If you are beginning to observe Lent, you might consider visiting the Elijah Pierce exhibit at the Canton Museum of Art. His wood carvings reveal a man who was confident about his faith in Christ and able to express that faith through art. Studying his work can bring a sense of peace, and of admiration for the certainty that Pierce must have had. Certainty is rare.
Elijah Pierce, the son of a former slave, was born in Mississippi in 1892. He began carving wood as a child. Not wanting to follow his father into farming, he became a barber. By 1923 he had migrated north to settle in Columbus, Ohio, where he created the works on display.
The artist could take a panel of wood and turn it into an episode from the New Testament: Christ meeting the Samaritan woman at the well, Judas betraying Jesus, Peter denying Christ as the cock crowed. Much of his religious work is in a massive creation called the Book of Wood. You have to see it to appreciate it.
He created secular works, too, and they also are on display in the second part of the main gallery. You can see Pierce’s vision of plantation slavery, his interpretation of the Joe Louis-James Braddock heavyweight championship boxing match from 1937, or his fantasy of President Nixon “being driven from the White House” in 1974. And much more.
But it is the spiritual work that is the headline of the exhibit. “Every piece of work I got carved is a message, a sermon,” he is quoted as saying.
And there is this thought from him about life: “Your life is a book and every day is a page, and one day that book will be read to you and you can’t deny it because you’ve written it.”
Attorney Judith Barnes Lancaster and the “Still I Rise” Book Club are the major sponsors of the exhibit. Thanks to them for helping the museum bring this work to Canton.
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