George Kornegay

George Paul Kornegay (November 23, 1913 – June 3, 2014) was an American folk and outsider artist, and minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, who created a large Christian visionary environment with found objects near Brent, Alabama.

Early life and career Kornegay was born on 23 November 1913 in Bibb County, Alabama, the second of ten children of Will and Sue Kornegay. His father worked as a farmer, miner, and barrel maker, and his mother looked after their children. Kornegay attended the Alabama Mission School in Brent until the tenth grade, but had to leave school and help his father in sharecropping. Kornegay gave several names to his visionary environment including The New Jerusalem, Seven Holy Mountains, Art Hill, and the Sacred Mountain.

He had been inspired to create the work after a dream in which a vision from God told him that he would be better able to communicate his religious messages this way. Kornegay had originally intended to sculpt a face onto a red rock but he felt compelled not to and was told to "Say, Upon this rock I'll build my church the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I'll give you the key to the kingdom but what you find on earth shall he found in heaven, what you loosen on earth shall he loose in heaven, and this was my beginning. I love this because this is the beginning, and all of this is going to have an end". Having only intended to sculpt the rock, Kornegay was told by God to "Go further" and he asked God to "Tell me how when I get up in the morning". The next day he was compelled to "Put a piece here, put a piece there, put a piece over yonder. Go back and get that; never throw nothing away...So I fixed it up his way. I spaced it, you know, with the eye God give me. Everything got a place. I told them, "I can see more with my eyes closed than they can see with their eyes open." So God gave it to me, and I'm going to use it till I die". Kornegay died a centenarian on 3 June 2014; he was predeceased by his wife, and his daughter Donna Lee, and survived by his 11 children, 30 grandchildren, and 45 great-grandchildren.