About the Artist
As a child, Earl Wayne Simmons made his own toys from scraps of cardboard, jar lids, and bottlecaps, sometimes using a Coca Cola bottle as a hammer. In the early 1980s, he began to build his home and “Art Shop,” constructed from scrap lumber, aluminum tubing, reflectors and other found materials, in his hometown of Bovina, Mississippi. The Art Shop burned in 2002 and again in 2012. Today, Earl is hard at work rebuilding. (Detour Art)
More Information:
Earl sells his art through the Attic Gallery in Vicksburg.
Where Else Can You Find His Work?
Mobile Museum of Art
Old Capitol Museum of Mississippi History
African American Museum (Dallas, TX)
Saint James Place Folk Art Museum, Robersonville, NC
Publications and Press:
Earl’s Art Shop: Building Art with Earl Simmons, (University Press of Mississippi, 2005), by Stephen Flinn Young and D.C. Young
Only in Mississippi, (Quail Ridge Press, 1993), by Lorraine Redd and Jack Davis
Light of the Spirit: Portraits of Southern Outsider Artists, (University Press of Mississippi, 1998), by Karekin Goekjian and Robert Peacock
Exhibitions:
Folk Art from the Collection of Sally M. Griffiths, Art Museum of Southeast Texas, January 14-April 10, 1994, Curator: Andree M. Hymel, catalog
Wind in My Hair, American Visionary Art Museum, October 12, 1996-April 21, 1997, Guest Curator: Susanne Theis
Self-Taught, Outsider and Visionary Art from the collection of Richard Gasperi, Ogden Museum of Southern Art,
October 4, 2014 – February 22, 2015
Location of Earl’s Art Shop:
