"The Treasure of Ulysses Davis" Exhibition
American Folk Art Museum
This event has ended.
Ulysses Davis (1914 - 1990) was a Savannah, Georgia, barber who created a diverse but unified body of highly refined sculpture that reflects his deep faith, humor, and dignity. For the more than three hundred carved wooden figures, furniture pieces, and reliefs he created during his lifetime, Davis used shipyard lumber, pieces donated by his friends, or wood he bought at lumberyards. He almost never made preliminary drawings or models but reduced the mass with a hatchet (and, later, a band saw) before refining the form with a chisel and knives, many of which he fabricated himself. To add textural detail, he sometimes used tools of this barbering trade, such as the blade of his hair clippers. Davis's sculptures, which range in height from six to more than forty inches, can be divided into major categories: portraits of American and African leaders, religious images, patriotism, works influenced by African forms, fantasy, flora and fauna, love, humor, and abstract decorative objects. The exhibition includes the group regarded as the artist's masterwork: a series of carved busts of forty U.S. presidents.
[Image: Ulysses Davis "STRANGE FRUITS" (detail) (After 1968) Paint on wood with glass 19 x 9 x 9 in.]
Media
Schedule
from April 21, 2009 to September 06, 2009