Helen LaFrance Children’s Book Discussion & Book Signing

Saturday, March 16 will be Helen LaFrance Day in Mayfield, her hometown. Several community organizations have come together to celebrate the life and work of this important African American artist.

The Jackson Purchase Historical Society will meet at the Graves County Public Library Community Room for a program honoring LaFrance beginning at 10:30 am on March 16. The program will feature She Remembered It All: The Art of Memory Painter Helen LaFrance a new children’s book by Jayne Moore Waldrop and illustrated by Michael McBride. In addition to Waldrop and McBride speaking about the book and Helen LaFrance, Jayne will read the book and a group of children who will have read it will discuss the book. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing by the author and illustrator at the meeting. The book is published by Shadelandhouse Modern Press and is available through online booksellers as well as directly from the press: smpbooks.com. The library is at 601 North Seventeenth Street in Mayfield.

Helen LaFrance was born in Graves County in 1919 and passed away at age 101 in 2020. She has been described as both an outsider artist due to her lack of formal training and existence outside the cultural mainstream and as a memory painter, best known for her capture of the disappearing lifestyle of the rural South. Sharing traits in common with memory painters Horace Pippin (1888–1946) and Grandma Moses (1860–1961), LaFrance has been referred to as “the Black Grandma Moses.” She also painted powerful and intensely spiritual visionary interpretations of the Bible, in a style that differed radically from her memory paintings.