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Fundamentalism in form - art Across the Curriculum - Column

Arts & Activities, June, 2002 by Tara Cady Sartorius

If you were trying to tell a story, and really wanted to get across its point, some illustrations might help. It might not be too difficult to draw them with pencil and paper, or even get more elaborate and embellish them with colored paint. But what if you had to carve all of them out of wood?

That's just what Fred Webster (1911-1998) began to do when he was 62 years old. His work was simple; he did not carve every detail, but just what was necessary to create a basic scene, rich enough to make people curious to know more. Webster continued carving for 20-some years and, in the end, had made an impressive contribution to folk art of the late 20th century.

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Take the story of Moses, for example, as "told" by Webster in the sculpture to your left. Tiny, 3-month-old Moses lies in his basket of papyrus and pitch, resting in the bulrushes, just at the point of discovery. No one has rescued him yet; Webster depicts the crucial moment where his characters are deciding what to do, and that decision will affect the entire course of biblical and world history.

One figure, presumably the pharaoh's daughter, stands with outstretched arms looking down at the baby. The other, probably her handmaiden, kneels in the water facing Moses, about to lift the basket out of the water. The symbolic tree-like bulrushes stand at attention, forming a patterned backdrop for the whole scene.

So what if the basket is a cube of wood with a tiny head attached to its side? So what if the figures' arms have no apparent elbows? So what if the handmaiden kneels in a physiologically impossible position? Webster's hook is set. His scene is a jumping-off place for telling how Moses got in this predicament and what happened after his rescue. The story is thus ripe for the telling.

Although Webster had dabbled in whittling as a young boy, he began his intense period of carving only after retiring from a 39-year career in education. He was first a history and science teacher (22 years), and later, principal (17 years) at Berry High School in Berry, Ala. He also taught Sunday school at the local Berry Methodist Church.

The only art school Webster attended was the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, N.C., where he and his wife spent two weeks during each summer of 1975 and 1976. Webster enrolled in woodworking and wood-carving courses, and began by carving comic-strip characters such as Mickey Mouse and Snoopy, the dog from Peanuts.

His subjects later evolved to well-known Alabamians such as coach Paul "Bear" Bryant and former Governor George Wallace. Finally, however, Webster settled on images from the Bible, after receiving an initial commission for a scene of the Last Supper.

Deeply religious, Webster's favorite stories came from the Bible, and he made scores of small carved wooden sculptures illustrating important biblical scenes. He fashioned his carvings, rudimentary in their construction, out of scrap wood (mostly cedar and white pine discarded from furniture-building plants) with an inexpensive pocketknife. Usually one piece formed the head, body and legs, and then he'd carve separate arms and feet that he would peg in place.

The biblical scenes Webster chose were ones he believed were particularly poignant or especially instructive: ones with devils, angels, Adam and Eve, Noah, and others. He liked to make groupings of people (or angels or devils) in action at a pivotal point in their story. He'd often create dramatic, stage-like scenes on rectangular platforms to hold the figures together in specific arrangements. At the front of each platform, Webster would attach a little piece of wood upon which he'd write with a ballpoint pen a short phrase relevant to the scene.

Webster's wry phrase-like, teacherly "titles" say things such as, "Oh Elijah, you are on your way," or "Gabriel blow that trumpet," or "Little David you proved your strength," or "Jonah, the big fish will get you." In the case of the work about Moses shown here, he wrote the phrase, "There is little Moses. Let's take care of him."

Webster's religious scenes are, at times, both serious and humorous. Although being funny was not his central motivation, Webster definitely took a fun approach to his work. The figures themselves are toy-like, conveying the impression that Webster might have played with his arrangements before settling on their final compositions. His more complex scenes include 12 or more characters and elements.

It seems the approach Webster took to telling the messages of the Bible was one of basic fundamentalism. After so many years in the classroom, Webster found a way to reduce even the most complicated theological concepts to their simplest forms. He said, "I went to a can of Red Devil Lye to see what a devil looked like," (1) and this was the prototype he used for his entire oeuvre. By taking such a literal and populist approach to his imagery, the stories at the roots of his messages are accessible to almost anyone at any educational level.

Fundamentalism in form - art Across the Curriculum - Column

Arts & Activities, June, 2002 by Tara Cady Sartorius

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