“Re-Ignition: New Paintings by Roscoe Hall” To Open at the Birmingham Public Library

Birmingham, Ala. - An exciting new exhibition of paintings by Roscoe Hall will open at the Birmingham Public Library on Friday, June 7. The show is titled Re-Ignition: New Paintings by Roscoe Hall and will be on display in the First Floor Gallery at the Central Library through Friday, July 26.

Artist and chef Roscoe Hall, who lives and works in Birmingham, was born in Chicago in 1978. He has worked as a chef for nearly 27 years, using his art “as a life force to cope with working in some of the best kitchens in the United States.” 

In an interesting combination of the culinary and fine art worlds, Hall makes pigments from dried spices and produces his own charcoal from oak and mesquite wood. He even uses kitchen utensils to apply the homemade pigments to canvas, wood panels, paper, and other textured surfaces. 

In the exhibition Re-Ignition, the “repetitive icon of the match is the figurative focus chosen to express the narrative within the series. The match is an icon of celebration. Various forms of memories of fear, romance, and change [are] in the essence of the smell of a blown-out match. The matchbook is a figurative focus that will tell the narrative of the progression of the core principles of sustainability.”

Hall received a degree in Fine Arts with a focus on Photography from San Diego State University, followed by an M.A. in Art History from the Savannah College of Art & Design. His work has been exhibited across the United States and is in the permanent collections of the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, and the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. 

More about Re-Ignition

“The core principles of sustainability are now emotional challenges in society. All original land seems to have been approved for redevelopment for the purpose of place, profit and unjust change. The concept within this body of work is to look at these principles from the ground up. Primary research focus is in the cultivated soil of Alabama, Georgia and Illinois. The narrative sought was one of migration and settlement within these states by African Americans/my family tree. Pigments made and used in production for these works are from agriculture within those states.” – Roscoe Hall 

More about the Artist 

Over his long culinary career, Hall has worked under Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in California and David Chang at Momofuku Ssäm Bar in New York. Hall has been a creative force behind the culinary scene in Birmingham, serving as chef in restaurants such as Urban Standard, Woodlawn Cycle Café, Rodney Scott’s Barbecue, and Post Office Pies. 

Hall’s love of cooking runs in the family – his grandfather founded Dreamland Barbecue in Tuscaloosa. In 2020, Hall was a contestant on the television series Top Chef, where he cooked up innovative Alabama-inspired dishes.

To read more about Hall’s impressive career as a chef, check out the excellent article “Meet Roscoe Hall”. 

Re-Ignition is curated by Paul Barrett and BPL employee Margaret Splane. The exhibition is made possible by a grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, awarded to the Friends Foundation of the Birmingham Public Library. 

To see Hall’s show, please stop by the Central Library anytime during regular business hours. It is free and open to the public.

By Margaret Splane|Library Assistant III, Community Engagement & Fundraising