Gnarly teeth: The raw power of Son Fords skull sculptures. Born in 1926 in Eden, Mississippi, a village in northern Yazoo County James “Son Ford” Thomas was a gravedigger, sharecropper, blues musician and self-taught artist rooted in the deep south. He is most know for his delta blues, but his small sculptures carry a power of their own. As a child, James Thomas earned his nickname by modeling Ford tractors out of the red “gumbo” clay found in the hills of Yazoo County and throughout his life he would continue to use the clay of the land he lived in to create his sculptures. He sculpted native animals, such as birds, alligators, and rattlesnakes, as well as funerary figures and busts, but in particular his skulls with human teeth have a raw power that radiates of the hoodoo folk religion he was a part of. Hoodoo as opposed to Voodoo focuses on the power of the head and skull and the mythology surrounding Son Ford tells of him having powers to give and cure sickness through hoodoo. Mythology also has it that he collected the teeth for his sculptures while working his gravedigger shifts, but in reality he was supplied by local dentists. Thomas’s skulls live in a peculiar place, unequivocally between ghoulish and absurd. Each a hefty lump of clay crudely worked into the shape of a skull, they are squat and feel as though each of their identities comes from being mashed down to their very core.
(via mementomoriiv)
Michał Elwiro Andriolli 1836-1893 (Polish), Mother, 1888.
(via mementomoriiv)
Nam June Paik: Candle TV (1990)
(via awhchaos)
Folklore
Yohji Yamamoto: Wool ‘Bat’ Sweater (1999)
A 15th Century tour of Hell
Medieval monks had themselves one hell of a time imagining the demons awaiting sinners in Hell. The illustrations are from Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur (Bodleian MS. Douce 134), a treatise on the Antichrist, the last judgement, and Heaven and Hell.
The Five Wounds of Christ, from a Book of Hours
