Deep with the wood

Entirely self-taught and passionate about reshaping wood into unique sculpture, local artist Ivory Henderson creates meaningful artwork that reaches back, like a tree's twisting roots curling through the earth it needs, to Africa, home of his ancestors.

Henderson's work has been showcased here at the annual adult juried exhibition and African-American art exhibit at Texarkana's Regional Arts Center. And perhaps passersby have seen him work outside wherever he calls home, whether it's hollowing a tree to craft into a drum or filing the base of a staff.

Figures, masks, walking sticks-there is much that he can do.

Henderson crafts art that has personal, spiritual and cultural significance, the weight of the wood he's chosen backed by the weight of its meaning.

He's an artist who's said it was his destiny to do this work, and it's clear, talking with him about his creations, that he's accepted this destiny wholeheartedly. He keeps photographs and newspaper clippings that tell about his work through the years.

In his home, Henderson's work shows an affinity for the stylized elements that depict a face or a body with some degree of abstraction. He points to one mask on the wall, saying, "That's an ancestral mask. It's black walnut. It's from an old, old black walnut tree. I counted the rings in it, in the tree. It was about 150 years old."

Part of the story with his artwork rests in the wood. A staff nearby in the corner, Henderson carved it about nine years ago. "That's elm. The big leaf elm," he said. A nearby statuette depicting a mother with child on her back? "That's pecan, the Texas state tree."

He cares about the wood enough that with a bit of crepe myrtle, he keeps it beneath his bed in a cool place to cure and dry naturally so it doesn't expand and crack. He can tell it's ready by the feel of it when it's cut. It's beautiful and clean wood, he says.

"I've carved exotic woods. I've carved black ebony wood from Africa," Henderson said.

Beyond the wood that constitutes the sculpture, the form it takes retains symbolic significance. In the mother-and-child statuette, a bowl rests on top of the mother's head.

"All of my art is pertaining to my ancestors, you know, and the bowl symbolizes the woman's power the abundance of good things come out of that bowl, in the kitchen cooking and stuff. The spoon and bowl are two of her power symbols, you know," Henderson said.

There's a particular person in Henderson's life to whom he says he owes it all, this interest in his cultural roots. A photo homage to this man tells the story in the artist's home.

"That's my priest. He was murdered. His name was Karioki, but we all call him Ifayomi." Ifayomi was a Dallas cultural leader and political activist with a particular interest in African heritage. An obituary of him reads, "Throughout his life, he consistently and proudly professed his pride in his culture, his roots and expressed an innate ability to help others."

For Henderson, Ifayomi inspired him to carve more than 40 years ago. It was an artistic pursuit young Ivory had enjoyed as a child.

"I used to watch cowboy and Indian movies, and I was fascinated by the bow and arrow," he recalled. "I made them myself. I made them so good and so real, that they was powerful enough to kill."

His mother didn't like that pastime, naturally enough, and a near miss with a neighbor landed him in big trouble one day. Henderson was born in Navasota, Texas, but was now living in Dallas. The young lad was trying to hit a flock of pigeons, but the arrow missed them and nearly hit a woman walking on by with her sack of groceries.

"My Mama was sitting on the porch and seen the arrow when it landed. The woman said, 'Oh, damn, where that come from?'" Henderson remembers.

"My mom just kept picking the greens, what she was doing, and as soon as the woman walked down the street, she called me by my whole name," he said. You can guess the rest. It didn't end well for Ivory, or for his 8-year-old backside.

Still, woodworking was his destiny. He takes out an old photograph to emphasize this point.

"If you look at my baby picture, what do you see behind me?" Trees. A friend said to him, "That's been your calling all your life." It was foretold there in his two-month-old photo.

Another inspiration? Believe it or not, "The Beverly Hillbillies." He didn't make bows and arrows anymore, but he kept secretly carving behind his mom's back. He'd make Bowie knives and tomahawk heads out of wooden crates.

"One day I was watching 'The Beverly Hillbillies,' and I saw Jed Clampett carve a statue of Granny. I was so amazed by that. That kind of lit a fire in me, like a little light went off in the back of my head. I got to peeling with the wood with a knife and stuff," Henderson recalled. He got good at it.

"I kept it going, kept it going, kept it going, and then I made a walking cane," he said. A man with braided hair and symbols were part of the design. He sold it to a friend for $150. "The most money I ever made off of any of my artwork."

"I've been carving over 50-some odd years now," said Henderson, now 63. He keeps very little and intends to pass what he has on down to his children. "As fast as I make it it's gone," he says of his art.

For a long time, Henderson admits, he "was blind to the culture." But his priest opened his eyes to his roots, and he also taught Henderson a lost-wax technique of metal sculpting, which was practiced in Africa. Henderson also used to repair imported African art.

Eventually, he and his wife came to East Texas, wanting to get out of the congested, wild city life, as he describes it. His wife was born in Bowie County, so this is where they landed.

When it comes to art, he's done all sorts of sculpting. He's worked with limestone, for example, but wood has a special feel for him. "The smell of it and just to do something with it, bring something out of it," he said.

He sees a woodcarving in his mind first, then gets to work. When he first taught himself woodcarving, art was all trial and error.

"Sometimes I'd carve from sunup to sundown, and I would be so tired and I'd see that last little piece and I'd try to finish it off. I'd get it done, you know," Henderson said. Of course, that was easier if he had work orders to complete.

"I was inspired to do these things that have been my calling all my life, it seemed like to me, and that's all I love to do. I have done other artwork before," he said, noting he worked with Wolf and Company in Dallas, creating sets for Tyler Perry movies and the TV show "Barney."

"Yeah, Barney, the little purple dinosaur. We did all the background scenery for him. The tree with the ladder going around it? The treehouse? I'm the one that put the bark on that tree," he said. He has the pictures, colorful and trippy, to prove it. About one photo, he says. "That's the mothership." They carved everything with Styrofoam.

Henderson taught art to Dallas kids at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center. He'd love to do more of that here. He also had a show at the South Dallas Cultural Center. A photo from those days shows him holding a totem, walking into the woods with it.

He's mindful of how in African art the culture was preserved there. Messages were stored in the artwork.

"Each statue meant something," he said. "It told a story."

"I love my roots and culture. Like Marcus Garvey said, a people without knowledge of their past history is like a tree without roots. And you never see a tree without roots. So we have roots and culture," Henderson said.