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influences. He also cites a pivotal European sojourn in 2000 to France, Italy, and Spain: "To see the El Grecos, you have to travel to a city that you can only walk into — Toledo. It's quite a journey to see some of those works and how they are placed. Really, the idea for Big Mom- ma's House started there." Huckaby elaborates further about the years-in-process vi- sion; he has been working on the home since the fall of 2010. The time-worn homestead was his grandmother's domain for decades — the seat of a matri- archal kingdom where a brood of eight children, even more grandchildren, and their large extended family met for holi- days, entertainments, advice sessions, and impromptu gath- erings. "There's that idea in Big Momma's House that a person has to come to this certain spot to see what's going on — and something about the journey is important, and something about place being important." Big Momma also watched young Huckaby after school until his parents returned from work. The painter recalls that some of his first drawings of fellow family members were made within the walls of the upright Victorian. The stal- wart Big Momma was the sub- ject of her own exhibition, "Big Momma's House," in 2008 at Valley House. Huckaby made the moving meditation on her passing, showing her final days bedbound in the home, as well as her hands on the Bible. Her visage was faithfully recorded in heroically scaled canvases, as were the unadorned domestic details of her dwelling, including the faded chair that took on the air of a throne while dissolving into abstraction due to Huck- aby's virtuoso display of paint handling, becoming both object and subject. The crumbling Victorian structure has been taken down to its bones — a labor of love equal to a purification ritual. What remains are the walls, natural light (our first visit was sans electricity, and even in the twilight, the rooms shone with pearly rays), and honest materials, especially the shiplap and wide floor beams that would be hard to duplicate today. Huckaby hints at redemption with well-worn pews preserved from his own church's congre- gation, reused here to create a beautiful chapel that symbol- izes the riches that lie within unadorned human interiors — a central tenet of his artistic practice that underpins his life as a painter. Big Momma's House will be open to the public when Huck- aby perceives the time is right. What does the house signify? Huckaby's carefully chosen words are weighted with con- viction. "There's this whole idea of place and what it can mean and how it can affect the way we perceive both art and how it simply affects us. With the house, I think like a painter on the one hand … I don't want to say community activist, but an idealist on the other hand. I'm constantly searching for how to make art have a profound effect upon people. "In terms of art, I don't know that we've asked all the questions of what all it can do and be in a society and culture. For example, if we look at Houston, and we look at Project Row Houses, what exactly is the art and what is it doing? Project Row Houses is not going to break those houses down and take them down to the museum, but it is helping transform that area of Houston. Who would have thought that art can do that? I try to ask those kinds of questions and push [art]. We think of it as objects of con- templation, and definitely that is important. But what if, let's say, Big Momma's House can be a place that is a catalyst for transformation of that entire community? Can art do that?" 82 "BUT WHAT IF, LET'S SAY BIG MOMMA'S HOUSE, CAN BE A PLACE THAT IS A CATALYST FOR TRANSFORMATION OF THAT ENTIRE COMMUNITY? CAN ART DO THAT?"— Sedrick Huckaby Huckaby's Little B, 2016, depicts the child the couple lost to miscarriage. Sunlight washes the century-old interiors of Big Momma's House.