ANTON HAARDT GALLERY - Key Persons

Annie Tolliver remembers drawing in the dirt of Sternfield Alley outside the home where she was born in Montgomery, Alabama. She went to high school until the tenth grade, then dropped out to take care of her son, Leonard. She has been married and divorced twice, and has three children. She worked for for a long time cleaning hospitals, hotels and restaurants. She says her father, Mose Tolliver, was the first to influence her art. When the family gathered to share a meal with father Mose and mother Willie Mae, they all watched Mose work. Annie started out wanting to paint like her daddy, she says, but later developed a style more her own. Her work shows some definite differences from that of Mose Tolliver's. Her work is more colorful, with brighter and more varied colors. Her shapes are her own, with more muscular bodies and many more details such as tiny white teeth, trim on the clothing, and polished finger nails. Her paint has a flat, hard-edged look, and she seldom mixes her colors.

James "Son" Thomas was one of the great Delta blues musicians, as well as a self-taught sculptor. Born in Eden, Mississippi, he was taught to play guitar by his uncle and grandfather, but began to play seriously only after reaching the age of fifty. Soon afterward, Thomas' bottle-neck blues style was enthusiastically received all over the world. Thomas worked for a while as a grave digger and this profession most certainly stimulated his creation of clay caskets and skulls with human teeth. He said he made his first skull as a little boy to scare his grandfather who was afraid of ghosts. Thomas' music and sculpture were first documented by William Ferris, a folklorist and Director for the Study of Southern Culture in Oxford, Mississippi. In 1981, Thomas' work was included in the "Black Folk Art" show at the Corcoran in Washington, D.C.

Juanita Rogers was born near Montgomery, Alabama, and began "making mud" as a child. Using cast-off materials and objects natural to her surroundings such as mule and cow bones, fossil shells, and mud she dug from the woods near her house, her primitive existence was reflected in her work. Although Juanita firmly denied any connection with voodoo or hooddoo, perhaps in her work she unconsciously nurtured a dwelling place for a spirit, giving it an identity and personality. She treated her mud work with an unwavering sense of mission, even though her eccentric ways and compulsive urge to create segregated her from the outside world.

Mary T. Smith was born in Brookhaven, Mississippi, and spent most of her life as a tenant farmer and a cook for other families. She later moved to Hazelhurst, Mississippi, where she lived and worked until her death. After retiring, and with time on her hands, she began to paint. Smith later said, "I did it to pretty the place and please the Lord." Smith's house and in its surrounding yard was located on one of Hazelhurst's main streets and captured the attention of countless passers-by with its colorful displays and decorations. In her paintings, Smith used pieces of tin, scraps of plywood, scrap-metal sheets or other found materials. She worked with bold brush strokes, usually in one or two primary colors. Most of her paintings are figurative of animals or portraits, in a simple, child-like style, sometimes incorporating words or letters. Smith's lively figures are often depicted with both hands raised to heaven.

Mose Tolliver, was born about 1925 near Pintala, Alabama, and lived in Montgomery. During the late 1960's, boredom and long hours of idle time spawned his creativity. Mose works with "pure house paint" on plywood; creating whimsical, haunting and sometimes erotic pictures of wonderfully balanced animals, humans, and flora. A "Quail Bird" may glide over a cotton field, or a spread-leg "Diana" may be straddled over "An Excercise Rack Bicycle. Self portraits with crutches are a repeated image. Mose was dyslexic, which may have encouraged his artisitic efforts by limiting his reading and writing abilities. He would often turn his paintings upside-down and paint the picture of perhaps an animal and landscape positioned from various directions. Tolliver's titles exhibit a fantastic imagination; "Smoke Charlies," "Scopper Bugs,"or "Jick Jack Suzy Satisfying her own Self." Tolliver's work has been exhibited at the Philadelphia College of Art, Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, and the Cocoran Gallery of Art. In 1993, a retrospective of his work was held at the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City. Mose Tolliver died on October 30, 2006 at a hospital in Montgomery, Alabama, from pneumonia, at 82. Numerous works by Tolliver still remain widely available on the art market.

Sybil Gibson was born Sybil Aaron in Dora, Alabama. Although Gibson's father was a prosperous Alabama coal mine operator, she spent most of her life in poverty.