite her dementia, not allowing for any real intervention until last September.
You can feel how you want about Mitchell’s characters in Gone With the Wind, but I know these women. They are all up and down my line, just not living on a plantation in a hoop skirt, but rather toes down in wherever life took them to make their own way.
In what ways are you no longer Southern?
You could put me on the moon and I would still be trying to fry a summer vegetable. What kind of question is this, Susannah? I’m just kidding! I know what you mean. When I graduated high school I started at Birmingham Southern College where I was going to major in musical theatre, get OUT and follow my dreams to NYC for Broadway. But life circumstances at the time said otherwise. No regrets, remember? Fast-forward to a few years ago, when my voiceover coach, who is a big industry leader, asked me why I was trying to mask my Southern accent. Boom! Those questions from J Michael Collins were like a bullhorn in my ear and a call to rekindle and preserve the essence of me. If anything, I am revealing my “Southerness” more and more. After that moment, and a couple of writing workshops with Southern author Janisse Ray, there is no going back for me. I can sit with it all, you see. The good, the bad, the ugly.
What is a specific place in the South where you feel at home?
Here in Butler County, especially on the farmland, and at our home here in Greenville. The land provides space to listen and write, while Greenville has the energy for me to grow my work. My song “Going Home” tells the story of my first dog Shaina, who was with me for a short time before being brought here to Greenville over forty years ago to become the patrol dog with the beat officer here in town. I’ve just followed Shaina home.
Tell me about a Southern expression that
a. You dislike
b. You love, or
c. That you’ve used in your work
I love “Over Yonder.”
What do you like about living in the South?
It’s all here. Everything converges like the weather. Hot and cold creating a big ole fuss a few times a year. Winters are short. Summer is long.
Summer vegetables
Proximity to the coast and mountains
The storytellers
Porch swings and ice tea
Country churches
Family reunions with a potluck
The music roots and history
It’s misunderstood
It’s not for everyone and that’s okay
Share a memory of a time when you became particularly aware of some character of the South.
If you are talking about a persona, there are a couple that come to mind. Little Black Sambo and Br’er Rabbit were stories read to me by my paternal grandmother, who would read them to me from the My Book House twelve-volume set published in 1948. I remember thinking that they felt wrong even as a very young child.
If you are talking about a characteristic? Country music in the 1970s made an impact on my life and what I wanted to do. Listening to country music and gospel, visiting the Grand Ole Opry, and watching the Barbara Mandrell show along with Hee Haw each week. I wanted to follow in those footsteps. I saw myself on that stage, too. My paternal grandmother, the same one reading those stories to me, also put instruments in my hand, a Delta Dawn song on the turntable in her Birmingham home and said, “Sing Jill, sing!” Now that’s a core memory made in the South, and here I am toes down, doing what I call Delta Dawning.
Get you some Delta Dawn Scones
Other Good Southern Women Q&As you might enjoy:
One Year of the Good Southern Women Interview Series
This was such a treat to do and grateful for our friendship Susannah 💛 Thank you for giving space for voices like mine and sharing your life experiences through your own writing.