“James 'Son Ford’ Thomas: The Devil and His Blues”

While a number of places have a mythical hold on the nation’s imagination, few are as resonant or important to our cultural heritage as the Mississippi Delta, home to the blues, and repository of both the suffering and resilience of African-American life. The art of James ‘Son Ford’ Thomas, a musician and self-taught sculptor, was both literally and metaphorically wrested from this landscape. A gravedigger by trade, Thomas was know for modeling skulls out of the clay of the Yazoo River, which were sometimes augmented with real human teeth: Momento mori that not only recall life’s vanities, but also America’s self-dealing attempts to bury the past.