Woodcarver's Mystery Topic of CW Talk

By Amber Lester Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Amanda Clayanna Armstrong

The artist produced just 12 of his unparalleled woodcarving portraits before he died of consumption at age 27 in 1851. This week, curator Stacy Hollander will reveal the history of his sculptures during her presentation, “Asa Ames: Occupation Sculpturing” at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum.

Hollander, a senior curator for the American Folk Art Museum in New York, organized the show for her museum in 2008. It was the first-ever exhibit of Ames’ work, all produced between 1847 and 1851.

"Although details of Ames’s history remain shrouded in shadow, the work of his hands illuminates the meaningful and personal nature of the lives he captured so beautifully in wood, said Barbara Luck, Colonial Williamsburg curator of paintings, drawings and sculpture, when the exhibit opened in January. “Ames’s work bears some analogies to utilitarian carving of the time, but his conception of himself as an artist is evident in the 1850 Federal Census, where he listed his occupation as ‘sculpturing.’”

Ames created three-dimensional wood portraits, meticulously painted to look like his models, all friends and family living in his hometown of Evans, N.Y. His work went largely unrecognized until the early ’80s, when antiques dealer Jack T. Ericson culminated 12 years of research into an article published in Antiques magazine, according to a New York Times article on the exhibit.

Once Ames’ work began to be recognized among antiques and art circles, more sculptures were discovered. In 2003, the Boulder History Museum in Colorado uncovered a full-length portrait of Ames’ niece Susan, a stern-looking girl holding a small Bible. In May, Dr. Barbara Rice donated a woodcarving of her ancestor, Amanda Armstrong, to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Armstrong’s father, Dr. Thomas Armstrong, treated and housed Ames during his illness. The portrait was a gift.

Ames’s depictions share several key characteristics: finely rendered locks of hair, faces decorated with paint so thick it almost looks like wax and attention to detail in the folds of a skirt or the stiffness of a collar. The exhibit also includes a more abstract work, probably carved in 1850, showing a young child with delicate features and a phrenological map painted on her head. The exhibit is now on view at the museum through Jan. 3, 2010.

Visitors can attend the program with a Colonial Williamsburg admission ticket or a Good Neighbor Card (available here).