William Dawson

born Huntsville, Alabama died Chicago, Illinois

William Dawson grew up on a farm in Huntsville, Alabama. In 1923 he moved to Chicago, where he worked in a wholesale food market for almost forty years. After he retired, he took painting and ceramics classes at a Chicago senior center. He was bored, however, and started carving figures, animals, and totems from discarded pieces of furniture. He got up at five in the morning to work on his sculptures, and would make a new piece every day. Eventually, his wife persuaded him to move some of his pieces out of the house and he took them to a local library. The library agreed to exhibit his work, and the entire show sold out.

Artist Quote “I had never seen a totem. I was in the park one day. I was carving and a fellow came up and said, ‘Oh, you make totems.’ But I didn’t know what they were. My wife looked it up in a book in the library, and sure enough, I was making totems.” The artist, quoted in Folk Art Messenger, Winter 1990

Kenneth C. Burkhart and Russell B. Phillips