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Object Details
- Artist
- Simon Sparrow, born West Africa 1925-died Madison, WI 2000
- Exhibition Label
- Simon Sparrow was born in West Africa to a Yoruban father and Native American mother, and raised in the Great Smoky Mountains, where his maternal grandfather lived among the Eastern Band of Cherokees. Sparrow felt a deep connection to the natural world and began a spiritual journey when he was just a boy. He preached the Pentecost and called himself a child of God, noting: “You is saved by God, by the Son, by the Holy Ghost. Not by no religion. Religion is man-made.” Sparrow’s shimmering works center on faces and creatures surrounded with geometric forms conveying, as he explained, the spiritual essences of the ancestors.
- (We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection, 2022)
- Credit Line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Margaret Z. Robson Collection, Gift of John E. and Douglas O. Robson
- ca. 1968-1983
- Object number
- 2016.38.69
- Restrictions & Rights
- Usage conditions apply
- Type
- Painting
- Folk Art
- Medium
- glitter, molded plastic, jewelry, shell, beads, and found objects on wood; artist-made painted wood frame
- Dimensions
- 33 × 35 in. (83.8 × 88.9 cm)
- See more items in
- Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection
- Department
- Painting and Sculpture
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Topic
- Abstract
- Record ID
- saam_2016.38.69
- Metadata Usage (text)
- Not determined
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/vk7235a0470-b70e-4210-aecd-d84200203153
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