Winfred Rembert recalls: “Chain gang work is the worst work under the sun. I know because I spent seven years on one. It never got too cold or too hot to work. Snakes and bees can be a problem. Picking cotton on the chain gang is just hard. The sun is really hot and water is not plentiful.” - From a handwritten statement, Adelson Galleries archives
Rembert learned to hand tool leather while incarcerated at a maximum-security prison in Reidsville, Georgia, where he crafted billfolds with simple geometric designs. He had been arrested after fleeing violence at a 1964 civil rights rally and was very nearly lynched before being sentenced to 27 years in prison, of which he ultimately served seven. After his release, Rembert married, moved north, and found employment as a longshoreman in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He began to craft leather again at his wife’s suggestion. She encouraged him to visually record the story of his life: growing up in the segregated South; doing backbreaking work on a cotton plantation; joining civil rights rallies as a follower of Martin Luther King, Jr.; his arrest and near lynching; seven years in jail; and hard labor on the chain gang.
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Rembert’s tooled leather paintings resonate with a painful past but they can portray happier memories as well, recalling his hometown of Cuthbert, Georgia. For an artist with no formal training, he exhibits remarkable talent as both a creator and a storyteller. He has elevated prison-learned craft to museum-worthy art.
The intense patterning of Yellow Rows is striking both visually and conceptually, a direct reference to the practice of cotton planting. Despite Rembert’s experience of cotton picking as a brutal job he also remarked: “I must admit that the cotton field was a pretty place. The farmers did a beautiful job of patterning the rows, so if you happen to ride by or pass a cotton field, it’s a beautiful sight. Some rows to the left, some to the right, and some straight.”