This entry was taken directly from the “Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American FOLK ART and ARTISTS,” by Chuck and Jan Rosenak.  (Abbeville Press, NYC, 1990).

 

James Henry (“Son Ford”) Thomas—Thomas’s speech is punctuated by blues lyrics:  “Goin’ to get up in the morning—believe I dust my blues: (Get out and make some art).

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA

Born October 14 1926, Eden (near Yazoo), Mississippi.  Attended school through fifth grade, Morning Star Baptist Church School, Eden, Mississippi.  Married Hattie Green, 1948; now separated.  Five sons, five daughters.  Now resides Leland, Mississippi.

GENERAL BACKGROUND

“Son Ford” Thomas is a southern Black man who was first a sharecropper and then became a blues musician and noted clay sculptor.  “You can’t play the blues, drink whisky, and be a Baptist, “he says, “‘cause you doin’ wrong.”  Thomas had natural talents for music and art but did not fully develop them until he was nearly fifty.

              Thomas got his nickname, “Son Ford,” while still in school, because he was always modeling Ford tractors out of clay or wood.  After he left school, he worked alongside his father sharecropping.  “You borrow to put seeds in the ground—pay for the seeds and end in the hole.  I done it till 1961.”  After he gave up sharecropping, Thomas dug graves for “white people” at the Stoveville Cemetery until 1971.  By then he had found that he could support himself composing and playing the blues (Thomas sings and accompanies himself on the harmonica, piano, and guitar), and making clay sculptures.

ARTISTIC BACKGROUND

Thomas recalls making things with clay or wood from his early years:  “At age ten, I made a skull,” he says, “to frighten Grandfather.”  The skull was successful (his grandfather ordered him to remove it from the house) and has remained a favorite theme of his mature work.

              In 1971 Thomas gave up digging graves and started performing as a blues musician and making art full0time.  Within a few years William Ferris, a folklorist and director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi in nearby Oxford, discovered Thomas and has since spent time documenting both his sculptures and his music.  Ferris has also donated many of Thomas’s early works to the university.             

SUBJECTS AND SOURCES

Dreams are the basis for many of Thomas’s ideas for both this sculpture and his blues lyrics.  His sculpture—clay animals, heads, and of course, the skulls—conveys a message of doom, but it is intended to be beautiful, in the sense that “bad” is “good.”

MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES

Thomas uses “black gumbo” clay, which appears gray.  Sometimes he mixes a little wax with the clay and puts hair grease on it to smooth it.  He air-dries the clay in direct sunlight, which leaves it quite fragile.  The artist embellishes his skulls and heads with wigs, sunglasses, glass eyes, ribbons, and other objects.  His skulls often have vacant or aluminum foil-lined eyes, and the animals are frequently covered with tar.  Recently, Thomas’s son Raymond has been making skulls, and they may be difficult to distinguish from his father’s work.

              His earlier pieces are the simplest; the later works are more highly decorated.  In the beginning the skulls had teeth of corn.  In the last few years Jim Arient, a Chicago dentist and collector, has been supplying the artist with denture teeth.  “I traded for skulls,” Arient says.

              Thomas has completed about four hundred objects.  His skulls and heads are usually less than a foot high, his animals about a foot long.

ARTISTIC RECOGNITION

“Son Ford” Thomas’s skulls are his most significant contribution to folk art, and his work has appeared in galleries all over the country.  As life in the Mississippi Delta changes, documenting the fragile and fugitive work of artists like Thomas is increasingly important.

              Thomas’s work was included in “Black Folk Art in America:  1930- 1980” at the Corcoran Gallery fo Art, Washington, D.C., in 1982.  Not only were his sculptures exhibited, but Thomas also entertained guests at the opening with his blues music.

James Henry Thomas:  Biography