Folk artist Elijah Pierce once said, "Every piece of work I carve is a message, a sermon."
Christ Carrying the Cross speaks for itself on this Good Friday.
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Good Friday Sermon
Folk artist Elijah Pierce once said, "Every piece of work I carve is a message, a sermon."
Christ Carrying the Cross speaks for itself on this Good Friday.
Elijah Pierce's carved relief panels are visual variations on the performed sermon. Licensed as a lay minister in 1920, he considered his ability to see forms or subjects before he began a carving as God's gift of divination. Pierce maintained that "I'm the man who makes wood talk" and often described the carvings that he began making in the 1920s as messages or sermons. African American culture, biblical, historical, or contemporary events, and his life in Mississippi and Columbus, Ohio, provided the grist for the spiritual points he illustrated.
Source: Free within Ourselves (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1992).
Pictured: Elijah Pierce, 1892–1984, Christ Carrying the Cross, about 1972, carved, painted and varnished wood with glitter mounted on painted corrugated cardboard with paper collage, painted stones, and glitter, 24 3/4 x 20 x 7/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson.