About the artist
1892–1984, lived and worked in Columbus, OhioA Baptist preacher, a barber, and one of the most important American wood carvers of the twentieth century, Elijah Pierce tends to be identified with Columbus, Ohio, where he lived much of his life and where most of his work resides. However, he was born on a cotton plantation in Baldwyn, Mississippi, the son of a former slave. His uncle Lewis Wallace taught him how to whittle, but barbering attracted his attention as a trade. After the death of his first wife in 1915, Pierce joined the Great Migration north, working as an itinerant laborer and preacher—he earned his license in 1920 in his home town—and eventually following his soon-to-be second wife Cornelia to Columbus, Ohio, in 1923. In Columbus he was employed steadily as a barber and began to carve more seriously after presenting Cornelia with a small elephant as a birthday present. He promised her a whole zoo, and Pierce’s art practice began with that menagerie.
By the 1930s, Pierce was making colorful painted-and-polished sculptural reliefs as well as freestanding figures, which illustrated Biblical scenes, depicted popular cultural events and personages—particularly from sports and cinema––and recounted autobiographical details. He opened his own barbershop in 1951, installing a woodworking studio. Pierce’s sculptures, already well-known in his community, garnered broader artworld attention in the 1970s, and he exhibited nationally and internationally, retiring from his business and concentrating exclusively on his art. He began to tackle more topical subjects like the Civil Rights Movement and Watergate. In 1982 he won a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, in recognition of his cultural achievements. Pierce’s work, although concerned specifically with the African-American experience, maintains a wide appeal for its formal refinement and its direct, plainspoken communication of universal themes both religious and secular. Pierce’s sermon sculptures are among the most sought-after in the pantheon of self-taught American artists, and his work can be found in institutions worldwide, including the National Museum of American Art; the Columbus Museum of Art; the American Folk Art Museum; and the Wexner Center for the Arts.
—Brendan Greaves
Bibliography
Abercrombie, Sharon. “Art Community Saddened by Death of Master Carver.” Columbus Citizen-Journal (May 9, 1984).
Almon, Leroy. “Elijah Pierce Story.” Maccabeus (August–September 1979): 9–11.
Aschenbrand, Richard A. “Elijah Pierce: Preacher in Wood.” American Craft Magazine 42 (June–July 1982): 24–25.
Bearden, Romare and Harry Henderson. A History of African American Artists from 1792 to the Present. New York: Pantheon, 1993.
Bernard Danenberg Galleries. Elijah Pierce: Painted Carvings. New York, 1972.
Bishop, Robert. American Folk Sculpture. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1974.
Bishop, Robert, Judith Reiter Weissman, Michael McManus, and Henry Neimann. Folk Art: Paintings, Sculpture, and Country Objects. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
“Black Folk Art in America: Elijah Pierce.” Folk Art Finder (January–February 1982): 5.
Brewster, Todd. “Fanciful Art of Plain Folk.” Life (June 1980): 112–118, 120, 122.
Burris, Tom. Interview with Elijah Pierce. Channel 6 Television News, WSYX, Columbus, Ohio, July 7, 1981.
Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts. Elijah Pierce, Wood Carver (exh. cat.). Columbus, Ohio, 1973.
Common Ground/Uncommon Vision: The Michael and Julie Hall Collection of American Folk Art. Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee Art Museum, 1993.
Contemporary American Folk, Naïve, and Outsider Art: Into the Mainstream? Oxford, OH: Miami University Art Museum, 1990.
Dewhurst, C. Kurt, Betty MacDowell, and Marsha Mac Dowell. Religious Folk Art in America; Reflections of Faith. New York: E.P. Dutton/Museum of American Folk Art, 1983
Edwards, Larrilyn. “Elijah’s Barbershop New ‘Historic Place.’” Columbus Citizen-Journal (October 4, 1983).
Edwards, Larrilyn. “Pierce Friends Aim to Keep Work Here.” Columbus Citizen-Journal (June 24, 1984).
Edwards, Larrilyn. “Columbus Museum Purchases Pierce Carvings.” Columbus Citizen-Journal (March 29, 1985).
Elijah Pierce, Woodcarver. Columbus, OH: Columbus Museum of Art, 1993.
Garret, Betty. “Elijah Pierce: Sculptor, Preacher, Barber.” ARTnews (March 1974): 114–115.
Hall, Michael D. American Folk Sculpture: The Personal and the Eccentric (exh. cat.) Bloomfield Hills, MI: Cranbrook Academy of Art Galleries, 1971.
Hall, Michael D. Transcription of audiotaped interview with Elijah Pierce, fall 1971. Archives, Columbus Museum of Art.
Hall, Michael D., and Eugene W. Metcalf, Jr., eds. The Artist Outsider: Creativity and the Boundaries of Culture. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994.
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Jones, Carolyn. Transcriptions of audiotaped interviews with Elijah Pierce, 1972. Archives, Columbus Museum of Art.
Jones, Carolyn, producer. Elijah Pierce: Woodcarver. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University (16mm, 20 minutes), 1974.
Jones, Carolyn, and Raymond Kook, producers. Sermons in Wood. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University and Center for Southern Folklore (16mm and videotape, 27 minutes), 1976. Distributed by the Center for Southern Folklore, Memphis, TN.
Lavitt, Wendy. Animals in American Art. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
Let It Shine: Self-Taught Art from the T. Marshall Hahn Collection. Atlanta, GA: High Museum of Art, in association with the University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, MS, 2001.
Livingston, Jane, and John Beardsley. Black Folk Art in America: 1930–1980. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi/Center for the Study of Southern Culture for the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1982.
Moe, John F. Amazing Grace: The Life and Art of Elijah Pierce. Columbus, OH: Martin Luther King Jr. Center for the Performing and Cultural Arts, 1990.
Moore, Gaylen. “The Vision of Elijah.” New York Times Magazine (August 28, 1979): 28–30, 34–35.
Personal Intensity: Artists in Spite of the Mainstream. Milwaukee: Art Museum, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 1991.
Powell, Richard J. Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century. London: Thames and Hudson, 1997.
Ricco, Roger, and Frank Maresca, with Julia Weissman. American Primitive: Discoveries in Folk Sculpture. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
Seibert, Margaret Armbrust. Transciptions of selected audiotaped interviews with Elijah Pierce, 1980, 1981. Archives, Columbus Museum of Art.
Seibert, Margaret Armbrust. Transcription of excerpt from audiotaped interview with Estelle Pierce, 1991. Archives, Columbus Museum of Art.
Self-Taught Artists of the 20th Century: An American Anthology. New York: Museum of American Folk Art, in association with Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1998
Siporin, Steve. American Folk Masters. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992.
The Ties that Bind: Folk Art in Contemporary American Culture. Cincinnati, OH: The Contemporary Art Center, 1986.
Transmitters: The Isolate Artist in America. Philadelphia: Philadelphia College of Art, 1981.
Trechsel, Gail Andrews, ed. Pictured in My Mind: Contemporary American Self-taught Art from the Collection of Kurt Gitter and Alice Rae-Yelen. Birmingham, AL: Birmingham Museum of Art, in association with University Press of Mississippi, 1995.
Wahlman, Maude Southwell. Elijah Pierce. Columbus, OH: Keny and Johnson Gallery, 1985.
Williams, Mary Ann, producers, host. Afromation. Interviews with Elijah Pierce, Aminah Robinson, and Robert Strull, October 1973. Columbus: WOSU-TV and Department of Black Studies, Ohio State University, 1973.
Williams, Mary Ann, producer. Elijah Pierce, Woodcarver. Columbus: Department of Black Studies, Ohio State University, 1976. [videorecording]
Wolf, Jeffrey. Transcription of selected portions of audiotaped interview with Elijah Pierce, 1974. Archives, Columbus Museum of Art.