Red Devil Bird

Description

Ronald E. Cooper
United States, born 1931
He’s Got You and Me Brother
1992
Carved and painted wood
Gift of the Daniel and Harriet Fusfeld Folk Art Collection, 2002/1.213
Earnest Patton
United States, born 1935
Man in Business Suit
1970–92
Carved and painted wood
Gift of the Daniel and Harriet Fusfeld Folk Art Collection, 2002/1.212
Sherman Lambdin
United States, born 1948
Red Devil Bird
1970–91
Painted wood twig
Gift of the Daniel and Harriet Fusfeld Folk Art Collection, 2002/1.211
Cooper, Lambdin, and Patton are all professional Kentucky “whittlers,” or folk carvers. Southern carvers often include religious references in their works. Here, Cooper’s figure refers to the lyrics of a traditional African American spiritual, while Patton’s cane snake is a common nineteenth-century folk art symbol that has survived to contemporary times. Carved cane snakes were an African art tradition carried to the American South by enslaved West Africans, for whom snake imagery held spiritual significance.
(Out of the Ordinary, 2010)