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Artist: Leroy Almon Sr. (American, 1938-1997)
In 1979, following a job loss, Almon sought out Elijah Pierce — the celebrated African American lay minister and woodcarver whose Columbus barbershop served as an informal gallery — and apprenticed himself to him. Pierce taught Almon the craft of low-relief woodcarving using pocketknives and hand chisels, and the two initially collaborated on pieces before Almon developed his own independent body of work. The relationship was formative in both artistic and spiritual terms; Almon eventually became an ordained nondenominational minister and returned to Tallapoosa in 1982, converting the basement of his childhood home into a workshop and gallery.
His carvings in polychrome bas-relief address Christian themes, African American history, social commentary, and the struggle between good and evil, combining moral seriousness with a vernacular wit. Works frequently depict figures battling Satan, the temptations of modern life, and the legacy of slavery and racism — rendered in vivid paint, glitter, beads, and found materials applied over softwood panels.
Almon received Georgia's Governor's Award for the Arts in 1985. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the American Folk Art Museum, the High Museum of Art (Atlanta), the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Ackland Art Museum, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami, among others. He died of a heart attack in April 1997 at the age of fifty-nine.
