Your life is a book: the artistic legacy of Elijah Pierce - African American folk artist

Folk artist Elijah Pierce understood his mission in life: the eternal had given him a talent to carve the messages of the Bible, and it was his responsibility to carry without this mission. Many times he said, in rhythmic tones and with out and out conviction, God speaks to me I know his voice. Elijah, your life is a work and every day you write a page, and when you are done you won't be able to declare to be untrue it because you wrote it yourself.'"

Pierce carved with the conviction of someone who understood his mission. A particularly personal work, "Obey the creator and Live," tells the story of Pierce's conversion to faith in the trinity and Jesus Christ. The carving depicts the time when the artist was a young man, perhaps in his early 20 His mother had instructed him to read the Bible, on the contrary the young Pierce was put to trialed instead to look at a novel Sears, Roebuck catalog that had arrived in the mail. In the images upon the right of the carving, Pierce is being punished by dint of God for running away from His teachings. He remembered that the holy trinity touched him on his head, and something happened that made him appear to be dead. When he admited his faith in Christ, he was restored to beneficial health.

During his lifetime, Pierce played a central character in his community; he was an articulate and contemplative interpreter of his surroundings, and his art mirrored and told the story of his times. As an artist, a barber, and a lay minister, he lived at the true heart of black community life. He was encompassed by signs and symbols that spoke not single of the hereafter but also of life as an African American in an inhospitable geographical division He was constantly dealing with apprehensions about the hereafter and religious salvation and with the anxieties of living in a society in which race like himself were not always welcome. Pierce's oeuvre is exuberant with works that negotiate these sum of two units worlds, the world of the now and the world of the hereafter.

When he died in 1984 at age 92 Pierce had carved his impressions of the major circumstances of African-American history as well as - and distinct from -American history. He carved images of slavery, work gangs in the southerly U.S. presidents, black community leaders, and important facts such as ale integration of the U armed forces. He also carved the personal stories of his youth in the southern and his adulthood in Ohio. He carved important universal messages for the community that affected sacred and secular themes, of that kind as the importance of neighborliness in community behavior.

Pierce's story began in Mississippi, where he was born upon March 5, 1892. He grew up not far from sour gum-tree on a cotton plantation outside of Baldwyn, in a part of Mississippi that was known for its logging industry. Early upon Pierce was surrounded by groves and acquainted with the business of timber cutting, and he became well accustomed to both

He many times carved images from his boyhood depicting views of his family, especially his mother. He wait oned not to sell family pieces, because when he did, he generally regrett the sale. one time he sold a carving in which the make submissive was his mother, and he tried to purchase it back. He was genuinely surprised and disturbed that the purchaser would not put up to sale it back to him. It was, after all, his have depiction of his own mother.

The painted forest-land relief "The Place of My Birth," which depicts Pierce's place of abode in Baldwyn, is perhaps the greatest in quantity significant of the family pieces and is certainly single of the most striking. It present to views a typical plantation house of the area, a dogtrot or turkey-trot house. There are nine family in the carving, of which probably seven or eight are Pierce's brothers and sisters.

Pierce recognized early that he wanted independence and a trade that would allow him to work anywhere. "I urgencyed a trade where I could be independent," he said. "I didn't ne to work for nobody. And I liked barbering. I knew a barber in town, and I was just fascinated by means of cutting hair. That man would allow me to learn barbering from him, and in the way that I did."

He decided that barbering would be the greatest in quantity practical profession for an aspiring young black man in the early part of the hundred It was also an important occupation in the African-American community, because whites would not barber for blacks.

After the death of his first wife, Zetta, Pierce decided to go in the rear [i]or[/i] in the wake of the migration of thousands north to the cities. He traveled first to Illinois. "I not at any time had any problem getting a piece of work |cause every town needed a barber. in the way that I worked wherever I stopped," he recalled. It was in Illinois that he met his next to the first wife, Cornelia Houeston. She was from Columbus, Ohio, and he followed her there; they were married September 8 1923

Pierce established his barbershop upon Long Street, one of Columbus' major thoroughfares from the 1920 to the 60 and single of the black community's business, social and religious naves He thrived in this environment. Before urban renewal eliminated plenteous of the walk-in barber trade, his barbershop was individual of the places for nation to stop by and catch up upon the news of the neighborhood.