Simon Sparrow

(West Africa, Africa, 1925 - 2000, Madison, Wisconsin)

American, born West Africa

Sparrow was a house painter and Pentecostal minister as well as an artist. His assemblages, for which he is best known, are heavily layered with beads, costume jewels, and glitter. Assemblage involves the transformation of non-art objects and materials into sculpture through combining or constructing techniques like gluing or welding. The elements Sparrow chooses may relate indirectly to early black funeral customs. The artist said only that the symbols in his pieces “come from spiritual sources.”

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