Elijah Pierce

Elijah Pierce (1892–1984) was a 20th-century wood carver. He began carving at a young age using a pocket knife. He first started carving animals because of his prior life of growing up on a farm. Pierce was honored in 1982 with a National Heritage Fellowship for his art and influence in the woodcarving community.

Early life Pierce was the youngest son in his family, born on a farm in Baldwyn, Mississippi, on March 5, 1892. His father was formerly enslaved, and was sold away from his mother by the age of four. Pierce began woodcarving at the age of seven, when his father gave him his first pocketknife. His uncle, Lewis Wallace, taught him how to carve more complex pieces. Pierce would give away his carvings to other children at his school. As a teenager, Pierce decided he did not want to work as a farmer like his father. He began to hang out at the local barbershop, and this is where he found another passion of his. In 1908, he began barbering as a trade, A spiritual man, he earned a Baptist preacher's license in 1920. He left the South and worked itinerantly across the Mississippi River valley, settling in Columbus, Ohio, in 1923 to work as a barber.

Accomplishments Pierce's work was discovered by the mainstream art world in the early 1970s,

In 1973, Pierce won first prize in the International Meeting of Naive Art in Zagreb, Yugoslavia. He was a recipient of a 1982 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. That year's fellowships were the first bestowed by the NEA.

In 1991, he was inducted into the National Barber Museum Hall of Fame.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Performing and Cultural Arts Complex in Columbus, Ohio, named the Elijah Pierce Gallery in his honor. The Columbus Museum of Art has over 300 pieces of his work. Much of Pierce's work and influence was not appreciated until after his death.

Personal life Pierce was born to a formerly enslaved father. His uncle, Lewis Wallace, taught him how to develop his talent for woodcarving.

Pierce married his first wife, Zetta Palm, and had a son with her. Palm died during the birth of their son. In September 1923, Pierce would marry Cornelia Houeston, his second wife.

Pierce died on May 7, 1984, at St. Anthony's Hospital in Columbus, of an apparent heart attack.