Honoring the Ancestors: The Woodcarvings of Claude Lockhart

Claude Lockhart Clark is an African-American woodcarver whose work is an expression of his African cultural heritage as well as a personal statement. Clark’s repertoire illustrates the concept of “tradition” as both continuity and change. His carved stools in particular are closely linked to family history, carved as memorials to ancestors and as repositories for locks of hair passed on from generation to generation in his family since the mid-1800s. And yet, the stools can be traced to African antecedents still being made in tribal villages today.

Clark’s work is thus examined in the context of an African aesthetic legacy and of the urban African-American community in which he lives. Past and present contribute equally to the artist’s sense of ethnic identity which finds a creative outlet in his artwork.