Dimus Hall (folk artist)

"My talent is a gift from God. You are born with it. It doesn't matter who you are, or how beautiful you are, we all are going to die. But your work remains and will be seen for years after you have gone."

Dilmus Hall was one of 13 children born in 1900 in a farming and blacksmithing family in rural Oconee Country Georgia. As a child, he sculpted animals from clay and also from flour mixed with pine pitch bled from trees on his parents land. Hall's father disapproved of his son's artistic interests, as they were impractical for the family's farming needs. He eventually left the family farm to work in a coal mine. In 1917 he joined the United States Army Medical Corps and served in Europe as a stretcher-bearer. His exposure to European arts and crafts had tremendous impact, and Hall vowed to contribute to an artistic heritage of his own. Upon his return to Athens, Georgia, Hall's European experience met his familiarity with African American craft and imagery, and a richly iconographic body of paintings and sculptures ensued. He worked as a hotel bell captain and waiter, a sorority house busboy on the University of Georgia campus, and as a fabricator of concrete blocks. The latter resulted in a series of concrete sculptures that joined the pencil drawings he was producing at the time. In the art he made and in the manner in which he decorated his house, Dilmus Hall revealed an inherent belief in the spiritual nature of objects. While he was not aware of African history associated with such symbols as the cross and diamond, he used them and believed in their protective powers. His work and his home environment were living examples of African American conjuring culture, with its mix of Christianity and African traditions of empowering objects. Dilmus Hall believed he had a god-given creative talent all his life. He lived the belief that today's good work would "testify to the goodness of life after you're gone, yes."

Before being stopped by arthritis, Hall created concrete, metal and wood sculptures, some of the devil in various activities, and some of fanciful human and animal figures. After his arthritis became too painful for him to continue making sculptures, he began to make drawings. There is a large collection of color drawings from a sketch book. Dilmus died in 1987.