|
| Stacy C. Hollander, curator
Asa Ames is a mysterious and tragic figure. The young sculptor died
from consumption when he was 27 years, 7 months, and 7 days old. Though
his own life was short, he immortalized family members and neighbors in
the vicinity of Evans, Erie County, New York, in a legacy of twelve
three-dimensional portraits of children and young adults carved between
1847 and his death in 1851.
During the period that Ames was working in Evans, there was little
precedent for portraits in wood. Rare examples were carved in a
classical style by some talented shipcarvers, but Ames's veristic
life-size bust-, waist-, and full-length portraits have few antecedents
in American folk sculpture. One of the most intriguing artworks is a
startling waist-length carving of a little girl in a pleated red dress
with phrenological markings on her head, but the images that come most
readily to mind are sensitive carvings of actual children that seem to
embody a state of childhood innocence.
The individuation and ethereal solemnity of the carvings derive from
sculptural traditions with a long lineage, from Roman portrait busts to
marble statuary associated with the rural cemetery movement that was
burgeoning in the 1840s. Ames's sense of himself as an artist may be
implied in the Federal Census of 1850, in which his occupation is
listed as "sculpturing." Details of Ames's own history remain shrouded
in shadow, but the work of his hands illuminates the meaningful and
personal nature of the lives he captured so beautifully in wood.
Museum exhibitions are supported in part by the Leir Charitable
Foundations in memory of Henry J. & Erna D. Leir, the Gerard C.
Wertkin Exhibition Fund, and the New York City Department of Cultural
Affairs.
http://www.folkartmuseum.org/default.asp?id=2111
|