Hawk Head Guys

Copied Sulton Rogers, Hawk Head Guys, ca. 1990, painted wood, A: 18 in. (45.7 cm) B: 16 1⁄2 in. (41.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Gordon W. Bailey, 2012.73.3A-B

Artwork Details

Title
Hawk Head Guys
Artist
Date
ca. 1990
Location
Dimensions
A: 18 in. (45.7 cm) B: 16 1⁄2 in. (41.9 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Gordon W. Bailey
Mediums Description
painted wood
Classifications
Object Number
2012.73.3A-B
Linked Open Data
https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2012.73.3A-B

Artwork Description

Sulton Rogers carved figures during night shifts as a machinery supervisor at Allied Chemical in Syracuse, New York. He carved the characters that populated his imagination, ghostly figures he called “haints,” a term for spooks and spirits used in the American South. Human bodies with the heads of animals was a common feature and a satirical element in much of Rogers’s work, his way of suggesting animal traits in human nature.
Luce Object Quote
“I can make most anything from a picture. If I see it, I can make it. This is the gift I have. And I make up a lot of things, too. I’m not always sure where they come from. I like it, though. It keeps me always doing something. Now that I’m retired it keeps me busy.” Sulton Rogers, quoted in Karekin Goekjian and Robert Peacock, Light of the Spirit: Portraits of Southern Outsider Artists, 1998