Tools As Art: The Hechinger Collection

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Howard Finster, Mountains of People Use Tools, 1990
enamel and marker on saw
6 x 29 3/4 in.

Howard Finster was born in Valley Head, Alabama, in 1916, and has lived on his three-acre home, called Paradise Garden, in Pennville, Georgia, since the mid-1960s. He experienced visions from the age of three and was a revivalist Baptist preacher for forty years in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. He received his calling to paint "sacred art" in 1976, when he was retouching a bicycle and a splash of white paint on his finger transformed into a vision. Since then he has created thousands of evangelically patriotic, religious, and heroic paintings and sculptures. Today he is the best-known living folk artist. His work has been exhibited widely, including shows at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., the Museum of American Folk Art and the Paine-Webber Gallery in New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 1984 he was included in the United States exhibition at the Venice Biennale. His riotous images, which combine every kind of graphic medium, include "primitive" portraits of such American icons as Elvis Presley, George Washington, and John Kennedy, as well as biblical quotations and texts from his own fiery wisdom. Tools hold a particular fascination for Finster, who considers them the hallmark of civilization and the key to winning the American West.