Folk Art: Expressing Southern Culture

Have you seen a sculpture made out of discarded metal pieces or an animal carved from log pieces with a chainsaw and wondered who created it? The answer is probably a folk artist who may have never intended for it to be considered art. Folk art, which has a rich tradition in the American South, is art by the common people of a region that reflects the lives and expresses their hopes and dreams.

Functional and Decorative Art

Unlike fine art that is purely aesthetic and created by professional artists, folk art is typically functional and decorative and is produced by laborers and craftspeople. As such, cloth, cardboard, wood, paper, clay, and metal are commonly used, and some media are substituted for others when they are not immediately available.

Folk artists may spend their lives doing something else, although several learn skills through apprenticeships. Many are self-taught and develop their work in isolation or in small communities. The creations represent art forms of ethnic, religious, and other community groups who identify with each other and share traditions. For example, the Southern Highland Craft Guild, chartered in 1930, represents about 1,000 craftspeople in nine southeastern U.S. states.

The practical craftsmanship and decorative talent are quite apparent when examining quilts, pottery, and carved figures. However, folk art also includes expressive, unconventional, and nonconforming works by artists who draw on their cultures and experiences to create objects as whimsical as chainsaw animals and hubcap creations.

Folk art on display at the Fearrington Folk Art Show

A recent trend is the growing interest in folk arts by African Americans such as decorated furniture, architectural pieces, and utilitarian objects. When the High Museum in Atlanta held an exhibition of folk art, pieces by African-Americans (some enslaved before Emancipation) included a snake quilt, a decorated dresser cabinet (made from the recycled wood of fruit crates and cigar boxes), and a storage pottery jar engraved with a poem.

With Sam "The Dot Man" McMillan of Winston-Salem, NC,
who creates decorated furniture, quilts, clothing and
pottery as well as paintings

Folk Art in the South

The South is celebrated for its folk art shows, festivals, galleries, parades, and tours. Even the Folk Art Society of America, which focuses on folk art worldwide, has Southern roots and is still based in Richmond, Va.

• The world’s largest folk art show and sale is in the South. Folk Fest is held each August in Atlanta, features more than 100 galleries and dealers, and attracts more than 12,000 guests. “Self-taught art is the most important visual culture America has ever produced,” according to Steve Slotin, who is the Folk Fest promoter.
• A show that demonstrates the extensive variety of media that folk artists use is the Craft Fair of the Southern Highlands, which offers works of clay, fiber, glass, leather, metal, mixed media, natural materials, paper, wood and jewelry by more than 200 craftspeople. Sponsored by the Southern Highland Guild, the fair is held four days each July and October in Asheville, N.C.
• The major festival for folk art is in Alabama. Known as the Kentuck Festival of the Arts, it is held annually in October and includes demonstrations of traditional skills such as blacksmithing and quilting and the works of more than 250 artists.
• Major galleries, all in the South, that focus on folk art include Funky Chicken Art Project (housed in an old chicken house); in North Georgia; Red Piano Too Gallery (located in the first S.C. store to pay people of color with money rather than barter for goods) in St. Helena Island; Rosehips Folk Art Gallery in Cleveland, Georgia (in the center of that state’s pottery tradition); Yard Dog Folk Art (that features artists from the Gulf region) in Austin, Texas. In addition, the Kentucky Folk Art Center, a museum at Morehead State University, has a permanent collection of nearly 1,400 pieces of “self-taught art.” The Southern Folk Art magazine maintains a list of folk art galleries. 

Fork art often includes decorated cars

• The most notorious folk art parade is held in Houston, Texas, a city also known for conducting folk art tours among its historical excursions. More than 200 cars decorated by folk artists join in the parade that is watched by almost 250,000 people.

Displays by Artists Themselves

Some of the best displays of folk art are on the properties owned of the artists themselves. For example, for years Vollis Simpson made and displayed whirlagigs – pinwheels, propellers, and wind-driven sculptures built with random parts that spin in different directions – in a field next to his repair shop in Lucama, N.C. Because of the widespread recognition that he received, the North Carolina Arts Council created a two-acre park in nearby Wilson, N.C., to preserve and display more than 30 of his whirlagigs. The city even now conducts an annual whirlagig festival each November.

One of my favorite folk artists is Clyde Jones of Bynum, N.C., who uses a chainsaw to carve “critters” out of old logs and stumps. A former mill worker, Jones made critters for 30 years. They are on display at the Smithsonian Institution and around the world. None of his critters are available for sale except those that he donates for charity auctions. They are truly priceless. When my class visited Jones at his home, the students were enchanted by the zoo of brightly painted critters that surrounded his house.

Students on field trip to Jones' home

Student "riding" a critter

With Clyde Jones, renowned folk artist

I was delighted to meet Jones again near Pittsboro, N.C., at the Fearrington Folk Art Show, which is held annually in February and exhibits works by 35 folk artists. Jones represents the spirit of a true folk artist. No matter how often someone raises eyebrows when seeing his critters for the first time without understanding his fame, the renowned chainsaw artist remains confident that his work is art that has stood the test of time.

Visiting a folk art show, talking to an artist, and seeing a festival are important ways to understand more about a region. Seeing how everyday people have expressed their lives and hopes through their folk art gives more insights into a culture, particularly in the American South.

What Is a Whirligig?

Whirligig by Vollis Simpson of Wilson, NC, on display
in Wilmington, NC, at the Cameron Art Museum

Have you seen a whirligig recently? Everyone seems to have a particular idea of what a whirligig is and when to use the word. Simply, a whirligig is an object that spins or whirls. Individually as well as in groupings, whirligigs have become noteworthy, particularly in the American South, as an artistic form of creative expression.

A whirligig -- as fun to say as it is to see -- is a whimsical, wind-powered creation that whirls and turns on a pivot. The term dates to the fifteenth century and appears to have its roots in the Middle English word of whirlegigg, which was formed from whirlen (to whirl) and gigg (top). The term is applied to a variety of items – living and inanimate objects.

Creation by Self-Taught Artist

Small whirligig by Simpson

A whirligig is an inimitable creation by a self-taught artist who has no formal training – except for the whirligig that is a beetle, so named because it swims about in circles. With two pairs of eyes and clubbed antennae, the whirligig beetle lives on the surface of water where it spins and spins. Otherwise, whirligigs are inanimate and typically crafted by folk or visionary artists. The simplest wind-powered whirligig is a pinwheel, which demonstrates an important feature: blade surface. Although the designs of whirligigs may be simple, some are very complex, particularly when a creative artist such as Vollis Simpson of Wilson, NC, finds a “man or mule, hat or cat, hidden in any castoff sheet of steel” and fashions it into a whirligig.

Components are crafted out of wood, plastic, metal, and other materials, sometimes taken from discarded objects to recycle their parts and extend their lives, and then hand-painted to provide artistic expression. Antique whirligigs have been preserved in museums as creative expressions of earlier generations, as described in The New York Times. However, whirligigs are making a modern comeback, with credit for reviving them during the 1980s given to Ander Lunde of Chapel Hill, NC, who published eight books on how to build whirligigs.

Literary Connection

A whirligig as an artistic expression is sometimes even literary. For example, Whirligigs is the title of a collection of twenty-four short stories by North Carolina author O. Henry (born William Sydney Porter) that also includes the well-known “The Ransom of Red Chief.” In the collection, a lesser-known story, which takes the title of “The Whirligig of Life” to express the whimsical nature of life and relationships that change as the wind blows, recounts the visits of a Tennessee couple to a justice of the peace to “divo’ce” unhappily only to reunite blissfully the next day. In addition, Shakespeare uses whirlagig as a metaphor for “time” in Twelfth Night when the clown Feste states that “the whirligig of time brings in his revenges,” an expression we know currently as “you reap what you sow.” Sometimes whirligig is a label applied to a person, such as in The Gambler by Tyodor Dostoyevsky, whose character expresses concern that a stepfather “is going to marry that silly whirligig of a Frenchwoman--that actress, or something worse.”

Whirligigs stand guard over a field at the entrance to Fearrington
Village in Chatham County, NC

Cultural and Educational Destination

More often the artistic expression is visual art – and a tourist attraction. Sightseers enjoy watching whirligigs move as the wind blows and learning about the artists who created them for fun. Some whirligigs can be found at restaurants and in parks, and others adorn private gardens and yards. However, they attract more attention when massed in collections. The most famous location probably is the “whirligig farm” on Wiggins Mill Road in Lucama, NC, that had been constructed by Simpson on his land where more than thirty whirligigs, some more than five feet high, once attracted many visitors. Tourists are now directed to a new two-acre downtown park in nearby Wilson where these whirligigs have been designated to serve as a centerpiece to help shape the city’s industrial artisan district and be a cultural and educational destination. Wilson also holds an annual Whirligig Festival in November, and this event includes a whirligig building contest with Simpson as a judge.

On display at Cameron Art Museum

Small whirligig by Vollis Simpson

Cultural Recognition

Work of a junkyard poet

Whirligigs crafted by folk artists are also exclusive justification for a cultural award or recognition. Although garden shops, particularly online suppliers such as Wind & Weather and Plow and Hearth, sell mass-produced whirligigs, the ones individually crafted by folk artists such as Simpson, whose work has been profiled by Public Broadcasting System, are recognized for their cultural contributions. Although Simpson was wittily labeled a “junkyard poet” by The New York Times, he has been celebrated by organizations such as the N.C. Folklore Society for his “meaningful contributions to the transmission, appreciation and observance of traditional culture and folklife” and the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources that presented him the North Carolina Award, the state’s highest civilian honor. Southern Living has also presented a Heroes of the New South Award to Simpson for his contributions to art and culture. In addition, his work is now part of the permanent collections of the American Museum of Visionary Art in Baltimore, High Museum in Atlanta, and N.C. Museum of Art in Raleigh. 

When Simpson and his whirligigs were honored during a fundraiser at the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, NC, I visited to gauge the interest and reaction of the museum’s patrons. I left with the feeling that whirligigs tell an authentic story in our regional folklife. Although whirligigs mass-produced in Asia with stamped and painted metal can be cheaply bought, the true artistic ones – only the ones that connect to culture – hold value in the American South.