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).

 

Simon Sparrow—“Everything of mine comes from the Spirit.”

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA
Born October 16, 1925, West Africa. Attended school for three years in New Bern, North Carolina.  Married Johnnie Roper, 1942; divorced 1946.  Married Jocelyn Reed, 1968.  Four daughters, two sons by Roper; one daughter, one son by Reed.  Now Resides Madison, Wisconsin.

GENERAL BACKGROUND

Simon Sparrow is especially recognized for his large, complicated, collaged assemblages that sparkle with color, beads, and trinkets. 

              “I am the missing link between African and Afro-American art,” Sparrow proclaims.  “I was born in Africa.  My father was African, but my mother was a Cherokee.”  Sparrow’s parents moved from Africa to North Carolina to become sharecroppers when he was two years old.  At the age of twelve, he ran away to Philadelphia, where he was “adopted by a Jewish Family.”

              In 1942 Sparrow lied about his age and enlisted in the army, serving for the next two years.  He became a welter-weight fighter while in the army and had twenty-seven fights.  After his discharge, Sparrow became a house painter in New York City and began to create art until a fire destroyed much of his work in 1958.

              Sparrow left New York to settle in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1969.  He preaches in the streets as a Pentecostal minister, paints houses, and continues his art career.

ARTISTIC BACKGROUND

Simon Sparrow started to draw when he was seven years old, but his mature work, consisting mostly of pastel drawings, was started while he lived in New York City from 1944 to 1968.  Unfortunately, much of the work he did during the earlier part of this period was lost; “I had an art place,” he says, “but it burned down with all my paintings in 1958.”  The artist also creates large, collaged assemblages, some of which he uses to aid his Pentecostal street preaching.

              Carl Hammer of the Hammer Gallery in Chicago discovered Sparrow’s work in 1984 and began representing the artist.

SUBJECTS AND SOURCES

“I get small visions—fleeting pictures,” Sparrow says, “and I paint them.”  Both his pastel drawings and his large assemblages contain images that are barely recognizable as human faces.  He incorporates an iconography of personal symbols in his pieces that he claims “come from spiritual sources.”  The literal meaning of the work can only be understood, he says, “by the Lord.”

MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES

Sparrow’s drawings are done with pastels on oster board or paper.  The assemblages on plywood are composed of thousands of small objects:  plastic beads, buttons, trinkets, and cheap souvenirs of all types that the artist finds at garage sales and secondhand stores n Chicago.  Sparrow works outside while creating the assemblages, supporting them on sawhorses. 

              Perspective does not concern Sparrow; his faces, surrounded by symbols, designs, and fields of color, are flat.  He uses color freely both in his pastels and in the assemblages.

              The pastel drawings are approximately 30 by 24 inches; the assemblages are large, often 3 by 4 feet.  Since the fire in which Sparrow lost an unknown number of pieces, he has made several hundred pastel drawings and about thirty large assemblages.

             

ARTISTIC RECOGNITION

Although Simon Sparrow’s pastels are quite interesting, the large, complicated, heavy collaged assemblages are the artist’s crowning achievement.  The work is highly original and presents the type of spiritual expression that is often found in the work of folk artist.

              The artist has been exhibited in Madison, Wisconsin, and at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

             

Simon Sparrow :  Biography